Scientists say bedbugs bed down in chicken breeder houses | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Arkansas entomology professor C. Dayton Steelman, who collects laboratory samples, says bedbugs hide during the day but come out at night to feast in breeder houses where hens lay eggs for hatcheries.

“They’re usually in there by the thousands, maybe even millions, before they’re detected,” he says.

The scientists believe the breeder houses are “geographic epicenters” from which the bugs migrant to other parts of the country by traveling poultry workers and by other birds, such as swallows that nest in the houses.

The problem of detection makes sense. It’s hard for us to see bed bugs, so why not the people who take care of breeding chickens? And, of course, there’s no pushy chicken calling up the landlord saying, “I am being bitten by something! You must fix this!”

We started hearing about this research a few months ago, and it is very exciting. I’m still wondering if there’s a connection between live poultry houses in NYC as a contributing factor in the resurgence of bed bugs here (which hopelessnomo draws our attention to in the comments thread I just linked to).

The good news is there are implications about how to stem this problem:

The bugs aren’t as plentiful in houses that produce eggs sold in grocery stores because the chickens in those houses are kept in cages suspended over the floor and the bugs can’t jump that high.

Standard chicken houses with birds bound for processing plants also aren’t easy marks for bedbugs because the chickens cycle through quickly, and the houses are cleaned after each cycle.

Inaccessibility (”isolating the bed”) and cleaning, two methods humans use too.

• Bed bugs, chickens and DNA: a Q&A with Dr. James Austin
• Texas A and M researchers: chickens and bed bugs?
• “I can’t live they’re until they’re gone” — English woman says of bird bugs
• Consumers, before you hire one, find out what that bed bug dog can do!

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She said: “They have taken over and it is just horrendous - it is just the final straw. It is my home and I don’t want to move, I’ve had a new floor put down and my son is settled there. But I can’t live there until they are gone.”

The housing trust told Miss Johnson that the birds in her loft were starlings, a protected species, therefore they could not be removed without a licence.

But last Wednesday, after she told the trust that she had contacted the Surrey Comet, sister paper of Local London, a workman came round and removed the nests.

Yet the bugs remain. Miss Johnson said the pest controller told her the ant-size pigeon bug adapts to the life of a common bed bug when necessary, and when it bites it takes 10 times more blood than a mosquito.

She believes they have come through the vent in her son’s room from the loft, above his head.

“He was screaming and had these big red bites,” she said.

When Miss Johnson moved into the flat in July 2004, she had heard a rustling in the loft but the housing trust told her it must be squirrels.

Apparently part of the problem is also that bed bugs and bird bugs are not considered the same under the housing laws there:

Ian Watts, managing director of Richmond upon Thames Churches Housing Trust, said the trust was only told on April 2 that the bugs were not bed bugs - which are the tenant’s responsibility - and were to do with to birds in the roof.

On April 3 and 4 workers removed the birds, and will make a permanent repair to their entry point “in due course”.

The local laws are apparently such that bed bugs are the responsibility of tenants, whereas bird bugs are the responsibility of the council (local government). This seems absurd to me, since bed bugs, bat bugs, and bird bugs are all the same problem, biting you in your home.

• HPD seminar will be coming to Greenpoint– thanks to community lobbyists!
• HPD expands bed bug seminars
• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.
• landlord’s duty to tell prospective tenants about bed bugs?

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