We're just going through this in the Midwest USA, thanks to your videos I've watched in the past two years I was prepared. Very happy to see you continuing on and love these updates.
What a great video! You’re so informative, such a great teacher and I love your fun personality 😊 I’ve wanted to deep clean my 3 yr old coop ever since we built it but I never knew about all of these steps and exactly how to go about it. Thank you for showing me how to do it ☺️ Plz note that I do clean it really well ever 4 - 5 weeks but not to the extent you just did. I want to thank you for showing me how to look for red mites. I had no idea that they could be at the end of the roosting bar and the slot that I place it into. God bless you sir! I look forward to your next video.
Would the chicken who are outside while you clean not carry the red mite on their feathers? And when they go back in, they can colonise the box again? Just wondering - total newbie here!
They can do, if they happen to have any stragglers left on them - however typically red mite do not stick around on the bird for a long time. They go on to feed and go back to the group. However, any that are brought back in would be taken care of by either the DE powder, or the residual Ardap on the ends of the perches :)
You can't really overdo it when it comes to keeping the coop clean, but this is certainly a more thorough deep clean than you would need to be doing regularly, especially as we were unfortunate enough to find mites! We would usually advise doing a clean like this every month or so during warmer seasons, and every couple when it's colder. This does of course shift a little depending on the number of birds you have. Three birds will make considerably less mess in the coop than 8 will!