Poultry Lice Treatment - Pyrethrum bath

I bet not many of you can't boast that you gave chickens a bath on the weekend! I had, by far, the best answer to "what did you get up to this weekend?" at work today.

Anyway, let's wind back a bit. It was a gloriously hot spring weekend and it was time for me to get on top of the poultry lice on my chickens. I've been regularly dusting them with poultry dust, but it wasn't having much of an effect. So when a hot weekend was forecast, it was time for a two pronged attack. Bathe the chickens to get rid of the lice and a spring clean of the coop.

Why am I giving them a bath you say? Well, take a look at Penguin's bum. Brighter than those baboon bums and he's started to pull out feathers from the itching. And yes, I constantly see him scratching his bum. Poor guy with a sore bum and it ran under his chest too. Action had to be taken.

 First up: Pyrethrum

After quite a bit of research, I settled on the use of pyrethrum, partly because it has low toxicity and partly because it was easy to get a hold of. Believe it or not, I just used the Yates pyrethrum concentrate from Bunnings.

 The Yates solution has the active ingredient of pyrethrins at 4g/L (0.4% solution) with piperonyl butoxide at 16g/L (1.6%). Checking the MSDS, it also contains 1-10% ethanol and the remaining balance of "ingredients deemed to be non hazardous", which is most likely water.

Pyrethrum is the natural version (non-synthetic) of the insecticide and breaks down readily in sunlight. There is a study that shows it lasts about 2 hours in sunlight. Synthetic versions are called pyrethroids and they are more stable under sunlight.

The Yates version is coupled with piperonyl butoxide (I like how they call it a synergist) to increase the toxic effect of pyrethrum.

So before I went dunking my chickens in this solution, I did some research. It is used in pet shampoos and flea collars, and also for cattle as a pour on/spray solution. One article did say that in sheep and poultry, it is used at about 6mg/kg of bodyweight. The Yates concentrate is at 4mg per 1ml of solution, which means that I could potentially apply 1ml of the solution on my chickens safely.

Then I looked at commercially available solutions for birds and came across the Avitrol solution, which is composed of 0.05% pyrethrin and 0.5% piperonyl butoxide. There was also a study that used 0.1% cypermethrin solution (synthetic) and reported 100% parasite reduction and continued to prevent re-infestation up to 30 after the application.

Then I checked the LD50 of pyrethrum. For rats, the worse case scenario is 350 to 500mg/kg of bodyweight. Which equates to drinking about 100ml of the Yates concentrate solution. Since there is piperonyl butoxide added, I wanted to make sure the solution I made was well below that concentration.

So what did I end up doing?

I made a 1:1000 dilution. So for 18L of water, I added in 18ml of the Yates solution (and they have a handy measuring cup on the container!).

This equates to 4mg/L of pyrethrum and 16mg/L of piperonyl butoxide (PBO). Here's a table of the calculations ('cos I like tables)

So if my chickens drink a litre of the solution, they would only ingest 4mg of pyrethrum, and I wasn't going to let them drink the water!

Armed with this knowledge, I prepared a bath for them. I used a second hand baby bath for this which I only got for $2 (love bargains).

Chickens are such sticky beaks. The moment I brought out the bath they all marched up to see what I was doing. Little did they know what was going to happen...

First in my sight was Penguin. Besides the Pyrethrum, I had also added in some bubble bath ('cos who doesn't like a bubble bath), actually, I want the water to penetrate down to their skin and the soap helps to do that.

So next, once you have caught your chicken, be prepared for a lot of flapping and squawking and struggling when they realise that they are getting wet. Also be prepared to get bath water in your mouth, but hey, it's way below the LD50 limit, so you are safe!

Then it is splish, splash time. Actually, when you catch them the second time (yes, they invariably escape the bath and you have to catch them again) they give up and sit quietly in the bath, resigned to their fate. Either that or they realise that sitting in warm water with a human massaging them is actually quite relaxing. 

Remember to get the water under their wings, along their back and around the neck. I made sure that they didn't get their heads wet. Make sure that the water penetrates through to their skin, which means you will be massaging them quite a bit! Also pay particular attention to their bum/vent area as that is where the lice like to accumulate.

Once done, dry them off slightly with a towel. They got to use my expensive microfibre towel, but hey, the things you do for your pets. Because it was still quite cool and they were completely soaked, I gave them a warm session under the hair dryer.

I have to say, they all LOVED the hair dryer. They all just sat quietly (I think Penguin fell asleep) as I dried them off. Then you have happy chickens that smell really nice! And they are so soft and fluffy!

Happy, dry and fluffy chickens.

The main question though, is that concentration pyrethrum enough to kill off the lice. Well take a look at the bath.

Just looks like dirty water from here...until you take a closer look.

See the light brown bugs in the water! That's the lice. All nice and dead.

Quite a big mass of them in the corner. 

Can I exclusively say that it was the pyrethrum that killed off the lice? No. The soap might have helped to suffocate or drown the lice. Either way, I hope it will have a residual effect on any that I didn't get in the bath. Have to say, I haven't seen Penguin scratch his bum since! That's a good sign.

I do not know if this concentration of pyrethrum is enough to have an ovicidal effect (killing the lice eggs) or not. So I will have to check the chickens again in a week or two to see if they reappear.

Edit: I've checked DumDum 2 weeks after her bath and she has lice again, this indicates that this concentration does not have ovicide effects. Then again, DumDum is not the best at preening (with all her coordination issues). So far, no lice on Penguin.

Don't forget, you'll have to clean out the coop too. That's what all this spring weather is for!

So all the winter straw came out. There was a lot of straw -__- and it was really hot in the sun (yes I slathered on sunscreen).

The whole room got sprayed with Coopex, poultry dust sprinkled all over the floor and a new layer of clean dirt placed on the floor (I'm still aching from all those barrow loads of dirt)

The result! Sand is so much easier than straw to clean up poo. It's also cooler in summer, you can mist it down at night for the birds to cool the coop down, especially when you have a tin roof that turns the place into an oven during the day.

Also placed sawdust in the nest boxes. Again, easier to clean up than straw. All the chickens were highly unsure of the sawdust at first. Dum dum took hours of running around to finally lay in the nest box.

So there you have it. Kill lice with chicken baths! It's a few days since their ordeal, Penguin still loves to be picked up, they are all laying and acting normally and there is a lot less scratching the bum area going on.

This is an easy way to drastically reduce lice numbers on your chickens quickly, it's effective as seen by the number of dead lice in the bath water. I wouldn't do this routinely as the lice may become resistant to it, but I will give them a bath if I see lots of lice (even after dusting them with poultry dust) or I find red raw bums again. If own pets, I think it is my duty to make sure that they are happy and healthy, even if I have to put up with flapping, squawking wet chickens refusing to sit in the water! And really, it's not that much worse than giving a dog a bath!

Time to go and cuddle your soft, fluffy (lice free) chickens ;)

References

Comparative testing of some insecticides for control of mallophagosis in chickens, Prelezov, P (2008) Trakia Journal of Sciences, 6:78

Use and abuse of pyrethrins and synthetic pyrethroids in vetinary medicine, Anadon, A; Martinez-Larranaga & Martinez, M (2009) The Veterinary Journal, 182:7

Botanical insecticides, deterrents, and repellents in modern agriculture and an increasingly regulated world (2006) Isman, M; Annual Review of Entomology, 51:45