Bugs, but what kind of...

Hi
i have a question of the bug-bitten kind:

Sometimes out of the blue my husband suddenly gets bitten by something and shows me the spots on his skin looking like fleabites :confused:
Strangely its only some parts of the skin that are affected, like the inner or lower legs or behind the neck or the shoulders...it occurs just from time to time...it's weird
The cats get flea treatment very regularly and i'm not sure if some bugs could come from the hens enclosure maybe and i'm bringing them into the house? I really don't know what it could be :confused::confused::confused:

Anyone an idea?

I've been having a similar problem. I thought I was experiencing it with a particular set of bed sheets, which was pretty un ... settling, pleasant, generally gross. But I don't know what is getting me. It's only occasionally, but then it's a whole load of bites.

In my case it's probably down to slovenly household maintenance. This house needs a wife.

it is only occasionally and a lot of bites...household maintenance..not my strenght even if i try not to starve my vacuum cleaner

It could be the chooks, wrap some tape, say brown parcel tape, backwards, sticky side out, at the ends of the perches. This should catch any mites that crawl out to attack the chooks. You then have a start to eradicate one issue.

If you think is it the house [] try sprinkling DE around the edges of the rooms. Pestene would be better but DE is cheaper. []

Do you have caged birds in the house? They could be the culprit also. Pestene should solve that problem

Are you getting bitten? Or are you one of the lucky ones that seem unpalatable to the little buggers?

Are you sure its bites? I ask because I've had something similar a couple of times. The second time they appeared overnight but inside the elbow so I began to wonder what else it could be and read that hives look similar. The only different thing I'd eaten was field mushrooms so at great cost (as there were heaps in the paddocks) I didn't have more and haven't had the problem since. They took a long time to disappear, even after they stopped being itchy and I think bites go pretty quickly.

like this?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bedbugb2.JPG

[:0][:0]

unwelcome tourists on the rise....[xx(]

I wondered about bed bugs because of the single pair of sheets, but it was more likely something I'd become sensitive to in that sheeting... I thought, hope ...
You can also see bedbugs with the naked eye, if you look in the right places.

Actually I probably couldn't any more, I'd have to put my glasses on. []

If there's a link to the sheets, could it be a skin sensitivity to washing powder? I know people who get dermatitis from certain types of laundry powder. As for mites, I've experienced them when we stayed in an old farm cottage that was infested by them, and they were the most agonizingly itchy things. You can usually tell if you've got those because they go for the dark, warm places...under arms, down your gumboots, etc etc etc.... They look like flea bites except that they're smaller with a sort of red dot in the middle, and they're ITCHIER!!! Also, apparently they go for some people and leave others alone, which we found to be the case.

This is the future! We'll all be infested with crawlies again, as was the case in earlier times ...

I think if it only occurs on certain parts of the body, and not others, then its not bites - just my opinion.
Have you thought about excema, I sometimes get it just on certain parts of my body. If you scratch or rub it, it could look like bites

Don't yo have the Ross river mosquito in the Gisborne area? Any chance it's them, or sanflies? Sandflies like to get under the edge of clothing and bite, and they are usually worse just before rain.

Dose him up on Vitamin B - even to a tablespoon of Yeast daily. My brother ran a gun shooting range in a native bush area and this was his answer to getting bitten by anything. Mind he was a bachelor so not sure how they smell with that much Yeast in the system.

thank you all for your reply.
after seeing the picture in wikipedia it's definitely not bedbugs the spots look smaller and don't have this "ring" around it and we don't have those spots on "dark" places

It could be the washing powder, but here i use the same for years now :confused: and why do we get itchy now and then and not all the time when changing clothes?

Sandflies? Are they still active in winter :confused:

yes, i do get "bitten" sometimes but not as much as my husband and it happens out of the blue when i suddenly feel that something "stung" me..

@Muri: it is like you say; when we scratch it looks like bites..

@Spoook: i have to ask, what is DE??
I'll try the sticky tape and it could well be me, bringing those buggers into the house after feeding the chooks [:0]

I strongly suspect we have a single flea from time to time. There are a couple of cats who live here and sponge off us, whose flea treatment is not kept completely up to date and they have access to the bed during the day sometimes.

What you are describing sounds very like fleas to me, especially if you're getting those sudden nips! Are you sure there aren't a few around that could have hatched out in the carpet and jumped straight onto you instead of the cats and so escaped being zapped by whatever it is you treat them with? But if you vacuum often, say at least once a week, then it's not so likely. It is getting a bit late in the season for fleas though, but they are around, I saw a big fat one on our cat yesterday, but he escaped, grrrr. The flea I mean, not the cat.