re bulk breeding of Rodents for Reptiles? Mites/Lice Help!

[rodentrancher]

Hi we are breeding bulk supplies of rodents for reptiles. We are breeding in a 27ft insulated container. We have about 120 pregnant females. Approximately 40 boxes of breeding mice. Change nesting material once a week. I think we have lice/red mites or some other mites. We want to know what would be safe to spray/apply to the whole container and nesting boxes. Withholding period? The vet said to dab Ivomec on each critter? Very time consuming, but would be worth it to fix the prob. ? Can we dilute Ivomec and spray it in boxes and all over the container? Please help, as we need to be able to supply quality product. Thanks in advance, Cheryl :?

 

[olivaceus71]

Hi Cheryl
I would go with the ivermectin, is time consuming and has to be repeated in a fortnight but as well as getting rid of any mites it will also worm your rodents. After buying a few mice off another breeder I had the same problem around 6 months ago, and although it took me two days to do all of the rats and mice was worth it in the end. If you spray with a diluted mixture you end up needing alot more ivermectin and to be honest I don't think it is quite as effective.
The only thing you cannot do is cull any that have been treated for around 10 days, you can use top of descent spray or orange medic but if you have a good vet he shouldn't charge you too much, I payed $30 for around 250 mls and still have half left.
good luck feel free to pm me if you need anymore help
cheers
meg

 

[grahamh]

Hi
I would have thought that Top of Descent would be the thing to use. If it's safe enough to spray in a Qantas cabin then it ok. Having said that I don't know for sure.

 

[olivaceus71]

Hi Graham
top of descent does work and if you only had a few animals it would be great but as with cheryl when you have a few hundred/thousand animals works out very costly and you have to repeat the procedure a few times.

With the ivomectin I found it works almost immediately, cheryl make sure that you chuck out all of your substrate and I washed all of mine with hot water and bleach(anothe headache)

cheers
meg

 

[rodentrancher]

Thanks for all the input folks. We will stick with dabbing on the Ivomec I think. Like u said it is time consuming, but worth it in the long run. Actually we have just gone through all the rats and mice, and they don't seem to have any critters on them and they aren't scratching at all. Maybe Dave and my itches are coming from somewhere else.? Thought we had a mite/lice prob. But like I said all our animals seem to me free of em. Cheers Cheryl