plastic chicken house

[Still the Luvpies]

Hello, we havent posted for so long we couldn't remember our pasword and had to get a new account, but here we are asking four your advice...

our chicken house is smothered with redmite, we have used various powders and treatments and even took the house apart and re-creasoted, but stil they keep coming back. What can we do?
I was looking at getting one of these and converting it and moving the run to a different part of the garden

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Garden-Storag ... 27b9a0f7ad

what do you think?

[diggernotdreamer]

I had a look at this box. It is slatted so if you have red mite they will still be able to live in the cracks. It is quite small, not sure how hens could perch in there and it would need ventilation, personally I would not house anything living in it. How many hens do you have? I had very bad redmites a few years back, in the end I did get rid of them I used Growing Friends natural pyrethrum which is really a garden product to get rid of aphids, but it is a very effective killer and of course degrades very quickly again. I use diatomacious earth in my hen house and it is brilliant, you can get it on Ebay as well. You rub it into all the cracks and crevices, all along and around the perches and nesting boxes, you can even dust round the hens vents with it to deal with lice. Google it and read how it works, no chemicals or nasties in it. My neighbours had the mites this summer, so I did the pyrethrum and then dusted and the house is now clean, I have 70 assorted poultry and the DE has kept the mites away, you do need to dust regularly and thoroughly.

[Keaniebean]

Chickens are fairly hardy creatures but I'm not sure that this would be thick enough for them and they might get too cold. In the long run though, what you spend on treatments for the mites might be more?

I know the cost is possibly prohibitive but if you can stretch to an eglu from Omlet then they are great. We have had ours for 6 years now and we have never had red mites and it's still good as new. Well, at least it would be if we involved a pressure washer

[the.fee.fairy]

Niki's got an old playhouse as a chicken house. It works really well and is designed to be easy to clean.

She got it from freecycle - it's one of those plastic wendy houses that kids have. It looks nice as well as providing the chickens with a nice place to live. They got through the winter really well. The wendy houses are hollow plastic, so I'm guessing (don't know, haven't actually seen it yet) that the air in between the layers provides insulation for them.

Could be a good plan if you're not up to spending a lot