Monitoring Red Mite Infestations

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Visual assessment of red mite activity alone can be challenging. Mite hide away during the daytime and only come out to feed when the house lights are off. This means what you see during the day is often just the tip of the iceberg. A trapping system helps to quantify the level of infestation and monitor populations over time.

Try to position the traps between typical poultry red mite clusters and where the hens rest. The traps need to be along the pathways that mites will be travelling. We recommend using 10 traps per 16,000 birds, evenly distributed throughout the shed, on both upper and lower tiers for multi-tier systems.

Mark trap locations with a label so that you can identify which area of the shed the traps have come from and so that the same location is used each time they are placed. This will enable you to monitor population growth throughout the house.

Leave the traps in place for 48 hours to provide mites sufficient opportunity to discover them, so you can get a good representation of infestation levels. When you collect the traps, place them in individual bags and put them in a freezer for 48 hours. This will kill the mites, making them easier to count.

Place traps every 4-6 weeks, using the same locations each time. This will enable you to monitor population growth throughout the house and intervene before populations get out of control.

Assess one trap at a time so that they do not get mixed up. Remove the inner cardboard and carefully empty the contents onto a mite monitoring grid.

Visually assess the number of mites and compare them to the mite monitoring scale. Record the result along with the date and trap location. It can be useful to take a picture and keep this in your records for future comparison.

Red mite monitoring traps containing less than 10 mites would be considered as very low; up to 100 mites would indicate a low infestation; 100-250 would be considered a moderate infestation. Over 250 mites in a trap would be considered a high infestation and will almost certainly be adversely affecting the flock.

Share the results with your veterinary practice for further advice on whether treatment is required.