The dust is moving...

I’ve had a 50 lb bag of chick starter feed stored in a brand new metal garbage can in our garage. I noticed a few weeks ago that it had a slight sour smell to it. I blamed the humidity and consciously made an effort to watch for mold. About a week later, it smelled so sour that I had to investigate again. I noticed what seemed to be feed dust all around the sides of the can and it felt damp so I figured it spoiled and I wiped it off as best I could. Today, the can smelled super sour again, and was surprisingly dusty...

Upon further inspection, I noticed this dust was moving! This isn’t dust at all! There’s got to be a billion of these little critters all over the inside of the can, the bag of feed and the feed itself!

So, on to my questions haha

1. What in the hell are these things? Mites, lice, fleas, larvae...?

2. What  do I do? There’s probably 20 lbs of feed left in the bag. Can I feed it to the girls? Can I compost it all?

Any advice is appreciated!

I would take can to feed store and ask them what's up with feed you got from them

Going to agree with Bruce. Looks a lot like grain mites. I’m not sure that a little is bad for your birds but I’d keep the quantities small.
I’ve opened a fresh bag with those in it and took it back. I’m not sure if that’s an option for you but may be worth a try.

yep, that’s grain mites. it can be a sign that the substrate they’re in isn’t really dry enough for storage (they need a certain amount of humidity). they can be killed via heat or freezing. if the stuff smells sour (really, another sign that it’s too wet), it’s probably not worth trying to save. it should be compostable.

if they’re swarming at the top of the container, it also frequently means that the population density in the mix is super high. i had a grain mite outbreak the first time i raised mealworms. the experience of having this living dust keep reappearing on our countertop led my wife to veto mealworm raising for more than a decade.

bruce Fine wrote:I would take can to feed store and ask them what's up with feed you got from them

But I’ve had the feed for a month and a half. How would I know if it was infested when I bought it or if it happened afterwards while being stored in my garage? I admit I did not check the date and usually dont, but will certainly get in that habit now!

Scott Stiller wrote:Going to agree with Bruce. Looks a lot like grain mites. I’m not sure that a little is bad for your birds but I’d keep the quantities small.
I’ve opened a fresh bag with those in it and took it back. I’m not sure if that’s an option for you but may be worth a try.

Theres more than a little in here! I took the lid off and set the can in the sun and they swarmed into a couple large masses on top of the feed. I cant even guess a number but its got to at least be in the millions! Either way this is starter feed and the chicks are 9 weeks old now so they’re mostly eating all flock feed now with the big girls.

greg mosser wrote:yep, that’s grain mites. it can be a sign that the substrate they’re in isn’t really dry enough for storage (they need a certain amount of humidity). they can be killed via heat or freezing. if the stuff smells sour (really, another sign that it’s too wet), it’s probably not worth trying to save. it should be compostable.

if they’re swarming at the top of the container, it also frequently means that the population density in the mix is super high. i had a grain mite outbreak the first time i raised mealworms. the experience of having this living dust keep reappearing on our countertop led my wife to veto mealworm raising for more than a decade.

It was definitely too humid in the garage. The can outside on the south side of our garage (full sun) doesn’t have any. If I compost the feed and spray the can off with a hose, do I have to worry about them migrating inside our house or anything?

you shouldn’t need to worry about them coming in en masse, but make sure that possible foods for them inside are well sealed! it only takes a few plus some time in a happy place to get a population explosion.

We had a bad outbreak several summers ago. We store our feed in an old insulated truck body. We were told that a dehumidifier would take care of the problem, so Hubby moved the one we had at the house up to the truck body and was astounded that 24 hours of running the dehumidifier all out took care of the problem. We weren't getting a sour smell, but the little critters were migrating out of the pile of feed bags constantly.

The truck body is a fair distance from the house, and I keep a fairly close eye on my flour etc - decently sealed containers and don't leave spilled flour around - and I didn't see any signs of the critters moving in. It sounds as if your feed is closer, so I'd keep an eye out. I would let the can you're emptying sit in the hot sun for a week or so if it was me.

Jay Angler wrote:We had a bad outbreak several summers ago. We store our feed in an old insulated truck body. We were told that a dehumidifier would take care of the problem, so Hubby moved the one we had at the house up to the truck body and was astounded that 24 hours of running the dehumidifier all out took care of the problem. We weren't getting a sour smell, but the little critters were migrating out of the pile of feed bags constantly.

The truck body is a fair distance from the house, and I keep a fairly close eye on my flour etc - decently sealed containers and don't leave spilled flour around - and I didn't see any signs of the critters moving in. It sounds as if your feed is closer, so I'd keep an eye out. I would let the can you're emptying sit in the hot sun for a week or so if it was me.

I wonder what they did with the dehumidifier. Like if they went somewhere else or just dried up and died.

Ill plan on letting the feed and can all sit out on our blacktop uncovered during the next hot sunny day. Hopefully they all die and not just relocate! Still dont know what to do with all that feed though. If it isn’t moldy, I would think it’s probably safe to mix in with their all flock feed.

Also, I normally have sourdough starter and a couple containers of overnight oats on the counter and dog food in a non airtight container in the house. Hopefully they aren’t attracted to that stuff! We leave the windows open as much as possible and I’d hate to find a stampede of them coming in thra window someday.

Gaah! I just discovered I have grain mites on/in my chicken feed, and behold there is a thread about them here! I did a little internet research and I'll share a discovery I had. So when I've been handling sacks of feed over the last several months, they appeared to be dusty, and they also had a peculiar smell, kinda "minty". My feed doesn't smell sour, but I kept smelling what seemed like some sort of herbal essential oil bug repellant, and it's on the bags and would transfer to my hands. This I learned is the smell of those mites when they get crushed. I've also learned that they can't survive freezing temperatures. I'm approaching running low on feed and need to restock by the end of September.

Since I buy my feed from a regional small farm and take my grain sacks back for reuse, I'm going to put them all in a giant garbage bag and toss that in a freezer for four or five days before going for more feed. I store my feed on a pallet, and I can only imagine how many of these guys are in the wood fibers.  My plan of attack is to give the pallet a soapy water soaking and rinsing and then use the shop vac to get most of the rest on the concrete floor. Hopefully I can knock back the mite population for the time being, and then attack with the same approach this winter when the air dries out and temps drop below freezing and hopefully be done with this mighty mite infestation. I can say I am pleased to have solved the mystery of that minty/evergreen/citronella/clovey odor. That smell really isn't "pleasant".

I dumped all the mite infested feed out into a tarp and drug it onto our blacktop the last couple days. I spread it out thinly and left it there all day in full sun with the breeze blowing, mixing a couple times a day for a few days. It has definitely helped. There are still some mites but not nearly as many. Today is cloudy and humid, so I left it all in the garage but will resume whenever we get another dry, sunny day. Having 20 lbs of feed laying on the garage floor is definitely calling in mice though! Hopefully the mites all shrivel up and die or leave and then I will start feeding whats left to the chickens. I haven’t seen or smelled any mold so I assume its safe, although probably at least slightly less nutritious now.

i have doubts that you’ll really get rid of them at ambient humidity and temperature levels, but drying the substrate out as much as you can will only help

greg mosser wrote:i have doubts that you’ll really get rid of them at ambient humidity and temperature levels, but drying the substrate out as much as you can will only help

Thats what I figured too. Its not really necessary to get rid of them right? I mean, an infestation is bad and we certainly dont want them inside our house, but if there are low levels of them in the feed and that doesn’t hurt the chickens, what’s the problem? It was just obvious that the feed was too humid before and drying it out will prevent mold and keep the infestation from getting worse.

Brody Ekberg wrote:Its not really necessary to get rid of them right? I mean, an infestation is bad and we certainly dont want them inside our house, but if there are low levels of them in the feed and that doesn’t hurt the chickens, what’s the problem?  

When we had our infestation, Hubby had a long email exchange with  Everett Dixon of Top Shelf Feed on Vancouver Isl. He said the mites will not harm the chickens.  Hubby did suspect that the nutritional qualities of the feed are not improved by a mite infestation but we used all of the infested feed and it didn’t seem to cause any problems. Our feed was *not* moldy or funny smelling. Chickens do love eating insects and similar, and mites are spiders which are close enough, so my sense of safety wasn't going ballistic at the time either.

As I said earlier, lowering the humidity worked unbelievably quickly at stopping the microscopic little buggers!

If you see damp bags and fans at the feed store, look out! They're wiping the mites off the outside of the bags with a damp rag to hide the issue and turning fans on them to dry the bags out.

Jay Angler wrote:

Brody Ekberg wrote:Its not really necessary to get rid of them right? I mean, an infestation is bad and we certainly dont want them inside our house, but if there are low levels of them in the feed and that doesn’t hurt the chickens, what’s the problem?  

When we had our infestation, Hubby had a long email exchange with  Everett Dixon of Top Shelf Feed on Vancouver Isl. He said the mites will not harm the chickens.  Hubby did suspect that the nutritional qualities of the feed are not improved by a mite infestation but we used all of the infested feed and it didn’t seem to cause any problems. Our feed was *not* moldy or funny smelling. Chickens do love eating insects and similar, and mites are spiders which are close enough, so my sense of safety wasn't going ballistic at the time either.

As I said earlier, lowering the humidity worked unbelievably quickly at stopping the microscopic little buggers!

I still haven’t seen any mold at all in the feed or even any chunks of feed stuck together. Also, the sour smell dissipated after I laid it all out in the sun. I’ve been sun/air drying it for 3 days now and there are some mites left but not very many. I think I’ll probably call it quits tomorrow and start mixing it in with the all flock feed. Also will definitely not be storing it in the garage anymore!