Poultry Lice and Their Control

PoTTLTRYMEN realize that it is essential to control poultry lice, particularly in the case of chickens. These parasites are also a problem to those who raise turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas, and pigeons or grow wild birds, such as quail and grouse, in captivity. Losses due to poultry lice throughout the United States run high in the millions of dollars each year as the result of death, especially among young fowls, retarded development, reduced egg production, interference with incubation, and damage to plumage. Probably the losses are heaviest among farm and backyard flocks kept as a side line rather than among commercial flocks, which, are given special attention. Enough is known about lice and their control to make these losses totally unnecessary. All lice infesting poultry and birds are of the biting and chewing, not the bloodsucking, kind. Some persons confuse lice with mites. The latter suck blood, differ from lice in their habits, and are controlled by different methods. In general, each species of poultry lice is confined to a particular kind of poultry, but some pass readily from one kind of fowl to another, especially when the birds are closely associated. In this country, chickens are rather commonly infested with seven species of lice, turkeys with three, ducks and geese with three, pigeons with three, and guinea fowl and peafowl with two or three each.