How long before I see improvement after giving Fenbendazole?

Hello! In July 2008 this message board helped me diagnose one of my chickens with gapeworm. I gave her the Panacur paste and she got better quite quickly. I still have that tube and it says it is good until August 2011. I recently had another chicken come down with gapeworm and I fed it some of the paste two weeks ago. Nothing. She has gotten worse and the last two days I gave her a dose both days. I have her secluded from the rest of the flock but I'm not really seeing improvement. I think I will buy another Panacur (fenbendazole) today because I'm wondering if the old one just is too old. How long should I wait to see if the medication is working? She seems a tad bit better but is still sticking her neck up and gasping, just not as bad. I'm feeding her raw eggs from another chicken since she can't get anything solid down anymore.

I have spent an hour online trying to find out how long it takes before the worms die and the chicken gets better, but can't find anything. Also, how do they finally get rid of the worms once they are dead? I know they live in the lungs and crawl up the trachea. Do they cough them out, do they dissolve, or do they ingest them somehow?

Thanks for any help.

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Fenbendazole should kill them in a short time, like within a few hours. The worms are either absorbed into the digestive system or excreted. It may not be gapeworm and could be an obstruction of some sort in her throat. You can use a flashlight and look inside for an obstruction.
To check for gapeworm; get a Q-tip and stick it one inch down her throat. Gently swab her throat and remove the Q-tip. If you see a "Y" shaped redin color worm on the Q-tip, she has gapeworm. You can also use Valbazen liquid cattle/sheep wormer or Safeguard liquid goat wormer in addition to Safeguard equine paste to kill gapeworm.

meds from 2008?? check expiration date maybe?

OP stated the product didnt expire til August 2011.

Thanks DAWG53! The reason I think it's gapeworm is because she has been shaking her head for several weeks. Like I said, I tried giving her the paste a couple of weeks ago and I thought she was getting better. But then several days ago she was sitting under something in the coop staying away from all the other chickens. A day later she started lifting her head in the air and opening her mouth like she is gasping for air. I decided to go to the local feed store and get some new liquid goat wormer (fenbendozole) and I gave her 1ml down her throat since I'm not sure how much she's actually drinking right now. Yeah, and I had to give her a bath too since the first time I tried to put it down her throat it went all over the place!

She's also a little weak but the last two days she did gorge down on egg yolk. Today not as much so I took some of the laying crumble and mixed it with water for her. We'll see what happens.

By the way, how do you check a chicken's crop? Could the head shaking, hiccuping, and now gasping be symptoms of something else? I will also try to put a q-tip down her throat to check for gapeworms but being alone that's not so easy. I would assume it would take two people to pull that off. I read that giving a chicken fenbendazole won't hurt it if that's not what it is.

Any other ideas or advice would be great. I've had chickens die before from being eggbound and I doubt that is what this is since she's been sick for a couple of weeks. They go within days with that. I'm not sure what else I should do right now.

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I've used the safeguard liquid goat wormer myself. It's safe to use even if there's no worms involved, just dont reworm her until 2 weeks later if you deem it necessary. It's a 2 person job to use the Q-tip. I dont think it's necessary and I agree with you, it must be something else going on. She could have an impacted crop if she's not eggbound. Type in the BYC search box, "impacted crop" and you'll see a wealth of information come up on that problem. I've been fortunate not having to deal with that. I believe you can give her a piece of bread soaked in olive oil and give that to her to eat, then massage her crop to loosen the material in her crop to pass on through her system. Good luck.