Tapeworms - A few questions

[BayBay Peepers]

She really is. I can't count how many times she's helped me out over the past year.

**Many others have as well and I always appreciate it, but Kathy gets a big shout out today**

 

[IronEagle]

You can't overdose with fenbendazole- well its extremely hard to anyway. Can you get a livestock catalog or order livestock supplies online? I know that most ebay sellers will ship to Mexico. I live in a very remote part of NC and probably have a harder time getting stuff than you do.

I would give the fenbendazole to everyone (including the goose) for three days then another course of three days in two weeks. Then every three months I would rotate dewormers. Some good ones are the fenbendazole, valbendazole, piperazine, and pyrantel. Go to poultrypedia.com for dosages and warnings. fenbendazole is really safe but some of the others might warrant a little more caution. The thing is not to use the same anthelmintec every time you treat them.

Some other things I would get from the pharmacy to keep on hand are: wound powder, triple antibiotic powder, coflex, baytril (enrofloxacin), doxycycline, tetracycline, erythromycin, dosing syringes, betadine or chlorhexidine and waterproof tape. I also like to keep some euthanasia solution on hand. I believe that in Mexico you can get certain drugs over the counter and if you can, I would keep some phenobarb or buprenex on hand to help with euthanasia should the need arise. Meloxicam can be given to birds for pain and it works really well but you have to keep the dosage low (poultrypedia again). Also, a digital scale for weighing your birds to figure out dosages is a good thing to have.

If you really want to work up a good list of supplies for life with chickens in a remote area I would look up ozexpat, he lives in the Philippenes and has a really comprehensive list.

On the subject of ivermectin: It works for external mites in chickens, its not so good for internal parasites (at least not here in the states). Knowing that you live in Mexico, in the jungle I would keep it on hand for schistosomes. Look up eye worm- it will give you the chills and is carried by palmetto bugs and other roaches.

rbaker0345,
Thank you for sharing such valuable information. I will start gathering these items. Most are very easy to get here as pharmacies have doctors on hand and I can just tell them that I am preparing a kit for my farm and they have no problem selling most items. Some of those items I already have in my human med kit, so that's helpful. Also thankfully I will never have to worry about euthanizing an animal myself. I have a very good neighbor who is also a chicken keeper and part-time butcher who has agreed to "take my chicken to the next pueblo for a better life" should the need arise. I wanted to get his advice about this too but I haven't seen him for a couple of days.

Regarding ordering online, unfortunately I don't have an address and none of the roads here have names. Technically I live in a national park. Needless to say the closest post office is over one hour away and the postal service there won't drive this far to deliver anything or hold anything there for us to pick up. I did try to order something once just to see what would happen and the package never got any closer than 6 hours away due to the confusion about the address. I guess "2 km norte del puente" isn't specific enough for him to head his van deep into the jungle in hopes of finding the bridge! In his defense the bridge is 60 km up the road so it does take a 2-hour round trip commitment to find us. The package was returned undelivered. But usually what we do is order things online to the next friend heading down for a visit, so I'm going to try to do that and hope for a green light for them at customs. (no officer, I swear it's for my friends chickens!)

I guess the last thing I'd want to know is if you're in agreement that I should just mix it up in the food and watch each bird eat it to be sure they were dosed? I'm glad to know they can't overdose, but should I be worried about under-dosing if they don't eat enough and creating a nuclear super-worm? Man, it's going to be hard to get the goose to eat it. She is super picky about food. I think I'll have to put it in a papaya or something!

Thanks again, I'm blessed to get so much help from strangers.
IE

PS. I think I'll task my husband with looking up the eye worm. Pretty sure if I look it up my eye will start itching and I'll convince myself I have one. Best to just let him be the keeper of that particular morsel of information.

 

[dawg53]

Hello BYC,
Last evening I found tapeworms (rice-ish looking segments) in one of my 4 month old hen's poo. It was the first time I had seen that. Interesting enough her poo today is clean. I have not seen worm activity in any of the other chickens poo. Anyway,

The situation:
I live in a very remote part of Mexico and the nearest vet/feed store is a 2 hour drive. I'm a brand new chicken keeper (6 mos) and have learned that things come up unexpectedly and that I ought to put together a first-aid kit for chickens (similar to the one I have for humans.) So last time I was in town I went into the vet and did a "stock-up" on things to include in the kit. I had done a bit of research here (Thank you BYC members!) and had a small list but found it was more difficult than I expected because brand names are different here (similar to Mexican pharmacies you ask for the active ingredient, not the brand name) so the only option I had was to describe what I needed (in my not-so-good-yet Spanish) and they just gave me what they have. I should have known better! But in the end I just asked for "an antibiotic" and "a de-wormer." For wormer he gave me a 10g packet of Fenbendazol 5% in powder form.

Couple of questions:
1) Will Fenbendazol kill the tapeworms? (I have read conflicting information on this forum) If not, what is the main active ingredient I will need to ask for at the vet?
2) If the Fenbendazol isn't going to work, do I have time or do I need to make an "emergency trip" into town? I can probably find someone going in the next two weeks but if this is a more urgent situation I'll need to plan a trip myself sooner.
3) How do I dose a powder to ensure they get evenly dosed? I have some "timid eaters" and am quite confident the turkeys would eat most of it if I just put it on the food!
4) My birds free range (beach and jungle, very hot and humid environment) so should I assume a yearly preventative worming will be necessary? If so, what is the best medicine (the active ingredient) to use for preventative worming?
5) I have: 7 layers, 1 roo, 4 4-month old girls, 3 3-month old roos (One might be a girl?), 2 2-month old chicks (gender ?), 2 3-month old turkeys (1 girl, 1 boy) and 1 adult goose. Do I dose them all? Or just the chickens? (I have no idea if gender or egg-laying status is relevant)
6) Do I need to do a 3-day course of dosing and a follow up dose in 10 days or just a single dose? (again, read a couple of different methodologies here and want to know the best for my situation)
7) I'm assuming a 14-day period for not eating the eggs after the final dose, correct?

Also, feel free to add anything you think I should know that I don't know to ask about.

Thank you in advance for your time and help! Truly, truly appreciated.
IronEagle

There's alot of misinformation in this thread. I've dealt with tapeworms quite a few times. Ivermectin, fenbendazole, pyrantal pamoate, piperazine, flubendazole... are all ineffective against tapeworms, period.
I dont know if they sell horse wormers in Mexico or not. Horse wormers come in a toothpaste like box with a plastic syringe containing the paste wormer. The horse wormer paste you need MUST contain PRAZIQUANTEL (read the label on the box.) It will probably be mixed with another wormer such as ivermectin. Praziquantel kills tapeworms, it is the same as droncit/drontal...used to kill tapeworms in cats and dogs.
Here's what you do: Withhold feeding your chickens for 24 hours (all of them.) Withholding feed weakens the worms making the wormer more effective. Then give each chicken a "pea" size amount of the horse paste wormer orally. Dose each bird one at a time. They will wipe their beaks on the ground after dosing, this is normal. Wait several hours after worming before feeding them. When you go to feed them, ration only a little feed at a time to your chickens. They will be starving and gorge the feed if you dont ration it, possibly causing impacted crop or gizzard. Slowly add more feed to them over a period of one day.
Reworm them in 10 days, follow the above instructions again.
To make it a little easier to worm them with the paste, put the pea sized amount of wormer on a small piece of bread and give a piece of the treated bread to each chicken. Be careful though, they will try to steal each others treated bread, then you'll never know which ones got wormed or overdosed. It's best to separate them and give a piece of treated bread individually...you'll figure it out.
There's a 14 day withdrawal period after the last dosing. Good luck. Here's a pic of Zimectrin Gold horse paste wormer, what it would look like. Another one is Equimax horse paste wormer that you could use:

 

[rbaker0345]

He is right, I forgot about that. In horses, pyrantel is effective against tapes at double dose but you don't want to do that with chickens because it can be toxic. Especially make sure that you don't get the praziquantel mixed with moxidectin. I don't have the literature in front of me but I remember reading somewhere that prazi/moxi is very toxic to birds. If you can get just the prazi from your local pharmacist, that would be the safest but also the most difficult to feed to them.

I would still stay on a three month rotation, using a different dewormer each month (as much as possible). Another good point that dawg made is that you do need to do a second dose in 10 to 14 days in order to kill the newly hatching parasites before they get a chance to lay eggs.

Don't mind Dawg, he comes off as a bit impolite, but he means well.

 

[casportpony]

He is right, I forgot about that. In horses, pyrantel is effective against tapes at double dose but you don't want to do that with chickens because it can be toxic. Especially make sure that you don't get the praziquantel mixed with moxidectin. I don't have the literature in front of me but I remember reading somewhere that prazi/moxi is very toxic to birds. If you can get just the prazi from your local pharmacist, that would be the safest but also the most difficult to feed to them.

I would still stay on a three month rotation, using a different dewormer each month (as much as possible). Another good point that dawg made is that you do need to do a second dose in 10 to 14 days in order to kill the newly hatching parasites before they get a chance to lay eggs.

Don't mind Dawg, he comes off as a bit impolite, but he means well.

I think I read somewhere that praziquantil and pyrantel together are toxic to chickens and that moxidectin has a much narrower margin of safety than ivermectin, so probably wise not to use Quest horse paste with poultry.

-Kathy

 

[Eggcessive]

I don't think Dawg53 came off as being impolite. He was just correcting a lot of misinformation. When people look back over this thread in months or years to come, they won't use the wrong wormer for tapes. There is no valbendazole, but Valbazen is albendazole.

 

[casportpony]

@IronEagle , if you don't want to use the horse paste, ask around and see if you can find some liquid praziquantil. Dose for tapes in chickens is 10mg/kg (10mg per 2.2 pounds).

-Kathy

 

[IronEagle]

To everyone who has responded to the thread -- Thank You! I do truly appreciate your advice and experience and I don't mind at all the difference of opinions stated here as I know that sometimes problems can have more than one solution. Hearing about what has worked for others will help for those of us that have limited resources. (in my case being in a different country without readily recognizable medications)

My neighbor finally was able to come by and he confirmed that this type of worm is fairly common here and there is a special medication for it that he has used in the past. Thankfully he has offered to buy it for me tomorrow and deliver it by Wednesday. When he brings it I will leave another comment with the name, active ingredient and also the result after we've administered it in hopes of helping someone else should they happen upon this thread in the future.

I now also have a great list to help me put together my chicken emergency kit. Discovered how important it is when I found my 2-month old chick with an iguana sized bite taken out of her neck yesterday afternoon. Luckily I already had antiseptic and tinted spray so I got her fixed up quick.

Thank you again. What a wonderful thing to have a community to turn to when I need help.

IE

 

[casportpony]

@IronEagle , you could also use just praziquantil (also sold as Droncit) tablets for dogs and cats. Do *not* use Drontal as it has praziquantel and pyrantel pamoate, which together might be lethal in chickens. Need to find that source to verify, so don't quote me on that just yet.

-Kathy

 

[dawg53]

He is right, I forgot about that. In horses, pyrantel is effective against tapes at double dose but you don't want to do that with chickens because it can be toxic. Especially make sure that you don't get the praziquantel mixed with moxidectin. I don't have the literature in front of me but I remember reading somewhere that prazi/moxi is very toxic to birds. If you can get just the prazi from your local pharmacist, that would be the safest but also the most difficult to feed to them.

I would still stay on a three month rotation, using a different dewormer each month (as much as possible). Another good point that dawg made is that you do need to do a second dose in 10 to 14 days in order to kill the newly hatching parasites before they get a chance to lay eggs.

Don't mind Dawg, he comes off as a bit impolite, but he means well.

Impolite? No, you stated that praziquantel mixed with moxidectin is toxic to birds aka Quest Plus. Moxidectin Plus (Quest Plus) CAN be used in poultry to treat tapes. I've used it. Dosing must be exact...that's why I dont recommend it. It's much safer to use z-gold or equimax.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/421762/moxidectin-quest-wormer
http://www.shellspoultry.com/poultry-health.php
http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=684bab81-a4aa-4ac4-95fd-6ac6e9a97545