Hi! I am new to raising chickens and still working out the best ways to keep external and internal parasites from affecting my flock. Previously to now, all I'd been doing is cleaning the coop regularly and applying a liberal dusting of sevin each time. But apparently that was not enough! Doing a regular chicken inspection, I found poultry lice on one of my birds. The infestation has probably just started, but in any case I'll be cleaning the coop and dusting all the birds tonight. It's probably going to take me a few hours to get it all done, not to mention that I'll have to do it all again next week. So I was wondering, what are the routines you more experienced poultry keepers have? I've heard that people use Wazine to worm chickens every 6 months and maybe use ivormectin drops on the backs of their necks to keep the external creepies off for the same amount of time? I don't really have an established worming and de-bugging process yet, but I would like to set one up now and am curious about what's been working for all of you! Can you tell me what you do, and if you use wormers/chemicals, how you use them? I would be very interested to know and would really appreciate the info! Thank you! (Oh, and if it matters, my flock is free range.)
I too am interested in the same issues as you have brought up. I will be getting chicks in May and my coop and run are almost complete. I really would like to keep the mites and lice at bay as much as possible...so prevention is certainly a priority. I purchased sevin dust to have on hand and someone told me to put fresh Rosemary and garlic in the coop as well because the bugs hate those herbs....sounds weird but if it works I am game. Thanks for starting this thread!
Sevin dust will kill lice/mites. I use hay as bedding and when I change it out or put fresh hay inside the coop just as a replacement for soiled hay (not a complete changeout,) I lightly sprinkle sevin dust on the fresh hay. I lightly sprinkle some in the nests and pat it all down to let it settle. As far as worming goes, there are many wormers to choose from. Worming depends on your environment where you live. If you live in a warm, wet area and the soil is moist most of the time, you might have to worm several times a year. If you live in cold, mountainous or desert area, you might only have to worm once a year or maybe even longer than that, it just depends. Soil conditions are what you need to be concerned about, whether it's dry or moist. Due to my environment where I live, I worm once every 3 months, rotating wormers to prevent worm resistance to one particular wormer. I use Safeguard liquid goat wormer, Valbazen liquid cattle/sheep wormer and sometimes Zimectrin Gold equine wormer. Ivermectin due to its overuse in chickens as a miteacide has been been seeing large roundworm resistance in chickens. It will not kill cecal nor tapeworms. Ivermectin will not kill lice in chickens, only mites because they suck blood and chicken lice dont. Same for Eprinex. Wazine only gets rid of large roundworms. There are many types of woms that chickens can get. Therefore it's best to use a broad spectrum wormer to get rid of them.
Humble, thanks for the great information. I am going to change my way of doing things after reading this.
