Can You Use Sevin Dust on Chickens?
Raising chickens in your backyard is both fun and rewarding. Chickens can keep you and your family well-entertained while providing you with meat and delicious eggs. Just like other farm animals, chickens need some maintenance to stay healthy, active, and productive. This is where Sevin Dust comes in to control the pests in your flock of chickens.
Sevin Dust is a type of specially formulated chemical that can kill more than 65 insects including ants, imported cabbageworm, Japanese beetles, stink bugs, earwigs, squash bugs, and different types of pests that are found on chickens.
Sevin Dust can control mites and lice that often affect overcrowded chickens, invade unclean coops, thrive in nest bedding, or those that come with new chickens from another source.
What is Sevin Dust Used For?
Apart from using Diatomaceous Earth to control mites and lice, you can as well use Sevin Dust. With Sevin Dust, you can effectively kill all existing pests in the coop or on your chickens. You can safely apply this type of dust to your chickens and coops.
You can also apply this special dust to the eggs that hatch. Bear in mind that this is a very strong miticide and insecticide, so a lot of care is needed.
Is Sevin Dust Safe for Chickens?
Sevin Dust is absolutely safe to use on chickens. It does not harm chickens when used properly. Most chicken owners have been using Sevin Dust for many years without any safety concerns. Some claim that this dust works better than other pesticides.
As carbaryl, Sevin Dust is more effective than a great number of other dust available. Plus, it cannot affect you negatively when using it to control deadly mites and lice in your chickens. To be more cautious about this dust, make sure to read through the manufacturer’s instructions.
How Do You Use Sevin Dust on Your Chickens?
The best description for Sevin Dust for poultry is that it is a broad-spectrum insecticide in the form of dust. In addition to controlling mites and lice, this dust can eliminate fleas and ticks from your poultry. Carbaryl is the active ingredient in this poultry dust.
Sevin Dust contains carbaryl, which effectively overstimulates an insect’s nervous system. The overstimulation makes the insects or parasites experience some difficulties in breathing. Eventually, the affected pest or parasite dies from a lack of oxygen.
For Sevin Dust to work, an insect must ingest or come into contact with carbaryl. Therefore, you should sprinkle a substantial amount of Sevin poultry dust powder inside the chicken coops, around beds, garden plants, home, atop anthills, and any place that your birds can access while on free-range.
Sprinkle directly where the mites, lice, ticks, or fleas have been spotted. If done properly, Sevin Dust can help get rid of problematic and dangerous insect colonies around your chicken yard.
The right dosage is as follows:
- Make sure to dust Sevin poultry dust on the infested areas or body parts of the affected chickens. Repeat the whole process once you spot the pests such as fleas, ticks, lice, and mites on your chickens or around their coops.
- Sprinkle Sevin poultry dust directly onto your chickens from the container. If need be, repeat the sprinkling process until you are sure that all the pests are eliminated.
- If it is inside the chicken house, ensure that you sprinkle Sevin poultry dust directly to the walls, nest boxes, perches, floors, and roofs. Every part of the chicken coop should be covered to kill any pest that might be hiding in hard-to-reach places.
- Look around the chicken coop to find cracks and crevices that usually hide some pests and dust them using a sizable amount of Sevin poultry dust to effectively eliminate all pests.
To apply Sevin poultry dust, you must follow certain important steps. In this case, you should dust the product (Sevin Dust) on the infested places and repeat the whole process where necessary. Here is how the product gets rid of or eliminates the insects:
- Sevin Dust initiates a strong adsorption process. This happens when the pest or insect comes into contact with the Sevin Dust. The product will stick to the pest for as long as it takes without falling off.
- Sevin Dust punctures the pest once the powder/dust is adsorbed. In the process, friction occurs as the pest tries to move around. During the movement of the pest, the dust pierces the outer skeleton and shell, affecting its body function.
- Once Sevin Dust has pierced the outer shell, the powder starts to rapidly absorb the body fluid of the insect/pest. This process happens due to the water absorption capability of the product.
- As Sevin Dust continues to absorb the body fluids, the pest loses its fluids and eventually dies from dehydration.
Can You Eat Eggs After Treating Chickens with Sevin Dust?
Yes! You can eat eggs after you have treated your chickens with Sevin poultry dust. However, you must wash your eggs and hands properly after picking them from the nest boxes. Also, eat those eggs after three days of dusting your chicken coop with Sevin Dust to avoid cases of food poisoning.
Diatomaceous Earth vs Sevin Dust
Diatomaceous Earth (DE) is simple and cost-effective dust for treating or preventing pests such as lice, fleas, ticks, and mites, especially in chickens. You can sprinkle DE on your poultry or mix it with the dust bath for added protection.
On the other hand, Sevin Dust is a powerful solution for killing existing mites. You can apply it to the coops as well as birds including any eggs set aside for hatching.
Sevin Dust Alternatives for Chickens
You can use Diatomaceous Earth and Poultry Protector as your main alternatives to Sevin Dust. DE is affordable and safer than Sevin Dust while the Poultry Protector is simply a natural alternative to pesticides that contain chemicals as their active ingredients.
A perfect example is the Potassium sorbate, which inhibits the reproduction of mites rather than killing them.
Conclusion
Taking time to monitor your chickens for pests like lice and mites or any symptoms caused by parasites can help you act quickly to prevent an infestation. This is the best way to manage pests in your backyard chickens.
Once you find a colony of mites or lice, you can use Sevin Dust to get rid of them. Remember to read the label for helpful instructions on safety and application.
