Poorly chicken

[urbanchick]

Has anyone done this? If so I would love to hear how.

I bought a cheap wooden house from ebay (new) 3 weeks ago and it already has red mite!!! This is despite me spraying poultry shield all over and smothering it in diatom as soon as I built it (interestingly the mites were only crawling on the outside of the house, which I had not sprayed/diatomed). It is likely that my new girls brought it with them from the, ahem, traditional farm setting I bought them from

 

The poultry shield bottle says to replace felt roofs with onduline but I don't think that would be fox proof as I can't see a way of fixing it securely to the house, and it would be drafty.

 

Can I just put a wood panel across the top? What's the deal with the wooden houses that have wooden roofs? What's the purpose of the felt?

 

The girls will be in the cube with the other 2 asap but the amber star is still very little (about 17 weeks) and the Omlet girls are still being a bit nasty with the new ones. So far the cube has no signs of redmite.

 

Hope someone can help me......

[Redwing]

The felt is for waterproofing

 

My recommendation would be to remove the felt leaving the bare wood, treat the bare wood with creosote replacement then fix onduline or corrugated plastic in place on top

 

Wickes do a 'mini' profile plastic that is easier to cut than Onduline or ridged plastic

 

Clear plastic has the benefits of exposing the mites to daylight which they dont like but the plastic does not look as neat or permenant as the Onduline

[sjp]

if you use the plastic make sure you keep the gap between the wood and the plastic ventilated had a shed roof rot out on me a few years back (young and stupid in them days just left school throught it was a good idea to seal all the gaps )

[urbanchick]

Thanks. I'll take off the felt and hopefully it will be easy enough to attach some weatherproofing to the board left behind. It's a very cheap house though, probably not designed for the felt to be removed, so I hope it doesn't all fall apart!