How to STOP hens from laying??

[Picky Chicky]

Shoot... you should've given them to me for a few months. My girls stopped laying around June of this past summer and didn't start laying again until late November. The cause? The stupid rooster! I had no idea, but the rooster must have been stressing them out. As soon as we rehomed him, about a week later the girls production increased 10 fold! Who would have thunk it?! Now then I don't know if that's a fluke for me, or if this would really have an effect on your girls.

For a head count.. we had 13 girls, and 1 roo. Once he started crowing, that's when they stopped laying.

Good luck!

 

[Akane]

Whether it's safe for other pets depends what you are deworming with. Many are used across species and even in humans so there is no danger. A few though are not used in certain animals because they are extra sensitive to it and even 1/10th the amount given another animal of similar size could kill them.

 

[technodoll]

I used Piperazine Wednesday morning, one dose as instructed on the package.

I can't imagine it being dangerous for the dogs (who all weigh 100 lbs and over)?

They've never been wormed as adults, btw!

 

[emys]

Why can't you just feed them back to hens? Cooked of course.

 

[technodoll]

i answered that in post number 7 of this thread...

learned it from other members on BYC

 

[emys]

Sorry, I missed that. Not sure I believe it, but, OK.

 

[greathorse]

Why did you decide to worm healthy hens that are laying at the rate of about one per day each? Were they wormy? My experience has been that wormy hens dont lay that good.

As for giving them a break from what happens naturally for them just doesn't make sense. I would imagine if you stopped feeding them the laying would decline. Keep them in an even darker environment than they are in right now?

 

[technodoll]

I had to worm the entire flock as I have a sick, heavily infested bird (confirmed by fecal sample) that was in contact with the flock for about 2 weeks before I knew he had parasites, he was brought in the house because of a limp and only then did I notice the worms.

I can't take the chance that some birds are now contaminated and others not, so everyone got the treatment.

Otherwise I wouldn't have messed with something that isn't broken...

The flock gave me 9 eggs this morning, of all things.

They only get natural light (which isn't much these days...) and hardly any layer food, they are getting a higher-protein "winter mix" and seem to be going gorgeously well on it! No added crushed oyster shells but the eggs are still perfect. Strange.

The doggies are going to get them as of tomorrow, for the next 10 days.

Whew!

 

[Akane]

Piperazine is safe for dogs. However your concerns for not feeding it back to the hens should apply to dogs too. A constant low dosage to any animal would have equivalent consequences. But I also don't really agree that it's going to cause problems. If you did it frequently then yes overuse of medication can cause resistance and overuse of medications at a low dose is even more likely to cause resistance because you are exposing the critters you want to kill without actually killing them. Doing it once during 2 doses when you aren't planning to deworm with it regularly isn't likely to do anything bad. The fact the hens are also getting a high enough dose to kill those worms is if anything going to make it less likely to result in resistant parasites than giving it to the dogs where you aren't dosing high enough to also kill the parasites. When one animal has parasites on the place all animals are exposed to some degree plus you have the worst one inside. I used to have to deworm my guinea pigs because of parasites in the horses. You know the 2 never directly interacted or came in contact with each others feces unlike dogs that eat chicken poop all the time.

 

[technodoll]

Whew! This is turning into more than I bargained for

So... it's ok to feed the hen's eggs for the next 10 days to the doggies (assuming there is trace residual piperazine in them), but not OK to feed the same eggs back to the flock? Or is it safe to do that, too?

I want to do the right thing here, but what is it??

*confuzzled*