BackYardChickens Forum

De-worming is simply giving medication to your chicken to get rid of worms they may have. I use (Wazine) you can get it at Fleet Farm or your nearest tractor supply store.  Good luck   Follow directions on the bottle.

Last edited by Hangin Wit My Peeps (07/05/2008 12:56 pm)

You can see information on worming on my site HERE .  Good luck!

KierBri wrote:

anything organic you can use?

I would LOVE to know if there's an organic wormer.  Anyone? Somewhere here I read pumpkin seeds (raw, unsalted, and in the shell I presume) were a natural wormer.

That site is only an average/suggestion.  Not every chicken will follow that time line.  There was just a thread somewhere about roosters crowing at 3weeks.  Also when it says deworm it doesn't mean your chickens get worms at that time.  It just means that's a suggested time to deworm them to prevent them getting an infestation of worms.  An infestation is enough worms to cause a health problem.  Everything will have some parasites in them at all times.  It's normal.  Even humans have a worm or 2 living in them.  They are not going to die instantly of worms.  The level has to build to a point it starts to cause health issues. 

Some animals may never even need dewormed.  It depends on your setup.  The more animals and animal waste you have the more likely you are to have a parasite problem.  That includes all animals on the property and wild animals.  Internal parasites spread through feces.  The higher the concentration the more of a problem.  That is why big farms that have lots of animals will just deworm automatically at certain ages or certain times instead of waiting to see if there is a possibility of an infestation.  They have lots of animals and lots of manure so they probably have lots of parasites and the animals will probably get sick if they aren't dewormed.  On a small farm with few animals or that practice things like pasture rotation so the animals aren't exposed to much manure they may never need dewormed.

If you are concerned you can have fecals done on an animal.  You take in a small amount of feces to the vet and they test it for parasite eggs to estimate how badly infested an animal is.