Help! My chickens have tapeworms!

[Fiestychick]

I'm a newer chicken mamma, I've had my girls over a year now. 20 hens, 2 roo's. I just got 31 more chicks between 1 and 2 months old. They are in two separate coops and runs, but the babies are on ground that the older chickens once were. I noticed the other day the white specks in one of me chickens poo, and immediately knew it looked like tapeworm. They were moving. I freaked! So I started reading and decided to get the 10% safeguard liquid and mixed a solution to put in their feed.
Should I have put it into their water instead?
I want to worm the babies, but are they too young?
I cleaned the barn/coop out really good after day 2 of worming... I let the poo and some compost sit for 2 days in a metal tub. When I just went to empty it, there were live worms at the bottom in the poo! Maybe roundworms? Didn't look like tapeworm. I'm very concerned about my babies, all of them, they are like my children! Do I need to use a different wormer? How often during worming should I clean the coop and run? And what should I be cleaning it with? Should I put the wormer in the feed or waterer? Thanks for any help you guys can give!!

 

[-Isla June-]

Hey! I’m so sorry about your chickens. Here are some BYC members that can always help on emergency threads. @Kiki @Overo Mare @casportpony

 

[samanthaoverton]

@dawg53 helped me and wyorprock

 

[casportpony]

Disclaimer - There are no FDA approved drugs for treating tapeworms in poultry, so please consult with your vet and figure out what the withdrawal time is.

Praziquantel is the best drug to treat tapeworms in poultry. Dose is 10 mg/kg (4.54 mg per pound) once repeat in 10-14 days.

Available products

• Thomas labs make a powder and capsules that are just praziquantel. I need to do the math on this.
• MedPet make MEDIWORM for pigeons which is praziquantel and pyrantel pamoate.
• Droncit may be used, but will be very expensive!
• Wormout Gel has 20 mg/ml Praziquantel, 20 mg/ml Oxfendazole. Dose is 0.23 ml per pound or 1.14 ml per five pounds.
• Equimax horse paste has 140.3 mg/ml Praziquantel, 18.7 mg/ml ivermectin. Dose is ~0.033 ml per pound, or 0.16 ml per five pounds.
• Zimectrin Gold horse paste 77.5 mg/ml Praziquantel, 15.5 mg/ml ivermectin. Dose is ~0.06 ml per pound or 0.3 ml per five pounds

 

[sqatkins]

I'm a newer chicken mamma, I've had my girls over a year now. 20 hens, 2 roo's. I just got 31 more chicks between 1 and 2 months old. They are in two separate coops and runs, but the babies are on ground that the older chickens once were. I noticed the other day the white specks in one of me chickens poo, and immediately knew it looked like tapeworm. They were moving. I freaked! So I started reading and decided to get the 10% safeguard liquid and mixed a solution to put in their feed.
Should I have put it into their water instead?
I want to worm the babies, but are they too young?
I cleaned the barn/coop out really good after day 2 of worming... I let the poo and some compost sit for 2 days in a metal tub. When I just went to empty it, there were live worms at the bottom in the poo! Maybe roundworms? Didn't look like tapeworm. I'm very concerned about my babies, all of them, they are like my children! Do I need to use a different wormer? How often during worming should I clean the coop and run? And what should I be cleaning it with? Should I put the wormer in the feed or waterer? Thanks for any help you guys can give!!

So I am just dealing with this and went to the vet for direct instructions. First of all, it is a tapeworm, you won't need to treat your whole flock. The tapeworms do not spread from chicken to chicken. The tapeworms need an intermediary host... a worm, a snail, a slug, a grasshopper... some sort of alternate host. A chicken gets the tapeworm when they eat the intermediary host.

My vet recommended that I try to check stool samples from each of my chickens to see which ones are affected and treat only those. I also was told that it really doesn't require a thorough scrubbing of the coop and run because the tapeworms aren't transferred that way... again, they need to live part of their lifecycle inside an insect, gastropod (snails) or worm host. (So yes, I am wandering around my chicken yard trying to catch each hen in the act of pooping so I can see which ones are infected! Not my favorite pasttime.)

It is best to deliver the medicine to each individual bird to be sure they each get exactly their own dose and don't guzzle up more than their share or skip it altogether.
Also, we cannot eat the eggs of the treated hens for at least a full week after the last of 3 daily doses of the medicine.

All that said, you need to be sure you know for certain it is a tapeworm and not some other sort of parasite as different parasites require different treatments depending on their life cycles.

Good luck!