Pictures of leg mites

[Preservation Acres]

Great. I've been lucky enough not to have to deal with this, but I know it will come one day, and I want to catch it early.

 

[Sissy]

no idea.never had the problem.

 

[2txmedics]

I dusted for mites/lice..not sure like 2mos ago, and since then Ive dusted reg. and the whole coop, run, and flock...QUESTION....

can I give them ivermectin 5% or wazine 17

Can you please explain the best and why and the differences...
thank you all!!!!

Im also having a problem with my Porc' D'uccles, but I posted a picture and Im told its the Lavender Gene..??? I cant find if theres a cure for this or what???

 

[threehorses]

Quote:
Well the question is - for what are you giving the ivermectin or wazine? For external parasites or worming/internals?

If you're still having external issues, and mites are involved, you can't just treat the birds. You have to treat the wood AND the birds.

Mites spend most of their time off the bird, coming on only to feed (read as 'take alot of blood out of your birds') then returning to the cracks/crevices in the coops to lay eggs and wait til they need feed again. They move at night.

Lice spend most of their time on the bird, any time off being accidental. They feed on the bird (or feather protein) and lay their eggs on the bird.

For mites, you treat the bird, bedding, nestboxes, and all the wood 3' up from the ground, nestbox wood, under the roosts, etc. If you dust the birds with permethrin (never use sevin please), you retreat every 7 days on the birds for 3 times. You do the wood once with a permethrin spray (10% permethrin goat lice or livestock lice spray - see the feedstore, or TSC). You can dilute that according to labeling and actually dip chickens - it's said to have slightly more residual action than the dusts.

For lice, dusting the birds and bedding/nestboxes is usually enough. Repeat on birds each 7 days for 3 times total.

For worming, wazine 17 (piperazine 17% solution) treats only adult digestive tract worms of 3 types, mostly roundworms (which *are* the most common worms). It's a conservative treatment, non-broad spectrum, limited but necessary if your birds aren't wormed regularly with a wormer (not DE or any other natural bit). It reduces the chances of heavy infestations (which no - you can't see by looking at droppings, that's not a good indication at all) causing stress or death with a super strong worming. It's a gentle yet very effective way of clearing out the adult stages. It's designed, by their own directions, to be repeated. Because rounds don't just have digestive tract adults in the system - they also have larvae up there, and the larvae will eventually become adults.

So they say repeat every x-number of weeks.

Rather than repeating and just killing digestive tract adults, I use a broad-spectrum wormer as the follow up - then worm less often annually. For that, I use ivermectin 5% cattle pour-on as it stays on the bird three days. (One time 1% injectable given orally treatments only stay in the body 6 hours max, not long enough to treat thoroughly.) It will not only treat the common worms adult stages, but also most larvae stages even those not in the digestive tract (including gapeworms) and will treat blood-taking external parasites. (mites, lice, while they're on the bird - three days). That way you stop the larva -> adult cycle for a bit.

I use the ivermectin (or fenbendazole, another good wormer but not for externals) twice annually thereafter in an all chicken flock. Currently I'm running turkeys with chickens (a bad idea) so I'm working every 2 months with a broad spectrum to stop cecal worms that carry blackhead. But that's different.

The reason you don't start with ivermectin is that it's VERY strong. It will kill nearly everything, and if you do that and there are a lot of worms, you risk blockage or the body rejecting proteins of the worms (that when dead, appear as 'foreign proteins' to the body) and causing anaphylactic shock.

On parasite loads, unless you get a "fecal egg count" (not just the visual fecal exam for worms) done by a vet, no one knows their fecal parasite load. Period. Visual examinations fail because worms are designed to stay IN the bird and spread by shedding ova (eggs). If you see worms in the feces, that only means that there's a greater likelihood of a very very strong infestation. If you don't see worms, it means nothing. There could be a very strong infestation passing only ova, not dying/paralyzed worms.

Another word about worming. Some people think when they see worms for days after worming that the wormer failed. That's actually wrong - if you see worms for days afterwards, it means there are still paralyzed/dead worms being shed - that means success.

One thing I recommend after any worming is doing a one-time cleansing mash of applesauce (1t per bird), yogurt (1T per bird), a few drops of molasses per bird, water, honey (for taste) and crumbles. The applelsauce helps cleanse paralyzed worms and any undigested food material from the gut, the pectin of the apples not only cleanses but makes the good useful bacteria happy. Yogurt replaces and builds up good bacteria during the light stress of worming. Honey is for taste, having a lightly anti-bacterial property but only against pathogenic bacteria. Molasses flushes the digestive tract, which is why you use so little of it. The water and crumbled feed pellets act as a base to hold the other stuff.

Doing that the day after the worming pushes the worms out more quickly so that you won't see them coming out for days and days. It also makes a 'clean slate' of the digestive tract, and the good bacteria in the mash (which is served slightly damp) help re-establish a healthy gut flora, which nourishes and protects the bird.

Remember, worms make the intestines inflame. Inflamed intestines don't digest food - so food sits in there and rots, the birds are malnourished (the worms don't actually steal that much food directly), and you have problems like reduced egg laying, diarrhea, failure to thrive, light-weight birds, nutritional deficiencies, yeast infections (that dripping feces at the vent), etc etc. Plus reduced immune systems - which make them more susceptible to respiratory illnesses, etc. So you want the good bacteria to be back on tract immediately to help the intestines to get healthy and work better again.

Hope this helps.