Tapeworms won't go away! Please help!

[Krazy4Chicks]

If it's really water soluble we could have you weigh out something like five grams, and some amount of water, like 20 ml, stir well, then give 0.9 ml per 5 pounds, that way you only need to measure once.

Unfortunately, it doesn't mix well with water. I know from dealing with it for our pond. That's where I came up with the idea of putting the recommended amount for each bird into something like yogurt and then sucking it up into a syringe and then dosing. But this would be done to 14 different birds. Am I sounding crazy - lol!

 

[casportpony]

Unfortunately, it doesn't mix well with water. I know from dealing with it for our pond. That's where I came up with the idea of putting the recommended amount for each bird into something like yogurt and then sucking it up into a syringe and then dosing. But this would be done to 14 different birds. Am I sounding crazy - lol!

You could try mixing it in yogurt too, that might work.

 

[Krazy4Chicks]

You could try mixing it in yogurt too, that might work.

Well, I will give it some more thought. I'll let you know if I decide to try it.

Thanks for all of your help!!!

 

[dawg53]

Thank you! The only issue, since the rain, is that the inside of the coop floor is now damp from water seeping up through the ground. Almost wondering if we should have put a concrete floor in instead of having it sand & dirt. We're now planning to add rain gutters - lol!

If you have a wood flooring inside the coop, you might be able to jack the coop up using a couple of floor jacks, start with the rear of the coop first, then the front. Slip pressure treated 4x4's under for support, like a shed has.
Then you'll have airflow under the shed to help keep the floor dry.
If you dont have a wooden floor, add alot of sand, or you'll have to go with your cement plan. Or maybe you could still jack it up and place 4x4's under it and then add plywood flooring.
Gutters work. I have one gutter for each of my 2 coops/pens and they divert rainwater away from the pens/coops via 4" corrugated hose out into the yard.
We have flooding rains here all the time and the backyard floods temporarily. The pens never flood due to the gutters and because I've filled the pens with truckloads of sand. The amount of sand in the pens is actually higher in elevation than the rest of the yard.
The sand doesnt wash away like dirt/mud. However over time, the hard rains beat the sand down into the soil. Then it's time to refresh the pens with sand, when it's not raining.
It takes approximately 2 cubic yards of sand to refresh my pens, a total of 25'x25', $25 per cubic yard.
Due to the extreme hard rains almost every day for 3 months earlier this year, I had a dump truck deliver 5 cubic yards of sand to our house. I had a neighbor help me load it up and haul to the back yard. It took a week for us to complete the job because it started raining again the next day.
Good luck with what you decide to do.

 

[Eggcessive]

If you could get droncit tablets from a vet or online with a vet prescription, you could just pop 1/2 or a whole tablet, depending on the strength of the tablet, into the back of the beak. Droncit is praziquantel. Chewy sells it in single 23 and 34 mg tablets:
https://www.chewy.com/droncit-table...9mHi5bj8NJgPxv7oADZzVrTqIgPRL56hoCsMkQAvD_BwE

 

[Krazy4Chicks]

If you have a wood flooring inside the coop, you might be able to jack the coop up using a couple of floor jacks, start with the rear of the coop first, then the front. Slip pressure treated 4x4's under for support, like a shed has.
Then you'll have airflow under the shed to help keep the floor dry.
If you dont have a wooden floor, add alot of sand, or you'll have to go with your cement plan. Or maybe you could still jack it up and place 4x4's under it and then add plywood flooring.
Gutters work. I have one gutter for each of my 2 coops/pens and they divert rainwater away from the pens/coops via 4" corrugated hose out into the yard.
We have flooding rains here all the time and the backyard floods temporarily. The pens never flood due to the gutters and because I've filled the pens with truckloads of sand. The amount of sand in the pens is actually higher in elevation than the rest of the yard.
The sand doesnt wash away like dirt/mud. However over time, the hard rains beat the sand down into the soil. Then it's time to refresh the pens with sand, when it's not raining.
It takes approximately 2 cubic yards of sand to refresh my pens, a total of 25'x25', $25 per cubic yard.
Due to the extreme hard rains almost every day for 3 months earlier this year, I had a dump truck deliver 5 cubic yards of sand to our house. I had a neighbor help me load it up and haul to the back yard. It took a week for us to complete the job because it started raining again the next day.
Good luck with what you decide to do.

Thanks for the suggestions, Dawg! The coop is actually bolted onto cinderblock, so the option of jacking it up might be difficult. Attached are pictures of the inside of the coop (taken earlier in the year). Because of the rain, it is about 75% saturated -- only the doorway area is dry. As you can see, I do have sand in the bottom, but the water seems to seep in from under ground and come up and saturate the sand. I could definitely add more sand though.

And speaking of sand, is that a better bedding material to keep parasites (like these darn tapeworms) at bay? I want to make it a less desirable place for any of these worms/bugs that carry parasites to want to live.

 

[Krazy4Chicks]

If you could get droncit tablets from a vet or online with a vet prescription, you could just pop 1/2 or a whole tablet, depending on the strength of the tablet, into the back of the beak. Droncit is praziquantel. Chewy sells it in single 23 and 34 mg tablets:
https://www.chewy.com/droncit-table...9mHi5bj8NJgPxv7oADZzVrTqIgPRL56hoCsMkQAvD_BwE

Thanks for that option, Eggcessive --- I thought about this also. But that would unfortunately require me to get a prescription. And those pills appear to be very expensive. I also thought about trying Thomas Labs Fish Tapes, but that looks a little costly too. Ugh, I'm not sure what the best answer is. All I know is that I need to get these darn things gone, and that's going to require me eliminating the worms and the source of infection.

 

[casportpony]

Thanks for that option, Eggcessive --- I thought about this also. But that would unfortunately require me to get a prescription. And those pills appear to be very expensive. I also thought about trying Thomas Labs Fish Tapes, but that looks a little costly too. Ugh, I'm not sure what the best answer is. All I know is that I need to get these darn things gone, and that's going to require me eliminating the worms and the source of infection.

For me it's all about cost. So I would do a price per mg cost comparison and go fom there. Let me know if you need help doing that.

 

[Krazy4Chicks]

For me it's all about cost. So I would do a price per mg cost comparison and go fom there. Let me know if you need help doing that.

Yes, Casportpony, Thank You!! I can use all the help I can get - lol! I'm still thinking the pure Praziquantel powder will be the most cost effective, plus it would not have any other meds in it. But it will be the biggest pain to dose because I'd need to make up one dose at a time (doing it the mixing into yogurt way) for each bird to make sure they are getting the right amount of Prazi. And I'd probably want to get a Milligram Scale that's more exact to be the safest.

Or I can just use the Equimax again --- but I hate the fact that I'd be giving them more Ivermectin. But that would probably be the easiest medication to use. I wish they made praziquantel in a liquid form like the Valbazen (which I also have).

 

[casportpony]

You don't need to make individual doses, you might be able to use the yogurt as a suspension vehicle, or you could buy a proper suspension syrup like Ora-Blend, though that would add about $40 to you cost. Either way, the powder just needs to stay suspended in the yogurt or syrup.

If you do this, it would be very easy to make one batch with enough to treat all of your birds. I do this when I need to treat one with Meloxicam. I take my 15 mg pills, grind them, add some amount of suspension syrup, and voila, a liquid containing Meloxicam at 1.5 mg per ml.