Book lice in new build and guinea pig room 😭

[DougalandDiego]

Hi everyone,

I am close to tears. We moved into a new build last year and in the last couple of months have noticed book lice around the house. We’ve had pest control out and the new build company and apparently they’re common in new builds whilst the house is drying out. I’ve tried to kill as many as possible and there isn’t really a treatment as they’re not classed as pests as they’re harmless. I’ve just done some cleaning the guinea pigs room and noticed them in their bag of forage, and cardboard tunnels/hideys as well as a couple of fleece items that I switch in and out of their cages. I feel like I could cry as I hate to think they’re in the guinea pigs hay and bedding/toys. I’ve chucked out the ones that I’ve found them on and they currently have their wooden hideys and some wooden log bridges left.

I’m looking for some advice as to what I should do - are they harmless and anything to get upset/anxious over? I feel absolutely awful and hopeless as I feel like they’re going to be impossible to be gotten rid of as they feed on the microscopic mould and mildew on just about everything - hay, cardboard, wood! Even if I switch to all fleece bedding surely they’ll still stick around on the hay and cardboard boxes they come in If someone could offer some advice I’d be really grateful. Thanks x

 

[h.h.lovecraft]

I've never dealt with something like this, but this is sounds like such a crappy situation, I'm really sorry this is happening to you. We had some issues in the first year we moved into our house (it's a rental, but still) and it really put a damper on the whole new house excitement feeling. I'm sure you will get through it! I'm not an expert, but I do think book lice are harmless to pets. I can understand you not wanting them crawling all over the piggies belongings however. Since they like humid environments, maybe you could get a dehumidifier to speed up the process of them dying out as the house dries? It will also prevent mildew and mold.

 

[DougalandDiego]

Thanks for your reply @h.h.lovecraft yes they’re completely harmless but it doesn’t stop you worrying like you said! Luckily I’ve just had a good look around their main wooden hideys and can’t seem to find anymore and can’t see any crawling on their fleece bedding. Hoping that the 5/6 I found are the main culprits but still feeling hopeless as they have two big boxes of hay in their room and obviously the hay in their cages which they also eat! Thanks for your suggestions, I’ve literally read everything online that I can find about how to get rid of them, I’ve got a dehumidifier and I’m trying to ventilate the house as much as possible. Says online that they’ll apparently go when the humidity drops but not sure that’s the case if they’re eating the guinea pig stuff. Thanks again for your reply x

 

[h.h.lovecraft]

Thanks for your reply @h.h.lovecraft yes they’re completely harmless but it doesn’t stop you worrying like you said! Luckily I’ve just had a good look around their main wooden hideys and can’t seem to find anymore and can’t see any crawling on their fleece bedding. Hoping that the 5/6 I found are the main culprits but still feeling hopeless as they have two big boxes of hay in their room and obviously the hay in their cages which they also eat! Thanks for your suggestions, I’ve literally read everything online that I can find about how to get rid of them, I’ve got a dehumidifier and I’m trying to ventilate the house as much as possible. Says online that they’ll apparently go when the humidity drops but not sure that’s the case if they’re eating the guinea pig stuff. Thanks again for your reply x

I understand your worry if they are at all eating the guinea pig stuff. Maybe it is worth going the extreme route and just throwing away everything that you think the lice may have gotten into? Or at least keeping it in an area away from the piggies for a while and do a deep clean on everything? It obviously really sucks throwing away otherwise good hay and forage, but if you currently don't see any on their bedding it might be a good time to get rid of anything that could still have bugs. I think it would be really hard to tell if they have gotten into the hay boxes or not since they are so small, but it may give you a piece of mind to get rid of them. If you get new hay and forage, you could store it in a seal proof plastic container to make sure no bugs can make their way in. Not sure if any of this is doable for you or would truly help, just trying to throw some ideas out there! We had a bad case of ringworm that I was really stressed about and so I unfortunately had to throw some perfectly good stuff out or clean it with special vet grade disinfectant multiple times. It was a real pain, but worth it in the end! I do hope the lice leave you and the piggies alone soon!

 

[DougalandDiego]

Yes I think I may try that if all else fails, I threw away all of the hideys and forage that I saw them on already today. I didn’t explain it very well earlier in my complete panic, but they eat the microscopic mood and mildew on hay and other dry goods and not the actual hay. So not sure whether getting rid of the hay will help because the problem is that they’re scattered all over the house and will still have access to the hay and hideys in the guinea pigs cages anyway and just be attracted to that anyway such a nightmare. Thanks for taking your time to respond again

 

[Josiegerbil]

Hi,
Sorry I can’t offer any good advice. But I have a similar situation where our garage was rebuilt and half is a piggy room that now has book lice. We’ve now moved all the guinea pigs into the house and their stuff into the garden to start deep cleaning it and had the room sprayed by pest control. I’m finding it all extremely stressful and similarly don’t know how I’ll be able to make sure they are all gone as we have just got wood and glass cages built so there’s lots of nooks they can hide in.
Did you get rid of yours in the end? Do you have any advice?

 

[Free Ranger]

We had what looked like book lice but I think they were actually something similar called bark lice. They probably came in on some lovely local organic hay (we since switched to Pets at Home own brand which nothing has ever crawled out of!) and thrived in our damp Victorian house. A guy told me they can overwinter in grass stems or something like that. They looked a bit like the tiny springtails you see in the garden but springtails leap out of sight when you give them a little poke and these can't jump. They scuttled - only over hard surfaces - they never spread upstairs because of the carpet but they were all over downstairs. I'd been seeing them for a few months but as I have the back door open a lot I didn't really put 2 and 2 together. We found most in the tube-y bits of the correx (we had C&C at that time) between the two layers. Bark lice reproduce asexually like aphids so each can just keep popping out more but they are also vegetarian... they graze on algae or something that grows on damp dust in corners, so they are no risk to anyone. I will admit I went a bit mental as we were trying to deal with carpet moth upstairs at the same time and I spent weeks blitzing the house and clearing out so we could be sprayed with industrial strength pesticide (and also had a few sessions of therapy as I was getting a bit OCD) but it didn't really need all that... as long as you don't have a cat.

There is a household insecticide spray you can buy in the UK called Insectrol (the one for crawling insects, not flying) which contains Permethrin and it's about six quid. This kills little crawling critters stone dead (it's sad really) and hangs around for a couple of weeks so the idea is that you just spray round the edges of the room where things tend to scuttle and it kills on contact. You re-do it every week or two (read the instructions) till the problem's gone. It's got quite a strong pong but is essentially harmless to people and pigs - but it's specifically very toxic to cats. But assuming you don't have a cat you can spray as you like! I did the edges of the rooms (floor and ceiling), under shelves, door frames, inside cupboards etc. I switched from C&C because that was the source of our problems - my pigs are kept on the floor which is probably why there was damp in the tube bits from when I washed it out. Take a look at this pic:

This is an overhead shot of the alcove where my pigs are based. I took out all the stuff, cleaned the floor and skirting and when it dried I sprayed a stripe of insectrol round the edges and left it to dry with doors/windows open until the smell went. Then replaced the tray cages and fleeces. The pigs had no ill effects. I'd give it a go.

 

[Josiegerbil]

Hi thank you for responding! I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who’s gotten very stressed from these bugs, they are making me rather distressed when I’m usually very chill with insects and in general. I even had nightmare the other night about them crawling all over me. I don’t have cats so that’s good, it’s just one room that’s really effected and all their stuff - as the room is attached to the garage so opens into the garden. I’m freezing things and washing all the fleece and things. I’m thinking of trying insecticidal smoke bombs to try to get into all the little nooks they can crawl into as there’s quite a few in the room. But that spray sounds good, I’ll definitely need to get some. Did they go away in the end? Have you ever had them come back?

 

[Free Ranger]

They went and never came back. They're actually very fragile. The thing was we actually had to have the whole house sprayed because of the carpet moth infestation upstairs too but although they presumably used a stronger product they basically did the same thing - just came in and squirted it around the edges of rooms, in bases of walk-in cupboards etc. In fact you can get more places with the Insectrol because it's a spray rather than a squirt. Both required contact to kill - it wasn't something that hung in the air like a smoke bomb. But sprayed around they'll meet it eventually on their travels and it kills on contact. Both remained active for a few weeks so you spray and then forget about it and it still keeps working. Then you repeated the procedure a couple weeks later to refresh the product. But it took a bit of time for me to spot the spray product because I'd never bought a household insecticide before. I got it from a 'hardware' store locally but it's stocked nationally in the UK - one of those places that sells mousetraps and that, from the days when there was a lot more infestation in people's houses. It's probably in Sainsburys!

It does really get to you. The pest guy said he'd never seen a house so well prepared as I'd obsessively cleaned everything and piled all the furniture up in the middle of the rooms - totally unnecessary as often they're just slopping it over slippers and old newspapers left lying on the floor! I would shower and shampoo every night in hot water and run to sit in my bed with my feet off the floor. I could only watch little kids TV shows at night or there would be something to trigger tension. I had started to hallucinate seeing them scuttle over the walls. I knew they wouldn't go on me or harm anyone and I felt sorry for them afterwards but at the time I would have happily burnt down the house and jumped into the flames myself to be rid of them so I knew I wasn't being rational and I'm the same as you, don't mind crawlies. In the garden all sorts of stuff runs over you and I had no problem. Camping no problem - but when the tent came back into the house I was checking the seams obsessively and giving it a quick spray before double-bagging it! Had therapy, and the problem (for the 'housewife') stemmed from the fact that it was down to me to deal with the issue so if I didn't do it nobody else would. So all the reinforcing behaviour for OCD which you'd ideally avoid to break the cycle - checking, sorting, cleaning etc - was actually normal behaviour necessary to deal with the issue because if I didn't then they'd just proliferate again. But I went in 1,000,000% when actually about 10% and a tin of permethrin would have done it. I didn't know what I was dealing with - nobody else had ever heard of anything like this. A lot of hay-bedded pets are kept outdoors where this just doesn't become an issue. Once I switched from the correx which was actually our breeding ground that was it. I used to shake off the correx and shower it clean with a hot shower so in those tiny tubes between the plastic layers little bits of hay dust got caught and remained crusty enough for them to thrive. If I'd have wiped down surfaces instead it wouldn't have happened - maybe..? But that's when I went to P@H and asked the guy if their own brand hay was sprayed with insecticide and he said, "Probably - it's pretty cheap..." and I switched and haven't seen them since. Took a few weeks to deal with the problem but about a year to get over the mental anguish, but it does pass. Mid-life didn't help, I can tell you that for nothing!

Good luck - stay sane x