Safeguard and Feather Damage While Molting

[zazouse]

And we have a lot of wild turkey s. Read my tag line, we have other birds too.

I didn't see alot of trees so you think the turkeys pass them onto your land? i have all kinds of birds here but none are game type bird just migrating birds as well as jays,mocking birds, crows, hawks and all kinds of water type birds try to stop in for a visit, has a Rosetta's spoonbill come in last week, almost died when i thought i had a pink flamingo on the pond till it turned it's head where i could see the bill.

It is sad that you have to deal with this all the time , i know it has to be so stressful

wished there was a way to make it stop.
what kind of winters do you have there? snow?

 

[casportpony]

IMNSHO, the lesson to be learned here is that 3cc's Safeguard per gallon for 3 days is not likely to do Jack for roundworms, much less cecal worms or capillary worms. I mean no offense to those of you that do it, but the picture and post is proof positive to me that one should not rely on it.

Many thanks to KsKingBee for sharing this story... Hopefully his loss will prevent others from losing any of their birds.

Does anyone know where the 3cc gallon suggestion came from?

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

There are some similar necropsy pictures of someone that was using ivermectin to worm... Need to find those or folks to see.

-Kathy

 

[new 2 pfowl]

This is the earliest mention of 3cc/gallon I see on BYC, and this person attributes it to Deerman:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...feeling-well-but-no-outward-signs-of-sickness

and here is Deerman saying the same:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ive-clear-watery-poo-new-symptom#post_1535479

*earlier mention on UPA forum:
http://www.upaforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=313&sid=3df36dd954e5fb240f54014aace2835b

*10 years ago for ducks:
http://www.the-coop.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=59627

I guess this has been the "standard" for a while...

 

[casportpony]

You sure can drive the searching tool, lol. Interesting... very old posts with *tons* of misinformation. Thanks for finding those.

-Kathy

 

[KsKingBee]

One ml Safeguard orally per adult..... Snicker.

 

[casportpony]

One ml is what I would give some of my three month olds!

-Kathy

 

[Garden Peas]

Quote: The liquid is less expensive.

-Kathy

​

Okay, I was seriously impressed by the necropsy photo -- not in a happy way

-- and spent this afternoon shopping and this evening doing math.

WARNING -- math follows. I recommend getting a heartening beverage before reading any further if math is not your most-favoritest topic...

I figured out the equivalent doses and cost per dose for the 10% liquid fenbendazole (Safe-guard goat dewormer), the 0.5% feed pellets/crumbles/top dressing (DuraFend, etc.), 10% paste horse/cattle dewormers, and just for giggles, dog granules (22.2%) and fish powder (pure, 250 mg packet). I also searched diligently for 0.05% medicated feed which was previously mentioned on this thread, but I could not find it listed or advertised anywhere.

To start with, I found some research abstracts that suggest that at least as far as cattle/horses go, the 10% wormers and 0.5% wormers have the same efficacy -- I am assuming they delivered equal amounts of the actual fenbendazole, and different volumes of product to get to the required dosage per kilo of animal, but I couldn't access the actual articles to verify. But I'm pretty sure that's what they did in the studies. Since it's all going in through the stomach... Didn't find anything that talked about absorption rates from different product formulations, but i didn't look very hard, since the other articles said both were equally effective. I don't have any reason to believe that one or the other will be absorbed significantly differently. But who knows? It's not like there's lots of published research on Peas

Here's the short answer. Yes, if you are buying the 1 liter bottles, the 10% liquid is cheaper than anything else I found -- but I think if you could find a 50 pound bag of the medicated feed, the price difference per dose probably wouldn't be very much, in what would be a similar quantity of effective doses. However, either way, that gets you around 400 doses... so it works for those of you with many peas, but would last me about a decade past the expiration date.

For those of us with small flocks, it probably comes down more to convenience and what method of delivery we can actually manage rather than cost per dose. In general, the liquid is the least expensive, the medicated feed is somewhere in the middle, and the paste wormers are a little bit higher. But if purchasing comparable quantities of doses, the prices don't vary as much as one might anticipate.

I also figured out that the dosage rate for turkeys published on the DuraFend 0.5 % medicated feed bag would require the bird to consume approximately 35 pounds of combined regular and medicated feed in order to get a 250 mg dose. Like the apocryphal 3 cc per gallon water recommendation, that turkey feed dosage on the bag would be unlikely to be effective -- at least not if our birds need a rate of 50 mg per kg to be effective. (That's about 10 times the dosing rate for livestock, btw, but that's the number I saw over and over again when I read all the threads I could find...) I took a couple photos of the bag, so if anyone wants to see that info, I can post the pix in another post. I'm really puzzled by this, but am thinking it is because they are feeding it as a sole food source over a period 6 days, and that it may have to do with the rate of clearance/excretion/breakdown from the turkey and the need to prevent overdosing? Anyway, I humbly don't think it would work.

I assumed a 250 mg dose of fenbendazole for cost-comparison purposes, based on all the recommendations. That is 2.5 ml of 10% liquid, 2.5 g of 10% paste, and is also 1.76 ounces BY WEIGHT (or 49.6 g) of 0.5% medicated feed. That's about 1/10 of a 1 lb medicated feed bag -- looking at the volume in the bag, my peas could probably, I think, each eat that in one meal without too much trouble, if they liked it. (Thinking a nice mash with egg or some cat food...) The 1 lb bag says that it has 2.27 g/lb, (0.45 kg), so the whole entire bag has 2270 mg of fenbendazole in it, or a little less than 10 individual bird doses. (When I saw it in the store, my plan was to do the 6 day turkey thing for a repeat dose in 10 days or so, but after doing the math, I don't think that will work. It will, however, work fine, I think, for single-dosing at the higher rate.)

If you are still reading (and have not passed out cold from the math yet), I found the 10% liquid for $22.99 at Tractor Supply. The 125 ml bottle will make about 50 doses, so that's about $0.46 per dose. It expires a year from now, and I probably won't be able to use it all before the expiration date. For those of you with big flocks, the 1 liter bottle (about 400 doses) works out to about $0.33 per dose. I couldn't find it for less than about $130, one place was only $120 but wanted $11 to ship...

The 0.5% medicated feed was $8.99 at TSC (and $7.49 online -- I need to go back with my receipt!), which works out to $0.90 (or $0.75) per 250 mg dose, and as mentioned above, is a little less than 10 doses in the bag. A 5 lb bag goes for $29.99 at TSC and was $23 at Amazon, for 45 1/2 doses, so about $0.50 - $0.65 per dose. I found a 10 lb bag online for $41.95 -- that would be about 91 doses at about $0.46 per dose -- almost identical to the cost per dose of the small bottle of liquid 10% Safe-Guard, for about twice as many doses. (The 5 lb bag makes about the same amount of doses as the 125 ml bottle, but as you can see, the cost per dose is slightly higher than the liquid.) I searched the whole darned bag for an expiration date and could not find one. Not sure what the shelf life is... that's a concern to me.

Fenbendazole 10% worming paste comes in 25g, 92g and 290g tubes. The prices I found were $9.99, $31.99 and $52.99, respectively, for about 10, 37 and 116 doses. Cost per dose works out to about $1 (for the small tubes), $0.86, and finally $0.46 per dose for the BIG tubes. It might be a little awkward breaking that down and trying to get it into that many birds...

I'm thinking I'd rather do math all night than try to paste worm 100 ******-off, frightened peas... But maybe it could be hidden in food?

And if you read this far, eager to hear about 22.2% dog granules, you can obtain 12 grams (packed as 3 packets of 4g each) for $16.99. That's 222 mg/g, so about 12 doses. I leave it to your imagination how to get those granules into a bird... Mash comes to mind, but at $1.42 per dose, there's cheaper ways to feed it in mash...

Pure fenbendazole is available in 250 mg packets (a single dose, mol) as a powder for fish. Three packets sell for $7.80, or $2.60 per dose, thus winning the award for the most expensive way to treat that I found.

It's too funny that the goat meds are the cheapest. I'd like to explain it as a reflection of the stature of goats

(since anything sold for horses is always expensive), but I bet it's just cheaper to make the liquid...

Anyway, I think this is the correct math for calculating the medicated feed (grain/alfalfa/pellet/crumble) dosing -- the thing on the bag is just weird. It says to mix the 1 lb bag of medicated feed into 313 lb of regular feed and give it to growing turkeys as the sole ration for six days. As I said above, it would take 34 1/2 lb of feed mixed at that ratio to get one 250 mg dose into a bird -- my peas definitely are not each eating 34 pounds of food per week, it's just not physically possible for them to consume that much... Since I wasn't at all sure how much they do eat per day, I worked it out backwards to see how much of it is needed to get an effective 250 mg dose... straight out of the bag, that's 1.76 ounces by weight. I don't know the volume measurement though -- it needs to be weighed out. I'd have to fool with a measuring cup and scale to figure out the volume, and doubt if it would be exactly the same across the different manufacturers. It's sold by weight.

I apologize to anyone who is now comatose and for any math or dosing errors... I'm still trying to assimilate all the information, so please forgive any mistakes. Hope this is somehow useful to someone besides me...

 

[casportpony]

Wow, excellent post! Thanks for doing that, now I don't have to, lol.

-Kathy

 

[bdfive]

...

Five cc's in a gallon isn't likely to be very effective either. Think about it... If you were going to give it orally, how much would you give per bird? Let's pretend you have 5 hens, all about 4kg. If you were to dose them at 50mg/kg, which is what I do, you would need to put 10ml in an amount of water that they will drink in one day. Will five hens drink a gallon in one day? I honestly don't know.

-kathy[/quote

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Didn't someone say they used more Safeguard then 5 cc in water? How much would I use if 5 cc isn't enough? I worm for 3 days and repeat in 10 to 14 days. Thanks much.