Deworming a small amount of birds

[Ascholten]

I have 5 chickens, and was looking into deworming them. I never have done that. I've fed them DE before but you can flip a coin and will be told, that helps, that's useless, so... there's that.

I went to tractor supply and the only thing they had for chickens was this pellet stuff, that a 1 lb bag of pellets was enough to treat 1000 pounds of chicken food. To me this is stupid ass stupid. How the hell are you going to get a chicken to pick a specific pellet? Which is about what it would end up being, one pellet per chicken. You can't shove a food pellet down a chickens throat very easily and even then it's not a uniform weight... anyways.

There were no other chicken de-wormers but tons of other Animal de-wormers. Specifically horse and cow de-wormers. I was looking at the horse because it was oral, and the cow was a solution you pour on them, umm not going to work well with chickens.

One was an ivermectin paste in a syringe that tastes like apple, and good for a 1000 lb animal.

My thinking is. the stuff is good for 1000 lbs, each chicken is say 5 lbs. for a total of 25 pounds of hen. If I take this paste and squirt it into 40 oz of water. that makes 1 ounce of water treats 25 lbs of animal - the weight of my girls. With this, I take their food dish in the morning, and I dribble 1 oz of this water all over it and let their food suck it up, it can easily hold several ounces of water so this is no problem at all. I put water in their food anyways. This way, they eat their food, and get the medicine they need. I repeat as necessary according to the label. Looking at the toxicology for Ivermectin and overdosing, it's a very safe drug and you'd have to OD a huge amount, multiple times, and about the worse is they get the squirts for a bit. So missing the dose by a pound this or that way is not going to really hurt a thing.

Anyone else try anything similar to deworm their girls and how did it work for you?

Thanks
Aaron

 

[swamphiker]

I use the pour-on ivermectin and apply it topically using a small syringe w/ the needle removed. I do my best with dosage, but a little extra is likely no big deal for the reasons you mentioned. Yes, one bottle will last me ages, but I share supplies with a few other chicken-keeping friends so we share things like dewormer, Corid, and antibiotics.

 

[Ascholten]

Ok, so how does that work?you eye dropper it onto their skin and rub it in or something? just trying to figure out how to bathe a chicken / dunk it w/o world war 3 erupting. and / or just rolling off the feathers.

Aaron

 

[Kiki]

Ok, so how does that work?you eye dropper it onto their skin and rub it in or something? just trying to figure out how to bathe a chicken / dunk it w/o world war 3 erupting. and / or just rolling off the feathers.

Aaron

You can use horse paste fenbendazole but you can't add it to water.
You need to direct dose each bird straight to the mouth according to how much they weigh.
.23ml per pound.

Get the Safe-Guard horse paste.
Not the ivermectin one.

 

[Kiki]

Ivermectin isn't very good for worms but it is okay for lice.
Use Safe-Guard unless your dealing with tapeworms.
If you have tapeworm issues use this...
The P word in this is what works for tapes...not the ivermectin.
This dose is not the same as the Safe-Guard. This is a much smaller amount at .03 ml per pound.

 

[Kiki]

I believe this is the only product available currently that can be mixed with water. Everything else needs to be given directly to the beak.

https://www.merck-animal-health-usa.com/species/poultry/products/safe-guard-aquasol

Notice this one is extremely expensive.

 

[swamphiker]

Ok, so how does that work?you eye dropper it onto their skin and rub it in or something? just trying to figure out how to bathe a chicken / dunk it w/o world war 3 erupting. and / or just rolling off the feathers.

Aaron

I pick up the chicken and part their feathers on their neck/shoulders where they can't reach, then apply it directly to the skin. It's easy to do since it's not very much liquid.

 

[Painted Calls]

For rounds, .23mls/pound Fenbendazole (I use Safeguard horse paste measured into 3ml syringes). Weigh each bird on a food scale (in grams - every gram counts for a chicken) and dose once and then again in 10 days.

For tapes, Praziquantel (Equimax horse paste) .03mls/pound. Repeat in 10-14 days.

 

[Ascholten]

Thank you everyone. I was looking at ease of application, as one of them is very skittish and getting her is going to be well.... interesting. She's very quick, so the feed them and snatch, nope the moment you start to move your hand she bolts, but IF you can smack her back once or twice when she bolts (but comes right back) at like the 3rd time of contact she'll jump a little then squat..... go figure. the rest, getting them will be very easy. My thought pattern was, if you put it in the food, there is no fighting, drama, running, in fact they'l push each other to get at it.

Aaron

 

[Ascholten]

i'll go get the safeguard tomorrrow .
thanks again
Aaron