Okay, my husband sprayed the coop / roost with Coopex and we thought we might try a more natural spray on the chickens to start with.
So I sprayed them on the vent and under the wings with a garlic, water, essential oil mix.
I opened the roost and there were hardly any feathers dropped. All of the other mornings there were heaps of feathers, so I'm guessing they were pulling feathers out because of the irritation ?
There were also no mosquitoes in there !

I inspected the feathers which were in the roost and I counted 5 mites in total. 4 mites on 1 feather and 1 mite on another feather. 1 of the mites were moving, but the other 4 weren't.
All the other mornings, almost every single feather had so many active mites you could hardly count them !
So I think all of this has done something !
The strange thing is, I've tried to see the mites on the chickens themselves, but I can never see any ...
I will re-spray the chickens on Thursday with the garlic, water, essential oil mix, then give a second dose of Ivermectin on Friday and then re-spray them again on Sunday.
On Friday we will be mixing in some wood ash to their dust bowels too !
Hopefully this is enough to stop the mites damaging my chickens feathers !
Thank-you so much for your help too !
From me and my chickens, Alice, Sally, Gloria, Sooty and Dotti.
