Gapeworm in Aracauna chick - Fenbenazol?

[aracaunamomma]

Can someone please tell me if they know the proper dosage of fenbenazole to administer to a ~200g, 1-month old aracauna chick? Our vets have no proper idea, and seem to rather suggest euthanasia. The bird isn't ill enough yet to go that far in my opinion, I want desperately to try to save it first. I still feel like we have a little time, at least a day or two, before choosing other humanitarian options. We only average one live chick a year and we already lost our 2020 chick to this same parasite, so I am very badly wanting to better our odds with treatment, but it seems our vets just aren't experienced enough to offer much guidance.

Also, anyone know about using diatomaceous earth to help "cleanse" the hen house? They are free-range unfortunately, so other than routinely deworming our flock every few months for the next 5 years or so, I'm not sure what else to do to solve this problem

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Signed, a heartbroken farm momma.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Welcome To BYC

Are you sure you are dealing with Gapeworm? Have you ever had a fecal float?

Are you in the US?
What symptoms are you seeing? Could it be respiratory disease instead?

To treat Gapeworm, Fenbendazole dosage is .25ml per pound of weight given orally for 5 days in a row.

If you have video of your chick that may be helpful. Is she gaping all the time?

Any other issues that could be bringing her down? Coccidiosis?

Perhaps @dawg53 would chime in as well.

 

[Eggcessive]

What is your location? Worms in general are not a problem at her age. Gapeworm is very rare in chickens. Gasping however, can be a sign that the chick has respiratory distress, or a respiratory disease. How is the ventilation in the brooder or coop? Are there any wet spots in the brooder or an ammonia odor from poop that might be irritaing her respiratory system?

I would not use DE around chicks. It can irritate eyes, nostrils and lungs. Gasping can be a sign when a chick is very ill and possibly dying. I would try to get the chick drinking water on it’s own and you can dip it’s beak into water often.

 

[aracaunamomma]

Hey folks! Unfortunately, I didn't receive any notifications that I got any replies - I only figured out now that I needed to revisit the whole thread! Rookie mistake :/

We live very rurally in central Sweden. The parasite ("gapmask" in Swedish) was diagnosed in the chick we lost last year, and this one had all the same symptoms in all the same sequence. We called our vet and they said that if we have gapeworm on our farm, the parasite is next to impossible to erradicate and takes a long time to break the lifecycle.

They prescribed us with fenbenazole again (Axilur here), but it came in 250mg tablets so we were really left to our own devices to figure out the proper mg dosage for a young chick. Last year we gave the suggested dose of xmg/kg of body weight, but the chick died overnight, and we believe it was because the case was so advanced that the initial die off plugged our chick's windpipe. Or it just couldn't cope. It was too late already when we noticed the issue and it went SO quickly

By the way, can I just say how traumatic this all is to talk about??

Anyway, good news! We finished our 5th day of meds for this little nugget, we had to eyeball it but offered just a couple milligrams suspended in water in a syringe and little chick is 100% better and back on his game!

I suppose we'll follow-up de-worm him(/her) a couple times this year until it reaches maturity? Our other adults show no symptoms, so I really have no clue how to proceed with treating this situation...