Yesterday midday I did my usual March thirty minute soaking of the hen house from the inside using a $4 no moving parts shower sprinkler. This annual practice has for years prevented an outbreak of NIGHTMARISH poultry mites brought into the hen house by crows stealing eggs as they need VERY dry conditions to get a foot hold in home poultry. Plus this deep soaking rinses many months' of chicken poop into the root zones of "Gray Street Grape" and "Gracie's Grape" just as they break winter dormancy. Poultry mites were an UTTER NIGHTMARE for me and my birds the year the hen house was infected with them by wild crows that had gone in to steal eggs....they ended up in my home, even my bed......I had HUNDREDS of very itchy bites all over me. Diatomaceous earth dust baths in a cat litter box rid the quails and chickens of the mites, sponge mopping my house and laundering the bed a few times and spraying the mattress with a pyrethroid I dumpster dived eliminated them inside. But this simple DEEP soaking of the hen house each March seems to have COMPLETELY eliminated them from my property for years now.