Do I need to worm them all?

[Freia]

2 months ago, I did my usual Fall worming of the ladies with eprinex. I have 3 Spring chicks that were too young to deworm, so they did not get wormed.

This week, I got one egg from one of the new chicks with a worm in it (ewwwww, merry Christmas...). Do I just need to worm the 3 chicks (who are now 7 months old) or do I need to reworm the whole flock?

 

[willowbranchfarm]

Wow thats rare. Personally I would worm them all. Usually when you find worms in eggs, its because of a bad infestation. That's why I would worm them all.

 

[Freia]

Is it possible that it wasn't a worm in the egg? Could it have been a blood vessel? The egg was hard-boiled. when I sliced the first slice, I thought the blood-spot or meat-spot looked a bit odd, so I just crumbled up the egg to see what it was. It was about 1.5" long and 1mm in diameter and a deep reddish-brown color. So it was the color of dried/cooked blood. But the shape was just so worm-like, it kind of gave me the heebie jeebies.

Oh, and the white was kind of a grey-ish/light brownish color in the area near the "foreign object"

 

[willowbranchfarm]

Is it possible that it wasn't a worm in the egg? Could it have been a blood vessel? The egg was hard-boiled. when I sliced the first slice, I thought the blood-spot or meat-spot looked a bit odd, so I just crumbled up the egg to see what it was. It was about 1.5" long and 1mm in diameter and a deep reddish-brown color. So it was the color of dried/cooked blood. But the shape was just so worm-like, it kind of gave me the heebie jeebies.

Oh, and the white was kind of a grey-ish/light brownish color in the area near the "foreign object"

Yes its possible that it was a fertile egg with a growing chick inside. That would be the only thing I could think of. Do you have a picture of it??

 

[Freia]

I don't have a picture. I was preparing Christmas breakfast and was more concerned about hiding it from the kids than documenting it. I don't have a rooster, so it would not have been a fertile egg. If it were a blood vessel, it would have been a vessel from the oviduct.

I have figured out though, that a roundworm is 1.25-3" long and about the thickness of pencil-lead. Yup. that would be it. I'm worming them all. I don't want to be worming my ladies every other month. I'll worm them tomorrow with the Eprinex, then again in 10 days, then try a monthly Verm-X after that to see if it can keep things in check. I do apply DE to their coop bedding, but they have the whole 5 acres to scratch and peck on, so they're pretty much doomed to be wormy to some extent.

 

[willowbranchfarm]

Worms gross me out. They're the one thing I cant stand. Good luck.