Chicken Scaly Leg Mite - Easy Treatment at Home

Chicken scaly leg first shows up as an abnormailty of the scales on your chickens leg, making them appear to be 'lifting up' or sticking out. Scaley leg mites burrow inderneath the chickens scales and its the inflammation that lifts the scales, irritating the chook in the process.

Your chickens scaly leg mite problem is only going to get worse over time if not treated. This eventually thickens the chickens leg until it is more than twice its normal size and quite knobbly and deformed looking. The mites definitely annoy the chicken as well, I watched mine regularly 'worrying' their legs and pecking at them.

Scaley leg mites are also very likely to spread to other birds in your flock if they roost together.

BUT, don't worry, scaly leg mite is quite simple and cheap to treat.

This method has been used for years and I have used it several times (my chooks forage over 3 acres and pick up all sorts!). As long as you don't mind picking your birds up, you'll have no problems using this easy cure.

Basically, to kill scaly leg mites you need to..........suffocate them! (and no, it's not 'mean'!)

The easiest way is to 'drown' them in oil! (I know, it sounds terribly medieval, but it works!)

Step by step

1. Buy a litre of the cheapest cooking oil that your supermarket stocks.


2. Next find a small pot approximately 10cm or 4" deep and about the same in diameter. I use an old plant pot, although any heavy pot or bowl is fine.


3. Fill it almost to the brim with your preferred type of cooking oil (you can use olive oil if you are a little bit 'posh')


4. Taking the chook gently but firmly manouver the bird over the pot and dip each leg for a few seconds. The bird will help by putting her legs down as you lower her, thus plunging the scaley leg into the oil.


5. Repeat daily for a few days, usually a week or so will get the legs sorted out and looking pink again, (Put the pot of oil somewhere safe in between dippings, topping up as necessary).

If your chickens are a bit wild as mine are, wait until they are roosting and get the pot(!) ready and just lift them gently off their roost and proceed as described above. You can calm them by talking to them if you like!

You will notice a difference after a day or two and certainly after a week of treatment they should be quite pink with new scaley skin minus the mites! Your chook may even help matters along by pecking at lose scales etc as the treatment progresses.

Additional points to note

With this method, the chooks will look a bit scruffy as the dust and muck sticks to their legs and the oil may get on the lower feathers as well while roosting, making them dirty as well. Rest assured that all will be clean again a few days after stopping the treatment with the oil.

Also, now might be a good time to clear out the chicken coop and spray your normal disinfectant everywhere. You don't want to cure the chooks legs only for it to find some more mites lurking amongst the roosts!!

I learned a lot of my knowledge about chickens from reading (I am a serious bookworm!), and I can recommend Martin's ebook Incredible chickens, which is a complete guide to raising and looking after your backyard chooks. He even throws in some free plans to build a simple chicken coop too.

When you think about it, books are great value for money considering how much time and research it takes to write one. Imagine how much it would cost to attend seminars or conferences to learn the latest on any given subject. Buy the book and you have all that knowledge for the price of a drink or three!

If you would rather have a 'real' book than you can of course head over to amazon.com if you are in the USA and look at their 60 books about keeping Chickens. For those in the UK, amazon.co.uk have around 136 books about keeping chickens.

I also chuckled at 100 Ways for a Chicken to Train Its Human. A perfect gift from a grandchild to a chook owning grandfather that has everything and it costs under £3 too.

Building your own Chicken coup is not that tricky, and believe it or not, no matter how poor you think your effort is......your Chooks will LOVE it! I have lost count of the coops that I have built using 'scraps' of stuff just lying around and I think that it adds to the whole scene.

If you don't believe me, take a look at these easy chicken coop plans.