Scaley leg

[SirVixofVixHall]

What is the best treatment for this? My cockerel has it quite badly, (he came with it) and I can see that now he has infected my hens. He had a spot on product from the vet, but the legs haven't improved. I'm going to take him back to the vet, as he also has a partially bald hear due to one of the hens pulling his "hair" out. But wondered what the most effective and least stressful treatment is. Hopefully something that is safe for egg layers as I need to treat the hens too.

HEAD not hear...

I bought cream from Mole Valley country store which we put on our hens legs every 2-3 days for a month.

You won't know if the leg mites have cleared up until the hen moults and then the scales fall off, so you may not see the scales disappear for a year!

When the cream from Mole ran out we used Sudocreme which was recommended elsewhere.

We also sprayed their house with a mite spray and sprinkled powder in their feathers

Oh thanks Helen. He won't moult until September-ish now, so that gives me a few months to get on top of it. It must be so itchy and horrible. I worry about the mite powders as I have one hen with very bad lungs, so I don't use them any more, but I could put cream on their legs.

We used surgical spirit brushed on with an old toothbrush, then an emoliant cream - sudocream would work but I think any E45 type product would do. We used this on the worst affected hen and a red mite spray bought from the local agri merchant for the rest - every 4 or 5 days for 3 weeks. None of them have got any worse, but Helen is right - you won't know until they moult

I read somewhere that vaseline is good, (?) I think the idea is that it smothers the mites? So maybe surgical spirit and then vaseline? Does SS not sting horribly? They all seem to moult around September or October, although one year they decided to moult just as we entered an incredibly cold snap, so it must have been nearer to Christmas. I had to bring them all into the conservatory as my favourite hen was a little bald thing.