I did a fecal on my chickens and thought I'd share the process, hopefully this be informative.
I am planning to treat my hens with 20 mg/kg fenbendazole for tapeworms and nematodes.
Here's what I found on the fecal exam.
Ascaridia (roundworms):
There were many, many of these tapeworm eggs. If you look inside the egg, you can see the little hooks. There are six of these so what's inside each egg is called a hexacanth embryo. (hex = 6, acanth = thorny).
Here is a "squash prep" of a motile (moving) tapeworm segment I found in the chicken feces. They have an impressive number of eggs in the uteri. This is only one group of proglottids, each segment is delineated pretty clearly here. Each segment has its own uterus, testes and a vagina. They are literally baby-making machines, these things. They're amazing.
Here's a segment of about 3 mm that I picked out of feces and literally squashed it between a slide and a coverslip. Each of the striations is an individual segment. Whatever species this is (Railletina, I think) sheds proglottids in packets like this. This is 4x magnification.
Moving up to 10x, you can start to see how much of this thing is actually eggs which you can see spilling out due to being squished.
And closer still at 40x. All eggs. They are actually really magnificent creatures, aren't they?
Here's a shot of the edge of the whole package, showing individual segments. The vagina is seen here, but you have to really look. They are a tiny divot at the edge, just right of each high point. The one in the middle appears to have an egg emerging from it.
So. Neat. My chickens have worms. Time to deworm them. To make it simplest, I am planning to treat with oral fenbendazole, 20 mg/kg once a day for three days, then I'll recheck them after 2 weeks. This should kill the tapeworms at this dose, and will kill any nematodes they have too, including gapeworm if those happen to be present.
My chickens weigh about 2 kg (I'll get exact weights later on) so if I want to kill the tapeworms, I'll give them 20 mg/kg, or about 40 mg per chicken per day for 3 days.
I weighed out 8 grams of paste, which equals 800 mg total.
For ease of dosing, I brought it up to 20 mL with distilled water so it's a liquid. Each mL now contains 40 mg fenbendazole, so I will have enough premix to dose everyone. I don't know how stable FBZ is in water, I plan to use it all between now and Monday, but I am keeping it in the fridge just in case. This is OFF LABEL use for chickens, so I plan to discard all eggs for at least 21 days.
I am planning to treat my hens with 20 mg/kg fenbendazole for tapeworms and nematodes.
Here's what I found on the fecal exam.
Ascaridia (roundworms):
There were many, many of these tapeworm eggs. If you look inside the egg, you can see the little hooks. There are six of these so what's inside each egg is called a hexacanth embryo. (hex = 6, acanth = thorny).
Here is a "squash prep" of a motile (moving) tapeworm segment I found in the chicken feces. They have an impressive number of eggs in the uteri. This is only one group of proglottids, each segment is delineated pretty clearly here. Each segment has its own uterus, testes and a vagina. They are literally baby-making machines, these things. They're amazing.
Here's a segment of about 3 mm that I picked out of feces and literally squashed it between a slide and a coverslip. Each of the striations is an individual segment. Whatever species this is (Railletina, I think) sheds proglottids in packets like this. This is 4x magnification.
Moving up to 10x, you can start to see how much of this thing is actually eggs which you can see spilling out due to being squished.
And closer still at 40x. All eggs. They are actually really magnificent creatures, aren't they?
Here's a shot of the edge of the whole package, showing individual segments. The vagina is seen here, but you have to really look. They are a tiny divot at the edge, just right of each high point. The one in the middle appears to have an egg emerging from it.
So. Neat. My chickens have worms. Time to deworm them. To make it simplest, I am planning to treat with oral fenbendazole, 20 mg/kg once a day for three days, then I'll recheck them after 2 weeks. This should kill the tapeworms at this dose, and will kill any nematodes they have too, including gapeworm if those happen to be present.
My chickens weigh about 2 kg (I'll get exact weights later on) so if I want to kill the tapeworms, I'll give them 20 mg/kg, or about 40 mg per chicken per day for 3 days.
I weighed out 8 grams of paste, which equals 800 mg total.
For ease of dosing, I brought it up to 20 mL with distilled water so it's a liquid. Each mL now contains 40 mg fenbendazole, so I will have enough premix to dose everyone. I don't know how stable FBZ is in water, I plan to use it all between now and Monday, but I am keeping it in the fridge just in case. This is OFF LABEL use for chickens, so I plan to discard all eggs for at least 21 days.
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