Why Do Chickens Dust Bathe?

Blooie said:

ME!!! I did!! WARNING: Long post.

I’m not sure where the idea that DE is a “chemical” came from. I guess in the broad sense that practically everything has some sort of chemical makeup, but DE is not a manufactured chemical. It’s just skeletons….tiny, ancient, microscopic skeletons with sharp points and edges. It’s those sharp points and edges that work against soft-bodied insects by piercing them so they basically dehydrate. Bees are also soft bodied insects, so contact with DE is just as dangerous to them as it is to the pests you’re really trying to kill. And it rips delicate mucus membranes to shreds. Oh, not dramatically, but little by little.

The sharp points on those microscopic skeletons can cause serious lung injury, not just to us but to our flocks as well. I used to swear by DE - from the time my first chicks went outside I used that stuff everywhere. It was in the litter, on the roosts, in the dust baths, even directly on a chicken if she seemed to be scratching a lot. When they started laying, I put it in the nests too. I did this for over a year.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure and before I explain why I say I believe I have been sickened by DE, I do have pre-existing lung and cardio issues. Those issues were just diagnosed the very year I got chickens. So back to the heavy use of DE…. Despite having it everywhere in the coop and run, I ended up with the worst and most persistent mite infestation you can imagine. Our yard is liberally dosed with trees, large old trees. Very large trees. That means lots of wild birds nest in them and use them to find food and shelter. And I believe THAT’S where the mites came from in the first place. There were just so many mites that the DE was rendered virtually useless. We treated the birds, cleaned out the coop and run, and put down more DE, once again spreading it everywhere. It did no good. But it was having an effect on my breathing. I was relying more and more on my nebulizer and fast acting inhalers. Was I allergic to my chickens? I didn’t know.

One day I went out to gather eggs and put more DE down. I was wearing a bandana over my face because the bag warns of respiratory dangers. I reached inside that bag for the cup we used to spread it and stopped dead. The words on the back of the back flashed in front of me…”Can cause respiratory distress”. Duh, DIane! What in the heck are you DOING?? That was the end of my reliance on DE. At my next pulmonary appointment two weeks later, when I told Dr. Rein that I seemed to need my breathing aids more than usual, she started asking about environmental changes. I mentioned the DE and asked if that could contribute. She gave me a resounding “yes”. She also said that even people with no pre-existing lung issues could pay dearly for continued use. AND THE DAMAGE IS IRREVERSIBLE. Pierced lung sacs do not regenerate.

I still had the issue of a coop and run full of DE to deal with. And we still had mites. So wearing respirators, hubby and I stripped that coop completely early one morning. We power washed it inside and out. (That’s fun with dirt floors!) We removed nests, feeders, roosts - anything that could come out did come out and those things were power washed as well. DE is ineffective when wet so it helped that the dust was kept down. Things dried out quickly in the hot sun. We mixed up a sprayer with Neem oil and a little dish soap (to help it stick on vertical surfaces) and sprayed every crack and crevice. We put just a thin layer of litter laced with Permethrin Dust down because we knew we’d have to remove it all in 10 days anyway. That night we dusted the birds with Permethrin Dust. I filled an old sock with it, grabbed each bird one by one off the roost, hung them upside down by their feet so their feathers were open - um, they protested this indignity - and pounced the dust onto them. Ten days later we repeated the entire process. We also sprayed Neem Oil on the bark of the trees close to the coop. After that I kept that old sock full of dust so at the first sign of mites I could take immediate action. We‘d gotten a handle on the mite issue, but the accelerated lung issues remain for me.

DE scares the pee-waddin’ out of me. And there’s another risk to using it - complacency. If we rely on a bag or bottle full of anything to prevent problems, we soon assume the problem won’t exist. “I’ll never have mites (or worms or lice in my coop because I always use _________ to prevent it”. We stop checking. And a few mites that could easily have been dealt with in a couple of treatments become a full blown infestation requiring weeks, or even months to eradicate. Mites exist. We’ll never totally eliminate them. But we can control them and control the effect they have on our flocks by being observant and proactive. They are not worth risking lung function over.

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