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I caught a slug in my kitchen the other night and, as usual, put it in a cup for the girls to eat in the morning.

 

The next morning I took it outside and noticed that it had several teensy white mites scurrying over it, and the girls wouldn't touch it (but then, nor would I if I were a chook...)

 

Is this normal, or should I be fumigating my kitchen......?!

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:shock: Do not feed your chickens anything with those white mites on. I would take in the looks of them and type into google their descriptions, unless you know what they are. Also take a search around your kitchen for any more as you may have an infestation. Just to be safe, do not leave any food lying around unless. They could be feeding off stuff left around like a fruit bowl e.t.c. If they are there, when they get hungry, they will start to come out of their hiding spots looking for food. This could be serious or...not serious :lol:
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:shock: Do not feed your chickens anything with those white mites on. I would take in the looks of them and type into google their descriptions, unless you know what they are. Also take a search around your kitchen for any more as you may have an infestation. Just to be safe, do not leave any food lying around unless. They could be feeding off stuff left around like a fruit bowl e.t.c. If they are there, when they get hungry, they will start to come out of their hiding spots looking for food. This could be serious or...not serious :lol:

 

The slugs live behind our sink (sigh) - they come in through an air brick and loiter where we can't get to them, and come out at night. We find maybe 1 a week. We dont leave food about, except the cat's biscuits............

 

http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/nurspest/molluskIAFAQ.htm

This is all I could find :(

 

Havent seen any more white mites about - not even on the cup the slug was in overnight.

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:? There isn't much on the web then! Maybe you should try something that kills slugs. This may get rid of the mites. For now it may be worth waiting just to see if it wasn't a one off! If you do find this again, then maybe it is worth dropping some slug killing stuff down. Of course...you would have to keep the chickens away.

 

mmm I'm not sure what you should do really. It says that they live off other creatures so if you kill the slugs, then they may move onto other creatures such as your chickens!

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They likely just to be slug mites - tiny creatures less than a mm long, right? They're pretty common on the slugs and sometimes snails; but I wouldn't worry about them moving onto vertebrates as they've evolved to live on slimy slugs.

 

There is not much documentation about these tiny mites, but you can find more on scholar.google.com than via a general search engine. Riccardoella limacum is a common British species.

 

Slug pellets are much more dangerous to chickens!

 

If you were feeling too reassured, here's a freaky story from Australia about a much scarier tropical slug parasite - Man gets parasites in brain after eating leopard slug . Not likely to be a problem in the UK, but please don't feed the leopard slug to your chickens - its tidies up unwanted detritous like cat poo and dead animals rather than damaging our plants.

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