LICE AND MITES ON POULTRY 377 
Biting Lice on Poultry 
Several different species of biting lice affect poultry, including the 
genera Menopon, Lipeurus, and others. They vary in particular 
characteristics, but all are alike in the fact that they do not suck the 
blood of their host, but cause injury 
by eating the surface of the skin and 
the finer parts of the feathers, and 
by the tiny pricks of their sharp 
claws as they move about over their 
host. On young chicks their irrita- 
tion may readily prove fatal. 
The eggs or “nits” are laid on 
the feathers, and in warm weather 
hatch in ten days. Both young and 
adults are apt to be especially active 
at night, crawling over the perches Fic. 604.—A Chicken Louse, Li- 
peurus variabilis. Enlarged and 
natural size. Original. 
and moving from one fowl to 
another. 
Treatment must include both the poultry house and the fowls in 
order to be entirely effective. The latter may be dusted with a mix- 
ture of 10 pounds of sulphur to 4 bushel of air-slaked lime. The 
same material may be used in the house, taking care to get it into all 
cracks, and mixing it with the dust bath. A more effective measure 
for the house is spraying with lime-sulphur solution or 10 per cent 
kerosene emulsion. Treatment of the fowls should be repeated at 
the end of a week or ten days. 
The Chicken Mite (Dermanyssus galline Redi.) 
Several species of mites attack poultry, but the commonest is the 
one here described. It is a minute, eight-legged creature, one twentieth 
of an inch long, normally grayish in color but appearing red when filled 
with blood. It has sucking mouth parts. 
Eggs are laid in droppings or in places where dirt has accumulated, 
and the young feed at first on such substances. Later they crawl on 
