What worked for my bird mite infestation (so far)

[roses9214]

About a month and a half ago me and my family were getting bit. We were not only getting bit, but it was excessive – we would wake up covered in intensely itchy welts. We have two dogs and cats so we initially thought it was a flea issue. We waited a couple months past our normal 3 month Bravecto treatments for our dogs. My husband bathed our dogs but didn’t see any fleas, which was the first red flag. Then we noticed the bites were far more itchy and different in appearance than flea bites. The bites would still itch weeks after being bit. We also didn’t see any fleas and normally we would. I started doing research and found out bird mites are characteristically active at night. We noticed we weren’t being bit in the daytime, only at night. The night I learned this I took a flashlight out with the bedroom light off and shined it on our large dog bed that lays at the foot of out bed…at first I didn’t see anything. After a few minutes of focusing my eyes, I was horrified to see tiny red bugs (they almost looked like microscopic red tics). The dog bed was covered. We immediately threw out all 3 of our dog beds.

At that point I had also learned bird mites come indoors when birds leave the nest. I remembered hearing birds all Summer long in the nest in the roofing at the front of our house and in a small opening in the roofing on the back of our house. The areas where the nests were were too small to physically remove them.

We started with throwing away all of our mattresses because we found out bird mites will infest anything with fabric. Throwing away our beds might sound like a rash decision, but we literally couldn’t see any mites on our bed but every night the bites would come. We came to the conclusion the mites were coming out of the bed at night and going back in before morning. We bought new beds and left the plastic on. We bought bug/mite resistant pillow covers so they wouldn’t be able to get in or out. If there were mites in the fabric of our pillows, they were now sealed in. Luckily we don’t have carpet (I can’t imagine what we would’ve done then). We moved every piece of furniture in our house and vacuumed. We scrubbed our floors and sprayed all of our furniture in a mixture of pine sol, citric acid, and water. We washed all of our laundry in hot water with Borax and put them in the dryer for two cycles. After pulling them out, we put them in plastic bags and tied them air tight just in case there were any mites in the house that could get back on the treated laundry. We showered using pure liquid Castile soap. We weren’t able to remove the bird nests because the areas they were in were so small. The nests were empty of birds as they had all grown up. We sprayed the nests for 5 days. Day 1 was with pine sol, citric acid, and water. Day 2 was with bleach. Day 3 was with simple green. Day 4 way a Borax mixture. Day 5 was bleach again. We then sealed the entrance and nesting areas with a liquid foam that hardens. We did a bleach wash of our walls and floors. We washed the dogs in Borax and took them in for their Bravecto. We bought a dehumidifier and run it nonstop daily. I read somewhere that the latter dries out bird mite exoskeletons, which kills them.

It has been 4 days and we haven’t had any bites. We are hoping what we did worked. We were being bit daily so it has so far worked. I’m writing this to help anyone that’s struggling with long term infestation. Maybe something we did hasn’t been tried yet. I hope it helps.

[MsWoggy]

Hi, I was wondering if you could give the exact recipe for the pine sol, citric acid you used on your floors?

[johndoe]

Pine-Sol cleaner I never tried that. On bugs I use it for mold though it works well to get rid of the smell.. How are you doing now are you still okay.? Let me know this is Bill . thank you God bless you

[thisshitsforthebirds]

Been fighting this nonstop for iver a year you name it I’ve used it everything on here to a t. What has working right now and I figured out and someone else in this sight suggested is switch your method of killing them each week. They get immuned to one thing like premoguard, ammonia, Kleen green, borax. So forth. Especially my clothes is where I noticed it the most. After a week amonia, borax, and I used arm and hammer detergent. Wasn’t working when i first do it it was amazing my clothes sheets so forth. So now o just switched out the amonia to Epsom salt. So switch the way you treat your house, you, and clothes each week. I have moved, been through hell and still battling. But this helped.

[johndoe]

Yeah switching on your weapons but you’re using to stop them. Using water 48 oz warm water over 77 degrees to melt two tablespoons of coconut oil into into the water and spray that everywhere it glows them down. I haven’t been bet while I sleep ever since I start spreading the piece of plastic out on the floor and missed it with that coconut oil water and they could not crawl up on that plastic they could try to drop off the ceiling but I’d spray the ceiling two.. This was years ago I had to do all this I got free of them since then. By using Ted’s mange cure listed on Earth Clinic which is 16 oz of peroxide and 32 oz of water and two tablespoons of borax. It has no smell it has no burn it doesn’t hurt. It’s like water it doesn’t even have any Fizz cuz the borax neutralizes the peroxide. I applied it and left it on till the next shower and it cured up all my bites sores and killed the bug. I had some bad areas I had to use benzoyl peroxide cream 2.5% sold at Acme. Org for twenty bucks for a giant tube it last a long time. I applied benzoyl peroxide cream after I took a shower when I was slightly damp and left it on tell the next shower. It kills the hard ones that are hard to kill in the skin. For my feet I had to soak my feet in rubber boots after I got out of the shower I would slip on the rubber boots from Walmart called Wellington’s for $17 and put in a quarter to a water the couple tablespoons of borax and it would soak my feet clean it took about 60 days to get all of them out of my feet but once they were out I was much better. God bless you thanks for all your tips, bill

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