AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

How do I get rid of scaly feet? my rooster has it pretty bad, help please

Scaly feet and legs are caused by little mites.
You can get rid of them by smearing vaseline on there feet and legs
use a fair amount the idea is to suffocate them...

When I had old english my rooster had scaly mites and I googled it and found a treatment that was cheap and easy.

To kill a scaly leg mite you need to suffocate it basically!

I have read of using various concoctions to 'paint' a chickens scaly legs, some even say to use kerosene but I have found ordinary vegetable based oil to work fine. Buy a litre of the cheapest cooking oil that your supermarket stocks!

Next find a small pot approximately 10cm ot 4" deep and about the same in diameter. I use a 1litre yogurt pot! although a heavy pot has less chance of being kicked over. Fill it almost to the brim with the cooking oil.

Then taking the chook gently but firmly manouver the bird over the pot full of oil and dip each leg in turn in the oil for a few seconds. It is made easier as the bird will attempt to put her legs down as you lower her down, thus plunging the scaley leg into the oil.

If your chickens are a bit wild as mine are, wait until they are roosting and get the pot(!) ready and just lift them gently off their roost and proceed as described above. You can calm them by talking to them if you like!

Repeat each day until the scaly legs are much improved in appearance. You will notice a difference after a day or two and certainly after a week of treatment they should be quite pink with new scaley skin minus the mites! Your chook may even help matters along by pecking at lose scales etc as the treatment progresses.

One note on this method, the chooks will look a bit scruffy as the dust and muck sticks to their legs and the oil may get on the lower feathers as well while roosting, making them dirty as well. Rest assured that all will be clean again a few days after stoping the treatment with the oil.

from squidoo

...or you could just treat each bird with ivermectin or moxidectin , 2-3 doses, each a week apart. If you apply the dose directly to the legs/feet it usually works well.

In the end either technique will work ok.

I have used vaseline on 3 chooks and it worked like a charm

We spray the legs with insecticide then coat the legs with Vegetable oil. I have also treated a friend’s chooks that had a bad infestation of mites and it only took 3 treatments to completely get rid of it.

Do turkeys get these leg mites? Sorry very new to all this

All birds can get scally. I use kerosine with a 1/4 motor oil kills the buggers fast and they wont come back

I am very impressed I thought I would get the answers here but not all these good ideas I will see which works for me and come back and tell you

I use ivermectin as well and its the most affective treatment its quick and easy