worming advice please

I have just finished the 7 day course of flubenvet for my 10 hens. Which seems to have eradicated the gapeworm symptoms in those that were showing them, all barring one chicken!! :-( I don't think she's been eating the food. I have brought her in the house, with what's left of the medicated food, but she's not eating it still :-( she has pale combs, watery poo, sleepy a lot & obviously not eating, or drinking a lot. Any suggestions please, greatly appreciated?

Gapeworms are rare in chickens. You are most likely dealing with a viral respiratory disease as evidenced in your previous thread:



https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/833348/respiratory-disease-denagard-not-working
Cull your sick birds.

So how come the flubenvet stopped the neck stretching, mouth agape symptom that a couple of my chickens were having? :-/ I had a look at some You Tube videos of chickens with gapeworm & they matched entirely with what my chickens were doing. If a viral respiratory won't be cured with denagard then did the flubenvet cure my other sick girls? :-/ 8 of them are laying right now ( 5 of them had started laying when we first got them, then stopped when they got sick) so it's only these 2 left & they both have different symptoms :-/ Have they definitely both got the same thing wrong? Thanks for any help x

Mucus in trachea from respiratory disease can cause gaping, neck stretching in order for the bird to breathe. It's possible there could be two respiratory diseases involved as such coryza and mycoplasma gallisepticum which usually go hand in hand. MG can be treated with antibiotics but surviving birds will always be carriers and are susceptable to relapse due to stress. Pretty much the same with coryza, except there's usually a foul odor and only sulfa drugs can treat coryza. Wormers would have no effect, antibiotics little effect. If you think your hens had gapeworms, a fecal sample shouldve been taken to a vet for analysis under a microscope, or necropsy performed on the trachea on one of your birds. Additionally, if your birds had gapeworms, infective gapeworm eggs in feces have contaminated your soil. You willneed to maintain a regular worming program to prevent your birds from getting birds reinfected...IF they had gapeworms in the first place. Youtube videos dont show and tell you all the truth about worms infecting chickens.

I did originally suspect mycoplasma :-( so how can I tell which of my birds are carriers, will I need to take them all into the vet for blood tests? I'd rather not kill any, hence all the questions, they are pets and all have names, but if they are going to die from these illnesses then I need to do something to try & save as many as possible. x

mylovelyhens said:

I did originally suspect mycoplasma :-( so how can I tell which of my birds are carriers, will I need to take them all into the vet for blood tests? I'd rather not kill any, hence all the questions, they are pets and all have names, but if they are going to die from these illnesses then I need to do something to try & save as many as possible. x

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Take your sickest bird to the vet for bloodwork. A blood test will determine if it's MG/MS or not. Good luck.

Thankyou

mylovelyhens said:

I have just finished the 7 day course of flubenvet for my 10 hens. Which seems to have eradicated the gapeworm symptoms in those that were showing them, all barring one chicken!! :-( I don't think she's been eating the food. I have brought her in the house, with what's left of the medicated food, but she's not eating it still :-( she has pale combs, watery poo, sleepy a lot & obviously not eating, or drinking a lot. Any suggestions please, greatly appreciated?

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What dosage did you use? I used .3 panacur on a pullet who is just under 3 pounds and the vet said I was using the most conservative of doses, and to do it again for 3 days. I did, and she's better, BUT I don't think I entirely eradicated it. I left a message with the vet today, asking what a higher, but still-safe dosage would be, and she hasn't called back yet.

Not sure what panacur is hun, we use ml's or grams here, lol it's supposed to be 6 grams of flubenvet mixed into 2kg of food for 7 days. That's to treat all 10 of my birds, except that this particular one seems to have been almost starving herself. Not sure now, she's probably just got a respiratory disease, like a couple of the others, just showing slightly different symptoms :-( x

mamakat74 said:

What dosage did you use? I used .3 panacur on a pullet who is just under 3 pounds and the vet said I was using the most conservative of doses, and to do it again for 3 days. I did, and she's better, BUT I don't think I entirely eradicated it. I left a message with the vet today, asking what a higher, but still-safe dosage would be, and she hasn't called back yet.

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Take a fecal sample to the vet and have it checked out. I would bet that your pullet is clear and free of worms.