Question!

[casportpony]

The drug ivermeticin is often used to control gapeworm infection in birds.

Sadly, ivermectin is not an effective gapeworm treatment. I can show you the studies if you are interested.

Per this veterinary textbook, gapeworm treatment using Safeguard for goats or Safeguard or Panacur paste is 0.14 ml per pound of body weight for *five* consecutive days, so a seven pound chicken needs 0.95 ml (okay to round up to 1 ml) five days in a row.

The dose amount on the label is for goats and is no where near enough to treat worms that waterfowl and poultry get.

I successfully treated roundworm infection in my flock last Feb with pea sized doses of fenbendazole (trade name safe-guard), which is also used as equine dewormer. chickens need only tiny pea size dose-

A pea size amount is only 25 mg. This pea size amount is equal to 0.25 ml of the liquid. IMO, this is too low a dose for poultry.

So, If you want a more natural approach to deworming please use food grade diatomaceous earth (DE) in your chickens dust bath (1 part to 3 parts mixed potash/sand/topsoil) and also add about 2 tablespoons DE to 1 pound feed and mix well. Do this every 2 wks until you see improvement.

Save your money and have routine fecals instead, DE is not an effective de-wormer.

 

[casportpony]

@Sarahloveslulu, this place can do testing for you:
https://zoologix.com/avian/Datasheets/PoultryRespiratoryPanel.htm

 

[Kglassmo]

Sadly, ivermectin is not an effective gapeworm treatment. I can show you the studies if you are interested.

Per this veterinary textbook, gapeworm treatment using Safeguard for goats or Safeguard or Panacur paste is 0.14 ml per pound of body weight for *five* consecutive days, so a seven pound chicken needs 0.95 ml (okay to round up to 1 ml) five days in a row.

The dose amount on the label is for goats and is no where near enough to treat worms that waterfowl and poultry get.






A pea size amount is only 25 mg. This pea size amount is equal to 0.25 ml of the liquid. IMO, this is too low a dose for poultry.

Save your money and have routine fecals instead, DE is not an effective de-wormer.

Thank you for this info and vet text resources! It’s greatly appreciated! I’m a microbiologist not a parasitologist. My background is poultry microbiology; I’ve personally never dealt with gapeworms (thankfully), only common roundworms (1 young pullet presenting symptoms but I treated everyone to be safe). I used 25mg safeguard equine paste pea size orally to treat my small breed chickens to err on side of caution, as they were not yet 2yrs old during treatment. I was scared to overdose. I retreated in 10 days to catch any newly hatched roundworms.
I had a difficult time finding current literature on quality dewormer meds for hobby poultry. I communicated with my rabbit vet too because she also keeps chickens. Wazine is safe for use in poultry; it has the most research because it’s considered safe to use in meat animals. However it’s not always best choice. And not all poultry are used as ‘meat’! I hope for longer lifespan for my egg laying and pet hens.

I use DE as a preventive measure, as it creates an inhospitable environment for parasitic worm colonization- if there are sharp bits of DE in crop, that tends to break up worm eggs, worm segments, etc. But, yes you are correct it’s technically not a good dewormer if bird is already colonized. It’s great in poultry dustbath though! Makes beautiful feathers & kills any mites, etc!
Thank you again for such great info! -KP