How to support my hen with tapeworm until medication arrives

[Lillith37]

Hi @Eggcessive I have a few more questions and was wondering if you could help? Do you have any advice on how long it would take before the praziquantel would show improvement in my hen?

I gave it to Whitetail last night. Unfortunately I didn’t fast her. She’d had a scrambled egg for breakfast and some buttermilk and the calcium supplement in the afternoon. I wasn’t home during the day but it looked like she’d laid another soft shelled egg and eaten it. I saw bits of soft eggshell and the towel had yolk and egg white soaked in and she had some yolk on her feathers. Her droppings seem normal, but a little watery.

She was better yesterday evening. She spent some time inside with us and had an appetite, was curious about things, preening, etc. She roosted with the others. This morning she’s quiet and puffed up. She still has a slow crop, kinda doughy. I gave her water with ACV, some coconut oil and a massage. She’s back outside with her friends but she’s clearly feeling poorly. I felt her abdomen compared with my other isa brown. Whitetail is very thin but no swelling or tenderness to my touch.

She seems up and down and I’m wondering also if I should keep/bring her inside when she’s down so she can eat and drink?

I’m also wondering if she doesn’t improve soon, should I treat for coccidiosis? I have a pond that the flock drinks from as well as their waterers, so it’s going to be tricky but I’ll find a way.

 

[Eggcessive]

I would continue the calcium supplements every day, and check her crop each morning before she eats. The wormer may help her crop empty, but if she has a reproductive disorder, it may not. Usually it is young birds that get coccidiosis. Sometimes older sick birds may have it, but I would probably hold off on coccidiosis treatment now. But that is totally up to you. I would try to repeat the dosage of the praziquantel in 14 days.

 

[Lillith37]

Hi @Eggcessive I just wanted to come back here and thank you and @dawg53 again for your help and advice. Whitetail is very much back to her usual self, empty crop overnight, no eggs but no soft shelled eggs either. I found tapeworm segments in the droppings of my other isa brown Narcissa who has just in the past few days gone off the lay and mild slow crop in the morning. I plan to treat her too. She and Whitetail are thick as thieves so maybe they shared whatever the intermediate host was that had the tapeworms.

I also have a couple of points for your consideration about the medications…

I don’t know how much of an authority the PoultryDVM website is but I found praziquantel dosage at 7.5mg/kg for tapeworm in chickens. 10mg/kg was easier to dose Whitetail though as she was just under 2kg and the cat wormer tablet was 20mg — perfect.

I also checked their levimasole dosage which is 20-36mg/kg. The Avitrol tablets contain 4mg praziquantel and 20mg levimasole. So if I had used them to treat Whitetail, I would have needed to give her 4x tablets according to the 10mg/kg dosage rate which would have equated to 80mg of levimasole.

 

[Eggcessive]

I know little about levamisole, but usually it is given in the water. I did find one dosage of 36 mg per kg or each 2.2 pounds for hard to get worms. So 72 mg for a 2 KG bird is about that. As for the Poultry DVM site, it is just a website, and there are some errors. Sometimes they are okay to use, but I like to double check their doses with a veterinary drug book such as Plumbs.

 

[Lillith37]

I know little about levamisole, but usually it is given in the water. I did find one dosage of 36 mg per kg or each 2.2 pounds for hard to get worms. So 72 mg for a 2 KG bird is about that. As for the Poultry DVM site, it is just a website, and there are some errors. Sometimes they are okay to use, but I like to double check their doses with a veterinary drug book such as Plumbs.

Yeah, I then found another page on Poultry DVM that said 10-20mg/kg for tapeworms in chickens…

That’s reassuring about the levimasole because the avitrol tablets would be generally easier to dose — I’ve gotten lucky with the cat tablets and my isa browns being close to 2kg. But if one is treating tapeworm on top of a seasonal worming practise, the levimasole would be gratuitous and I’m not sure if that would be best practise or not. Particularly because levimasole is the drug of choice in Australia for general worming — roundworm, threadworms, etc.

I’ll look into Plumbs or similar. The amount of varied and conflicting information on the internet has caused me a lot of stress when trying to figure out the best practices/treatments for my flock.

 

[Eggcessive]

I had gotten plain Droncit from vets and that comes in praziquantel, and nothing else. In AU they may sell Panacur horse paste or fenbendazole, which treats most other worms and is very safe to use for general worming. If using the 10% fenbendazole dosage is 0.23 ml per pound of weight given for 5 consecutive days orally and will treat most chicken worms except tapes.

 

[Kiki]

Yeah, I then found another page on Poultry DVM that said 10-20mg/kg for tapeworms in chickens…

That’s reassuring about the levimasole because the avitrol tablets would be generally easier to dose — I’ve gotten lucky with the cat tablets and my isa browns being close to 2kg. But if one is treating tapeworm on top of a seasonal worming practise, the levimasole would be gratuitous and I’m not sure if that would be best practise or not. Particularly because levimasole is the drug of choice in Australia for general worming — roundworm, threadworms, etc.

I’ll look into Plumbs or similar. The amount of varied and conflicting information on the internet has caused me a lot of stress when trying to figure out the best practices/treatments for my flock.

I would just like to point out that the poultry DVM website is ran by just a regular old person. It's not a vet and there are quite a few errors on that website.

 

[Lillith37]

I had gotten plain Droncit from vets and that comes in praziquantel, and nothing else. In AU they may sell Panacur horse paste or fenbendazole, which treats most other worms and is very safe to use for general worming. If using the 10% fenbendazole dosage is 0.23 ml per pound of weight given for 5 consecutive days orally and will treat most chicken worms except tapes.

It’s interesting because the fenbendazole has only recently been registered as a poultry wormer in Aus and is marketed to treat tapeworms at 2x dose. What makes you say that it won’t treat tapeworms?

 

[Lillith37]

I would just like to point out that the poultry DVM website is ran by just a regular old person. It's not a vet and there are quite a few errors on that website.

Oh that’s good to know, thanks. The website does seem like quite the resource/undertaking. I’ll make sure I cross reference information I find there.