ok, here's my take on worming:
all chickens have worms, considered a normal parasite load. When there is a worm overload, the chicken will show symptoms, including not laying, losing weight, poor general condition, etc. These are also symptoms of other issues, just to make it confusing. But lots of people, when seeing symptoms, start with worming. Supposedly, healthy chickens can fight off a worm overload. I am not sure about this, as exposure to too many worms might make that impossible.
If you have chickens on ground where there haven't been chickens before, you will likely not have any need for worming for the first few years. If your chickens are confined to a run, worm overload happens faster because worms cysts/eggs are in droppings, the chickens eat the cysts, and in a run the droppings are more concentrated. worms also supposedly come from wild bird droppings and from earthworms.
Worms can cause permanent damage to the intestines (scarring) leading to less nutrients being absorbed.
Chemical wormers (read pesticides) are scary but effective. Worms are becoming resistant to these. There are also different kinds of worms, and wormers are usually only effective for some kinds, not all. If you use a chemical wormer, you can not do it when the chicken is molting because the wormer will cause scanty feathering, and crooked feathering, which makes it hard for the chicken in many ways including heat retention in the winter. You also can't use the eggs for 24 days (14 days after the second dose).
If I have a sick bird with worm problems, I might chose to do a chemical wormer, but that is rare.
I far prefer a more natural approach.
Some things, like hot peppers, pumpkin seed, cayenne, garlic, etc are helpful in discouraging worms but will not address a worm overload. In my opinion, DE is not a worm deterent but....there is a lot of disagreement on this issue.
I have mareks in my flock, which means my hens have immune issues. Plus, they are on land that has had chickens for 9 years. I do let them free range but not when I am at work, and in the winter they are in a smaller run so droppings are not spread out as much.
I saw a round worm in a dropping, and did the soapy dishwater thing. Ordered molly's herbal wormer. While waiting for the herbal wormer, I added lots of fresh garlic and tumeric to their feed.
Molly's herbal is a very fine powder. I feed mash, that is, a ground grain combo with chunks of corn in it, oats, etc. I mix the powder in it, and I feed the mash wet - I add water or veggie water from cooking, or spoiled milk, etc, until I have an oatmeal consistency. It is a 3 day dose, followed by a weekly booster herbal powder. In 6-8 weeks you can repeat the wormer. I will do that once, and then through the winter won't worry about the wormer since they aren't as exposed to "wormy ground". I will begin again in the spring with a wormer dose, and try to maintain the weekly booster through the summer ( I didn't do that this summer!)
THe chickens eat it up just fine.
If I fed crumbles ( and I would tell everyone trying to go the natural way to stop that and find some decent food that isn't processed), I would likely moisten the crumbles and add the powder. Or, you could mix the herbs with yogurt, but how would you know if every hen got enough?
I've read of people who have used Molly's herbals on their chickens and followed up with fecal floats ( a method to see whether the chicken has worms, you can learn how to do this with a microscope, or you can get a vet to check the dropping sample) and found NO WORMS!!! so I trust this product and have used it two years. It does not kill worms. It makes the gut so inhospitable to worms that they leave - and you sometimes will see live worms in the droppings. This doesn't even make sense to me because it means the worms "know" when to leave, but.....it works somehow!
edited for spelling, etc
There is a lot of great information posted throughout this thread. You may want to start at the beginning and read through it.
