All chickens skinny help!

[Michael Apple]

You are correct about most worms being too small/unrecognizable in poo. You are incorrect about DE and apple cider vinegar in helping keep parasites, worms, and illnesses at bay. DE is ineffective when wet, just like inside animals innards. I've always used ACV in water for my birds and they got worms.
If you're going to worm poultry, use real wormers such as valbazen or safeguard or other wormers as with other livestock.

X2. I already tried mixing DE and ACV in a cup and drinking it when I had worms. I even downed a handful of ground cayenne pepper and was still loaded with worms. Then I ate a whole pumpkin with no success, even though I was confined to the restroom for an entire day.

 

[RachelleM1986]

You are correct about most worms being too small/unrecognizable in poo. You are incorrect about DE and apple cider vinegar in helping keep parasites, worms, and illnesses at bay. DE is ineffective when wet, just like inside animals innards. I've always used ACV in water for my birds and they got worms.
If you're going to worm poultry, use real wormers such as valbazen or safeguard or other wormers as with other livestock.

Interesting. I've used it for a little over a year now, whenever I see or suspect worms. I add a handful of food grade DE to their feed one day, then another 3 days later. I watch my flock for about a week, and if I feel the need to, I do it again. I have a large feeder though, and I mix it in really well to decrease the risk of my girls inhaling the dust. As far as I'm concerned, DE works as a real wormer.

Since I started using ACV earlier this summer, I haven't had as many problems with lice and mites than I did last summer. It's aimed more for lice and mites rather than worms, with the similar theory as garlic - it makes the bird's skin taste bitter for the bugs, so they don't start feasting on the bird. As well as all of the associated health benefits. Here's a good link: http://keeping-chickens.me.uk/what-to-keep-in-stock/apple-cider-vinegar

My flock shifts a lot. I acquire literally dozens of free chickens at a time, for numerous reasons. I have quarantine pens, but that doesn't keep everyone safe from bugs all the time. By the end of summer last year, I had 78 birds. Since then, I've decreased to as low as 27 birds, shot back up to 67 by September, and now I'm back down to 55, which might be going down to 52 soon (2 older hens and an aggressive rooster - they gotta go :/ ). This summer I only had 2 lice issues, last summer I had at least half a dozen. I can't swear by the apple cider vinegar just yet, but I'm definitely happy with it so far. If my birds are healthy, they're less likely to get sick or acquire bugs. It helps as a preventative measure for keeping illness at bay.

 

[Budderball]

Also don't beat yourself up - chickens are very good at hiding illness or stress and will sometimes just die for no known reason. All you can do is try to keep everything as clean as possible, them as comfortable as possible and keep worms, lice and mites at bay and treat as often as needed.

Completely agree. My first of three chooks to pass away simply stopped eating, pooping and laying and became less active. Mobile vet came over and turns out her bowel had erupted, which sounds incredibly painful. Cats do it sometimes too. We had little budderball put down because of that ruptured bowel. The vet was not an avarian vet, but she knew enough about fowls to know that that chook was in a lot of pain. Her tummy was really stiff. I was 11 at the time and I was the first to realise something was wrong. Parents passed it off as she wasn't feeling well. Until they were told she was going to die in a few days more of suffering.

Actually, still don't know why the second one died. Again, I was first to know something was wrong. She got really lethargic. I spent 7 am to dusk outside, under a trampoline, sitting with her as she slept in a clean cat litterbox full of sawdust. Next day, I pulled her out of the room she had been sleeping in for the night and rested her in my arms. She was there for a while, then she started vomiting, then went limp. The neighbor came over to help dig a hole and left in a hurry. I later found out he had started crying. Poor thing.

 

[Budderball]

My third died because she was bitten across the belly by a neighbor's German Shepherd. It peeled the skin off under her wings and it looked exactly like a chicken fillet (to this day I CANNOT eat or prepare chicken. Not okay with me.) The teeth had punctured her air sack, so we had her put down.

 

[dawg53]

Quote:
You'll learn in time.
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/05/diatomaceous-earth-de-benefitrisk.html
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/576245/proof-that-de-doesnt-work

 

[RachelleM1986]

I'm looking forward to being proven wrong then if that's the case. It's worked like a charm for me. I used to use commercial products (Wazine, Safeguard, Strike III). I'd go through the dosages and suggested timeframes at which to repeat, but I found myself worming them almost every month. In my experience, the commercial products we're weak and hardly effective. I hated the withdrawal times to not eat the eggs - half of their production was going straight to the compost!! And I hated pumping my girls full of chemicals that I couldn't even pronounce, much less understand what they were or where they came from.

Side note, if you worm any animal with ivermectin and you have a dog - MAKE SURE your dog doesn't ingest poo from the wormed animal!!!!! Dogs with the MDR1 gene will DIE from ingesting ivermectin. (Another reason not to give that crap to your birds...) Just had a friend lose her Blue Heeler after she wormed her horse with Ivermax. Said she went blind within an hour, started having seizures, and was dead by morning from complete neurological and organ failure. Very excruciating, slow death.

So if I start losing chickens from worms, which hasn't happened in over a year, then yeah, perhaps I'll cave and go back to commercial products...but until that happens, I'm swearing by DE.

 

[RachelleM1986]

http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-VCPL/
http://www.sheltie4me.com/info/display?PageID=5258
http://www.busteralert.org

 

[enola]

You will change your mind about using DE as your only wormer when your flock has worms that are not in the digestive system.

 

[Michael Apple]

I'm looking forward to being proven wrong then if that's the case. It's worked like a charm for me. I used to use commercial products (Wazine, Safeguard, Strike III). I'd go through the dosages and suggested timeframes at which to repeat, but I found myself worming them almost every month. In my experience, the commercial products we're weak and hardly effective. I hated the withdrawal times to not eat the eggs - half of their production was going straight to the compost!! And I hated pumping my girls full of chemicals that I couldn't even pronounce, much less understand what they were or where they came from.

Side note, if you worm any animal with ivermectin and you have a dog - MAKE SURE your dog doesn't ingest poo from the wormed animal!!!!! Dogs with the MDR1 gene will DIE from ingesting ivermectin. (Another reason not to give that crap to your birds...) Just had a friend lose her Blue Heeler after she wormed her horse with Ivermax. Said she went blind within an hour, started having seizures, and was dead by morning from complete neurological and organ failure. Very excruciating, slow death.

So if I start losing chickens from worms, which hasn't happened in over a year, then yeah, perhaps I'll cave and go back to commercial products...but until that happens, I'm swearing by DE.

Good luck.

 

[dawg53]

You will change your mind about using DE as your only wormer when your flock has worms that are not in the digestive system.

DE is also ineffective in the digestive tract. Been there done that with DE long ago.