Mosquitoes in the chicken coop

How can I get rid of the clouds of mosquitoes in and around my chicken coop at night?

I have read quite a few articles on line and tried searching on the forum here and have found very little that would help my situation. I am hoping there is someone out there who found something I missed. When I go out at night to collect eggs and close the coop, I am greeted by clouds of mosquitoes. This is a small mobile coop, and the mosquitoes are all over the bar on the front, the roof, the nesting boxes on the back and all inside. I live in Maine, which is not as bad as Alaska, but is still known for a lot of mosquitoes, and this is more mosquitoes than I have ever seen. The chickens are definitely stressed out and not sleeping well.

The first solution is to get rid of sources of standing water. I have removed all I can from our yard, but we are near a stream that meanders through some boggy areas in the back corner of our property. I can't get rid of those.

Second they say to mosquito proof your coop. This doesn't work well as my floor and two sides are hardware cloth. To cover it in mosquito netting would be very hard and take away the whole point of a mesh floor, to allow the manure to fall out. Not to mention, I would have to put the chickens into the coop before the mosquitoes come out which would be difficult.

Third is to spray some scent around, whether it is chemical or essential oil. This is the only one that seems like a plausible solution for me, but I won't spray chemicals and the natural methods are all over the place as to whether they actually help or not.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated. Anyone with experience will be given extra attention :)

Not sure if American Beautyberry grows where you are, but it's leaves work as natural mosquito repellent. Also you could try placing some mosquito attractant traps near the area which may help draw them away while also reducing the numbers.

A quick google search on beautyberry shows that you have to make either an alcohol and oil, or water, based infusion from the leaves to have an effective mosquito repellent.  Or at a minimum crush the leaves and rub them on yourself/the coop/etc.  Just planting a beautyberry bush (or even several) by the coop might not be effective.  Granted, I'm no expert, and have no direct experience with beautyberry as a mosquito repellant.  So if someone else does I'd love to hear about it.

Unless you normally have a lot of mosquitoes, I would look for a source for breeding. Standing water usually.

If you have some oranges, place the peels somewhere around the coop and maybe inside.

Rub orange oil in the places that you can.

Yes it is the oil in the leaves that work as the repellent. You would need to crush or soak the leaves.
I am not aware of anything that will get rid of the mosquitoes without some kind of continuous maintenance.
Maybe set up some bat houses?

Are you sure they are mosquitoes?  They say that the smell of chickens actually deter mosquitoes.  People now in Africa and other countries put chickens near the beds at night to keep mosquitoes away.  If they are mosquitoes, then I wonder if they were genetically engineered and altered as many things are.  Are they on the chickens or just around?  Are they biting you or just around?

I have used a commercial garlic spray and it worked great.  Added benefit, my yard smelled like an Italian restaurant.

I used this one mosquito barrier but others may be as good.  That is the one I have had experience with, and as I said, I loved it.

What about a mosquito net like they use over beds to go around the coop? Something like this? Or sometimes I see ones that are more square.

Obviously, might not work depending on the size and shape of your coop. But if it did, it could allow you have the benefit of mosquito net without losing the benefit of the hardware cloth floor. Depending if the chickens need access to the coop during the early evening, you could maybe even close the netting around the coop before the mosquitoes come out.

Encouraging natural predators of mosquitoes like bats, dragonflies and damselflies seems worthwhile. Our property used to be lousy with mosquitoes and we could barely go outdoors. The population of damselflies has been increasing year by year and now there are hardly any mosquitoes. We've also been pretty vigilant about watching for standing water. Since the areas you can't tend to are associated with the stream, I imagine that creatures that eat mosquito larvae will show up, though it may take time.

@ J Youngman, Andrew Mayflower - There is no beautyberry in my area. It appears to be a southern plant. I have thought about bat houses, though we have some bats around already. Also we have a bunch of dragonflies. I can try the attractant trap, but it appears they are already being attracted to that spot.

@ Anne Miller - We do typically have a lot in the woods, but not generally in the middle of the field where the chickens are. As I mentioned we have a stream coming through the property that goes through some stagnant boggy areas, so removing the standing water is not possible. I can try the orange peels though.

@ Tara Sanders - As sure as I can be, growing up seeing and hearing mosquitoes and being bombarded by them when I get close with my headlamp. The research you are referring to about the chicken scent deterring mosquitoes was for a specific species of mosquito. If you search for this problem, I am not alone, so that bit of information is certainly not universal. They appear to be biting the chickens, at least the chickens are restless, shaking their heads and whatnot. I tend to be moving enough that they don't bite me much.

@ Trace Oswald - I may try some garlic spray.

@ Heather Sharpe - That is a good idea, though I would need a significantly larger one. The coop is roughly 6ft x 6ft x 5ft. I had not thought about a drop cloth style.

Matt McSpadden wrote:@ J Youngman, Andrew Mayflower - There is no beautyberry in my area. It appears to be a southern plant. I have thought about bat houses, though we have some bats around already. Also we have a bunch of dragonflies. I can try the attractant trap, but it appears they are already being attracted to that spot.

@ Anne Miller - We do typically have a lot in the woods, but not generally in the middle of the field where the chickens are. As I mentioned we have a stream coming through the property that goes through some stagnant boggy areas, so removing the standing water is not possible. I can try the orange peels though.

@ Tara Sanders - As sure as I can be, growing up seeing and hearing mosquitoes and being bombarded by them when I get close with my headlamp. The research you are referring to about the chicken scent deterring mosquitoes was for a specific species of mosquito. If you search for this problem, I am not alone, so that bit of information is certainly not universal. They appear to be biting the chickens, at least the chickens are restless, shaking their heads and whatnot. I tend to be moving enough that they don't bite me much.

@ Trace Oswald - I may try some garlic spray.

Based again on my very brief Google search, beautyberry is commonly propagated as a landscape shrub and is hardy to at least zone 6, some varieties may be hardy to zone 5.  Not sure where Maine lies in the hardiness zones.  So it may or may not be feasible for you.  Also, if you don't want to attract deer to the area you might avoid beautyberry as apparently deer love them.  

Matt McSpadden wrote:How can I get rid of the clouds of mosquitoes in and around my chicken coop at night?

I have read quite a few articles on line and tried searching on the forum here and have found very little that would help my situation. I am hoping there is someone out there who found something I missed. When I go out at night to collect eggs and close the coop, I am greeted by clouds of mosquitoes. This is a small mobile coop, and the mosquitoes are all over the bar on the front, the roof, the nesting boxes on the back and all inside. I live in Maine, which is not as bad as Alaska, but is still known for a lot of mosquitoes, and this is more mosquitoes than I have ever seen. The chickens are definitely stressed out and not sleeping well.

The first solution is to get rid of sources of standing water. I have removed all I can from our yard, but we are near a stream that meanders through some boggy areas in the back corner of our property. I can't get rid of those.

Second they say to mosquito proof your coop. This doesn't work well as my floor and two sides are hardware cloth. To cover it in mosquito netting would be very hard and take away the whole point of a mesh floor, to allow the manure to fall out. Not to mention, I would have to put the chickens into the coop before the mosquitoes come out which would be difficult.

Third is to spray some scent around, whether it is chemical or essential oil. This is the only one that seems like a plausible solution for me, but I won't spray chemicals and the natural methods are all over the place as to whether they actually help or not.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated. Anyone with experience will be given extra attention :)

I have a small mobile coop with hardware cloth floor as well. We live in upper Michigan and usually have a lot of mosquitoes, but this year hasn’t been bad. More black flies than anything. I would say try essential oils (citrus, cedarwood, geranium, lemongrass, clove, mints...), herbs and removing standing water.

I agree that mosquito proofing your coop would render the mesh floor pointless, but if all else fails, it might be worth it. I actually have never used our mesh floor as planned. It is 1/2” hardware cloth with the intentions of poop falling through. Our birds arrived late last year and the weather got cold before they were fully grown, so I put cardboard over the hardware cloth and some bedding on top of that. Shortly afterwards, they started laying eggs and their poops about tripled in size. Theres almost no chance their poop would fall through at this point, so the hardware cloth has remained covered constantly so far... I think the idea would work with pullets, but not mature birds. Have you experienced this or are your birds younger?

For now I might try using a fan to blow over the chickens.  
I also like to plant lots of plants that are known to repel mosquitoes.  Most require Cushing the leaves or flowers. If they are planted near your coop brushing up against them may help.  Of course they will have to be planted beyond the reach of the chickens, or they will be eaten up.  
*Citronella grass / lemon grass: Best live plant for repelling.
*Basil: naturally emits it's aroma, so you don't have to crush it.  It's toxic to mosquito larvae, so plant near a water source to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs there.
*Catnip
*Marigolds
*Sented Geraniums
*Bee Balm (invasive)
*Peppermint (invasive)
*Lavender
*Allium
*Floss Flower
*Rosemary throw some in your campfire, and the smoke becomes a mosquito repellent.
*Sage like rosemary burning will make a repelling smoke.
*Pennyroyal good for repelling mosquitoes, fly's, and fleas. This plant is toxic, so keep away from children and pregnant women.

The plants won't solve your problem over night.  But I feel they really make a difference.  For me when it comes to plants I feel the more the merrier.  If we can eat it, feed it to the chickens, it looks pretty, and or any combination of the three, it's a total win.  I have several of almost everything on the list. ( I don't have catnip at the moment, and I try not to plant toxic plants, so no pennyroyal). We used to have a terrible mosquito problem all spring, summer, and fall.  I was ignorant enough to call mosquito abatement.  Which helped, but at  goodness knows what cost. This is real life unfortunately, so I can't tell you we never have mosquito problems.  I don't spray toxic chemicals anymore.  We don't seem to have even close to the problems we used to.  I really believe lots and lots of mosquito repelling plants has helped a lot.  So for us we make sure to replace the standing water for the animals everyday, have all kinds of plants everywhere, a fan in my chicken coop, (runs 24/7 in the summer) and I mix cedar wood chips with my free chips in the coop. ( Cedar is said to cause respiratory problems in chickens. I have always used them, not knowing it was bad for years. I have a very open airy coop, so maybe this is why?)
I hope some of this helps, nothing worse then being stormed by mosquitoes. Good luck.

Trap em.
https://permies.com/t/115296/trapped-mosquitos#968455
Sounds like your place would be a good test for the water style mosquito trap.

Mine is working good again this year.
I just picked rasberries near sunset without getting bit once.

I always hate it when someone asks a question, and then you don't get to hear the end of the story. Unfortunately I don't have a good update. The day after I had asked about this question, the mosquito load lightened dramatically. There are a normal amount of mosquitoes around, and the chickens are doing much better. They are in a slightly different spot in the field, and are working their way back towards the side that had so many mosquitoes. If it is that area, I will have a chance to try the sprays.

Matt McSpadden wrote:I always hate it when someone asks a question, and then you don't get to hear the end of the story. Unfortunately I don't have a good update. The day after I had asked about this question, the mosquito load lightened dramatically. There are a normal amount of mosquitoes around, and the chickens are doing much better. They are in a slightly different spot in the field, and are working their way back towards the side that had so many mosquitoes. If it is that area, I will have a chance to try the sprays.

Seems like the insects tend to come in mass swarms and then fade to reasonable levels around here too. We have hardly had any mosquitoes this year, but started out with hoards of black flies. They have faded away quite a bit now though.

Matt McSpadden wrote:  They are in a slightly different spot in the field, and are working their way back towards the side that had so many mosquitoes. If it is that area, I will have a chance to try the sprays.

Are they in a spot now that gets more naturally breezy air? Mosquitos tend to like "still air" as much as they like "still water".  Crazy idea coming - if the problem recurs  rather than even putting a fan inside the coop, consider a big box fan between the daytime mosquito hideouts (brush, the boggy area etc) and the chicken coop creating an artificially windy barrier?

I like the idea of getting a really big mosquito net, attaching it to the coop roof, then rolling it down to the ground each night. Water jugs could weigh it down. I suspect the issue is weather and location dependent, so it's not as if you'd have to do this daily, year-round.

Yes to all the suggestions that increase the natural predators to mosquito and their larvae. Does the boggy area have a good frog population? Has someone up-stream done something to damage the predator population? There are some fish that are big larvae consumers, and if there are ones that are safe locally, consider if there are ways to support their breeding needs? These are longer-term solutions, like the bat houses (there's been a disease decimating bats, so that could possibly account for the problem) but some of them will provide long term results without continuous effort.

When we had chickens, I put window screen over the windows and ventilation holes on the coop, to help protect the chickens at least at night. You wouldn't really need to cover the floor or even the run for it to help them to at least get to sleep at night. All I really did was to place the mesh up against the hardware cloth on the windows and staple it into the wood around the edges. A few mosquitoes will be able to get in before you shut it for the night, but they will stop biting after they have had their fill.

If you did drop a mosquito net over the whole tractor at night, enough weight to keep it from blowing away should be fine. Mosquitoes are not gonna try to wriggle their way under the bottom of the net, they just try to fly straight through and if they can't do that, they can't.

Also, you can close them up in the coop before it is so dark that you need to use a headlamp. If you put them away a little earlier, even if you need to "help them" go in to roost manually, you may be able to avoid some of the thicker clouds of mosquitoes. Chickens usually will go in to roost before it gets fully dark, but I understand if your schedule does not permit you to close up the coop until later.

EDIT
Is the portion with the hardware cloth floor elevated? I was picturing it flush to the ground, so I don't know if my suggestion would help. Not sure how easy it would be but maybe could cover the bottom with a poop tray that you can easily dump. if this is the case. It would be great to see a picture or diagram of the coop/tractor.

I would spray the coop itself, inside and out, with the garlic spray.  I did it with the dog house I was raising my newborn puppies in and it worked great.  Before I did it, there were clouds around the puppies.  It was pretty terrible for them.  After the spray, there were no mosquitos to be seen anywhere around there.  This was at my parent's house and near a few acres of swamp, so the mosquitos are very bad there.

Since the inside of the coop stays dry, you wouldn't have to spray it more than once a month or more.  You would need to do the outside more often if you get a lot of rain.

Quick question, I have hardware cloth too with the same thought process of the poop falling through but like you found out that isn’t working out as well as I had thought.  You say you keep it covered?  With cardboard and bedding or did you use something more durable?  Thanks!

Mosquitoes! So annoying! GARLIC BARRIER or MOSQUITO BARRIER works very well. This is concentrated liquid garlic that is mixed with water and sprayed  inside, outside the coop as well as on surrounding shrubs/trees/grass. Available in quarts and gallon concentrations, I used and found this product very effective. It’s organically approved and non toxic. Gallons are more concentrated and work better.
     My farm was 200 feet from swamp/wetlands, so there were plenty to mosquitoes for everyone! I mixed GARLIC BARRIER and used a 1 gallon sprayer, sprayed the inside, outside the poultry houses. Often, when there was a fresh mosquito hatch, when I did a nightly head count and last egg-check, mosquitoes were thick inside, birds were restless. I mixed a FRESH batch up and sprayed it inside the coop. Birds got sprayed, too. I went from coop to coop, spraying. When I checked the first coop, about 20 minutes later, the cloud of mosquitoes were gone. Now, they make MOSQUITO BARRIER, a stronger concentration of garlic. You will need to re-spray about every 10 days or after heavy rain. Also used it on, under my deck and doors. This stuff works very well and can be used as a insect repellent on plants. Bees aren’t harmed, they just don’t like to be sprayed. Again, I used the GARLIC BARRIER. It smells like garlic for about an hour after spraying but the smell goes away. I love garlic, so I didn’t mind!
    I also invested in a SKEETERVAC, a unit fired by LP gas. Mine had a radius of a thousand feet or something close to that. A pricy unit but worth every penny! Don’t buy anything else and this unit needs to be fired up BEFORE the mosquitoes hatch. I always started it up on MEMORIAL DAY and had few mosquitoes with it running. It has little blinking lights that drew moths and a wraparound black & white sticky paper that draws deer & horse flies. My turkeys would pick off the stuck flies off the paper! Ya have to keep the LP gas filled, I think I used 3-20 pound tanks per summer. I farmed on the south coast of Massachusetts.
    I hope this helps!

   

I am a huge fan of essential oils, but I must offer this caveat, they can be very toxic to birds.

I work with an avian vet who is repeatedly dealing with pet birds in respiratory distress from essential oil diffusers, incense or commercial chemical based carpet room deodorizers/fresheners. I do not have enough knowledge to know if this is scent or base (aerosolized oils?) related, only that the standard rule with PET birds (parrots etc.) is NO scented stuff, of any kind.

Apparently this sensitivity in birds is due to their breathing apparatus (air sacs vs "lungs").

This leads me to think of the old saying "canary in the coal mine". They kept caged canaries in mines to monitor air quality. If the bird got fussy, or died this would alert the humans LONG before it was noticeable to our senses.

My knowledge in regards to this issue is with wild birds and pet birds (OR canaries in mines) and may well NOT be an issue in a well ventilated coop, or outdoors...I simply don't know, advise caution and recommend one should carefully research the use of anything that could be inhaled or ingested.

We always need to remember that just because something may be "organic", "natural" and/or "safe" for humans does not always mean it is safe for other animals; and potentially have serious consequences in birds.

***I was able to confirm that chickens are absolutely subject to the same toxic reactions as parrots and other pet birds. The vet just looked at me, shaking her head and said "BIRDS are birds, doesn't matter if it is a pet parrot, wild songbird or domestic chickens".

Kelly Land wrote:Quick question, I have hardware cloth too with the same thought process of the poop falling through but like you found out that isn’t working out as well as I had thought.  You say you keep it covered?  With cardboard and bedding or did you use something more durable?  Thanks!

I just put a few well fitting sheets of cardboard over the hardware cloth and bedding on top of that. It’s been that way for about a year now and the cardboard has barely deteriorated at all yet. Its so dry in the coop and there’s several inches of bedding on the cardboard at all times. Plus, aside from laying eggs and roosting, the birds are hardly ever even inside our coop.