To worm or not to worm that is the question.

[casportpony]

I put a pinch of food grade DE powder in their food every few months and that takes care of most everything.

Welcome to BYC!

 

[achillacres]

I buy the powder mix at our local feed store and just follow the package, the kind that mixes in their water. Not sure if anyone answered the dosage/size part...My suggestion, base it on the lightest weight bird. Better to under dose a big hen then to over dose a small one. I never had to dose mine until they were much older...maybe 2...and that was an unbelievable wet summer. Not sure if there was a connection or not.

 

[Teila]

I think the reason that we go backwards and forwards on the ‘to worm or not to worm question’ is because we are really discussing ‘how to worm’ and we may also have differing opinions on the definition of worm in that context.

For all appearances, we have two camps, those who worm and those who do not. But, to me, that is not the case and we all worm our chickens.

Some of us worm our chickens with flock and soil management.
Some of us worm our chickens with natures’ products.
Some of us worm our chickens with chemicals and
Some of us worm our chickens with all of the above.

I believe the first questions we should be asking someone in response to “Should I worm my flock?” is “what type of flock do you have and where do you keep them?”
Multiple acres to free range? Suburban back garden to wander around? Confined to a run?

Next question “do you have flock or soil management” plans?

And finally, would you prefer natural or chemical solutions to a possible worm outbreak?

Armed with the answers to those questions, we could hopefully give them the best advice for their situation and then leave them to make what is a personal choice.

All methods mentioned in this thread have validity and work for some, but they are not the perfect fit for everyone.

Telling someone with 100’s of chickens, free ranging over 10’s of acres that they need to chemically and expensively worm their chickens every 6 months may not be the best option for them.

Telling someone with 6 pet chickens in a suburban garden that they need to cull the weak may not be the best option for them.

For me, the best outcome from this thread would be two columns, first column listing various flock types and second column listing worming options available for that type of flock.

 

[Bridebeliever]

I love all of the wonderful discussion on here! Respectfully hearing each other out...

Things have worms and parasites. People tend to freak out if you tell them they have a healthy load of parasites living in them! But here's the hard fact...if a human died and got sealed in a plastic box...above ground...worms and bugs would start to break down the body...because they are THERE! I have de-bugged myself before and seen all kinds of interesting things come out. I do it if I start having a sluggish system, if I'm having frequent break outs and if I start experiencing nausea frequently. I've de-bugged myself twice in my 46 year life. Fortunately no one thought EGADS, look at the parasites she has, we must cull her! LOL
I have ever seen-wormed a cat and a dog when I've seen worms, I have also not done anything to see if the animals body will "take care of it". I did it with my dog this last summer. I saw tape worms in his stool for a couple weeks, left it alone and within a couple more weeks they were gone. If I started to see more or it didn't resolve I would've wormed him. I think this is a pretty reasonable approach. It works for me! I'm not anti meds...I just had pneumonia two weeks ago and promptly got on antibiotics...and now I'm on probiotics to restore gut flora.

 

[Beekissed]

I love all of the wonderful discussion on here! Respectfully hearing each other out...

Things have worms and parasites. People tend to freak out if you tell them they have a healthy load of parasites living in them! But here's the hard fact...if a human died and got sealed in a plastic box...above ground...worms and bugs would start to break down the body...because they are THERE! I have de-bugged myself before and seen all kinds of interesting things come out. I do it if I start having a sluggish system, if I'm having frequent break outs and if I start experiencing nausea frequently. I've de-bugged myself twice in my 46 year life. Fortunately no one thought EGADS, look at the parasites she has, we must cull her! LOL
I have ever seen-wormed a cat and a dog when I've seen worms, I have also not done anything to see if the animals body will "take care of it". I did it with my dog this last summer. I saw tape worms in his stool for a couple weeks, left it alone and within a couple more weeks they were gone. If I started to see more or it didn't resolve I would've wormed him. I think this is a pretty reasonable approach. It works for me! I'm not anti meds...I just had pneumonia two weeks ago and promptly got on antibiotics...and now I'm on probiotics to restore gut flora.

Amen to all of that....folks don't want to hear about the worms inside of them. Do a little trip through YT and see the incredible HUGE loads of worms some people can have(mostly third world situations) and it gets you thinking. Especially for people who live very closely with their pets, which can be shedding oocytes all the while~on the carpets, on the furniture, on the bed.

 

[KuneKune]

 

[shortgrass]

Would be fun to do. Perhaps I could start by making a concoction of all of the items... Pumpkin, cucumber, ACV, garlic, onion, DE, grape seed extract, grass, xyfend, cayenne pepper.

Ya never know, you could patent it, call it "Casportponys Wonder Wormer"!

I was totally being serious! You have the capabilities right there, why knock it if you haven't tried it?

What are you looking for when you look at the soil?

Well, I use the chickens to add beneficial microbes and nutrients in pasture and permaculture type settings, so I'm looking for life. Nematodes, beetle larvae, worm castings etc... Find a bunch of roundworm eggs in dead soil and I know its time to bring in some litter or rotate the area they're grazing. I'm not really concerned with worm eggs though, tbh, I'm more interested in the ratio of good buggies and humates vs poo.


PS* chemical wormers will sterilize my soil and kill all my good buggies and might make me cry

 

[casportpony]

Would be fun to do. Perhaps I could start by making a concoction of all of the items... Pumpkin, cucumber, ACV, garlic, onion, DE, grape seed extract, grass, xyfend, cayenne pepper.

Ya never know, you could patent it, call it "Casportponys Wonder Wormer"!

I was totally being serious! You have the capabilities right there, why knock it if you haven't tried it?

What are you looking for when you look at the soil?

Well, I use the chickens to add beneficial microbes and nutrients in pasture and permaculture type settings, so I'm looking for life. Nematodes, beetle larvae, worm castings etc... Find a bunch of roundworm eggs in dead soil and I know its time to bring in some litter or rotate the area they're grazing. I'm not really concerned with worm eggs though, tbh, I'm more interested in the ratio of good buggies and humates vs poo.


PS* chemical wormers will sterilize my soil and kill all my good buggies and might make me cry

I know you're serious, and it would be a fun experiment, though I'm not sure I could do it properly. In therory I'd have to have a control group, a chemical wormer group, and a non-chemical wormer group, and all birds would probably have to be the same breed/age. Then how does one proceed?

Another thing I could do is have those of you already feeding non-chemical wormers send me poop samples and I could do fecals for you.

Lots to think about.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Just popping in to toss my $0.02 in. I've been keeping a flock under the same conditions for nearly 5 years now. Not as long as some folks, but it matters still I think that my birds have lived this way for that long. Also, I'm feeling a little aggressive today, so my apologies if this seems harsh.

I have never used a medical dewormer. I don't have parasite loads or problems. I have chickens in a small coop and pen in suburbia (about 750sqft with 10-14 LF chickens at any given time, meaning each bird has about an 8'x8' area). You do not need to worm constantly, even in suburbia. If you need to worm constantly, there's probably something seriously wrong with your management. That could be that you have too many birds for your area (Which DOES mean if your area is too small, you could have too many birds with just 2-3 bantams. There's a real possibility that owning chickens is not appropriate for your situation, like sticking a st bernard in a one bedroom apartment. There's a point where it's not enough space to keep healthy birds.), or you do not cull weak birds, or you do not use soil management or you need something more work intensive (like regular cleanings) or something. So here's how I manage parasites and I think that most of this is already in the thread but I just wanna say I agree with it.

1. Soil management. I lay down fresh woodchips in my chicken pen 1' deep every year or two. The fresh woodchips last longer and break down slower. The chickens dig in the woodchips, mixing them with their own fecal matter and they compost down into harmless dirt. There's 5 years of chicken poop in my chicken pen and you would never, ever, know it. I never take anything out or clean it, I just add more in. This creates a really violent environment for pathogens and parasites and they just can't survive in it. Everything has a natural predator, even tapeworms, and the deep litter is a motherload of things that feed on things that are bad for my birds. Deep litter is great.

2. Culling. I never really get around to culling my own birds. The local hawks do too good of a job of it for me. But I agree strongly with culling. A sick bird is a huge risk, kind of like how if you catch the flu it puts you at a greater risk for pneumonia. Yes, some of these birds are beloved pets but those pets have wide-reaching consequences. A simple example, in 2003 an Exotic Newcastle outbreak that resulted in 3 million chickens destroyed started in backyard poultry flocks in California and spread to four states. I'm not saying that your birds are carrying a nationally-threatening virus, but if you think that the worms you chickens carry won't be able to spread to the chickens 5 blocks away, or that little runny nose doesn't mean something bigger could be going on internally, you're wrong. And your negligence could effect more than just your own flock. Bird-borne pathogens and parasites spread fast, kill effectively, jump species easily, are hard to control and threaten our national food supply. Even dogs get put down if they carry a dangerous contagion. Responsible euthanasia is part of responsible chicken keeping. If you own chickens, you need to own that, as difficult as that is.

3. Diet management. If you feed a low quality diet, your birds will have low quality health and be more prone to all sorts of diseases and parasites. This can also be done effectively in small spaces. Fodder, fermented feed, probiotics, vegetable scraps, worm bins and other methods can be used in small confinement spaces to encourage a healthy, natural, diet. I put extra effort into deworming in the fall, not on purpose but by coincidence. Early November, right as my birds are going into molt, I try to do my errands on trash days. Anytime I can, I stop and pick up old jack o lanterns and pumpkins and other squashes from peoples tree lawns. Sometimes they have seeds, sometimes not, and I get my fall squash coming in so they get those seeds too when I eat those. Sometimes they're a little moldy, but I don't worry too much about that. This is the closest thing to a natural dewormer I use. It's a fall bounty that dang near any suburbanite can get their hands on for free and it's great. Sometimes if I feel like my flock has had a rough time I might soup this up with cayenne or garlic in their feed to try to give them a little extra boost.

4. Other environmental management. Making sure your birds are healthy stops parasites from taking over. Obviously, they're there the whole time but healthy birds don't worry about it. So in addition to diet and culling and deep litter, I also make sure all the other little details are in place. A bird with external parasites will be likely to have an outbreak of internal parasites. A bird that's having trouble with eating won't have a strong immune system. A bird with no exercise or poor mental stimulation will be less robust. So I try to make sure my birds have what they need, even in a small space. A dust bath filled with sand, DE and wood ashes gives a natural source of grit and minerals and external parasite removal. A cinder block gives birds somewhere to wear down their beak. Swings and branches and boxes and perches and tunnels give the birds things to stimulate mind and body (and conveniently so too does the deep litter).

An interesting note about this. Something that really improves the health of animals in captivity is mental health. Zoos found this out and they found that one of the biggest contributing factors to mental health was not how much space the animals had but rather if they could see the entirety of their enclosure. So they started adding alcoves and passages and visual blocks to their envrionments and it really improved the animal's physical and mental wellbeing. Animals in thoughtfully designed enclosures got sick less often than ones in more open enclosures. I guess seeing your whole entire world at once is pretty depressing.

And that's it. That's all I do. And it works, even in small suburban spaces. I never see worms, and I don't worm my chickens. They don't even really get the free range like some birds on here. And it's not scientific evidence, but... You're on a chicken forum not a scientific journal. And this is what works for me.

 

[lazy gardener]

Just popping in to toss my $0.02 in. I've been keeping a flock under the same conditions for nearly 5 years now. Not as long as some folks, but it matters still I think that my birds have lived this way for that long. Also, I'm feeling a little aggressive today, so my apologies if this seems harsh.

I have never used a medical dewormer. I don't have parasite loads or problems. I have chickens in a small coop and pen in suburbia (about 750sqft with 10-14 LF chickens at any given time, meaning each bird has about an 8'x8' area). You do not need to worm constantly, even in suburbia. If you need to worm constantly, there's probably something seriously wrong with your management. That could be that you have too many birds for your area (Which DOES mean if your area is too small, you could have too many birds with just 2-3 bantams. There's a real possibility that owning chickens is not appropriate for your situation, like sticking a st bernard in a one bedroom apartment. There's a point where it's not enough space to keep healthy birds.), or you do not cull weak birds, or you do not use soil management or you need something more work intensive (like regular cleanings) or something. So here's how I manage parasites and I think that most of this is already in the thread but I just wanna say I agree with it.

1. Soil management. I lay down fresh woodchips in my chicken pen 1' deep every year or two. The fresh woodchips last longer and break down slower. The chickens dig in the woodchips, mixing them with their own fecal matter and they compost down into harmless dirt. There's 5 years of chicken poop in my chicken pen and you would never, ever, know it. I never take anything out or clean it, I just add more in. This creates a really violent environment for pathogens and parasites and they just can't survive in it. Everything has a natural predator, even tapeworms, and the deep litter is a motherload of things that feed on things that are bad for my birds. Deep litter is great.

2. Culling. I never really get around to culling my own birds. The local hawks do too good of a job of it for me. But I agree strongly with culling. A sick bird is a huge risk, kind of like how if you catch the flu it puts you at a greater risk for pneumonia. Yes, some of these birds are beloved pets but those pets have wide-reaching consequences. A simple example, in 2003 an Exotic Newcastle outbreak that resulted in 3 million chickens destroyed started in backyard poultry flocks in California and spread to four states. I'm not saying that your birds are carrying a nationally-threatening virus, but if you think that the worms you chickens carry won't be able to spread to the chickens 5 blocks away, or that little runny nose doesn't mean something bigger could be going on internally, you're wrong. And your negligence could effect more than just your own flock. Bird-borne pathogens and parasites spread fast, kill effectively, jump species easily, are hard to control and threaten our national food supply. Even dogs get put down if they carry a dangerous contagion. Responsible euthanasia is part of responsible chicken keeping. If you own chickens, you need to own that, as difficult as that is.

3. Diet management. If you feed a low quality diet, your birds will have low quality health and be more prone to all sorts of diseases and parasites. This can also be done effectively in small spaces. Fodder, fermented feed, probiotics, vegetable scraps, worm bins and other methods can be used in small confinement spaces to encourage a healthy, natural, diet. I put extra effort into deworming in the fall, not on purpose but by coincidence. Early November, right as my birds are going into molt, I try to do my errands on trash days. Anytime I can, I stop and pick up old jack o lanterns and pumpkins and other squashes from peoples tree lawns. Sometimes they have seeds, sometimes not, and I get my fall squash coming in so they get those seeds too when I eat those. Sometimes they're a little moldy, but I don't worry too much about that. This is the closest thing to a natural dewormer I use. It's a fall bounty that dang near any suburbanite can get their hands on for free and it's great. Sometimes if I feel like my flock has had a rough time I might soup this up with cayenne or garlic in their feed to try to give them a little extra boost.

4. Other environmental management. Making sure your birds are healthy stops parasites from taking over. Obviously, they're there the whole time but healthy birds don't worry about it. So in addition to diet and culling and deep litter, I also make sure all the other little details are in place. A bird with external parasites will be likely to have an outbreak of internal parasites. A bird that's having trouble with eating won't have a strong immune system. A bird with no exercise or poor mental stimulation will be less robust. So I try to make sure my birds have what they need, even in a small space. A dust bath filled with sand, DE and wood ashes gives a natural source of grit and minerals and external parasite removal. A cinder block gives birds somewhere to wear down their beak. Swings and branches and boxes and perches and tunnels give the birds things to stimulate mind and body (and conveniently so too does the deep litter).

An interesting note about this. Something that really improves the health of animals in captivity is mental health. Zoos found this out and they found that one of the biggest contributing factors to mental health was not how much space the animals had but rather if they could see the entirety of their enclosure. So they started adding alcoves and passages and visual blocks to their envrionments and it really improved the animal's physical and mental wellbeing. Animals in thoughtfully designed enclosures got sick less often than ones in more open enclosures. I guess seeing your whole entire world at once is pretty depressing.

And that's it. That's all I do. And it works, even in small suburban spaces. I never see worms, and I don't worm my chickens. They don't even really get the free range like some birds on here. And it's not scientific evidence, but... You're on a chicken forum not a scientific journal. And this is what works for me.

This has to be one of the most thoughtfully written posts I've seen in a very long time.