If DE works for you in killing fire ants, by all means use it for that purpose. But not for treating worms in poultry.
That said, we live in fire ant heaven. Mounds are everywhere and with all the rain we're having, it has brought them to the surface in droves. I've been stung by them many times, not fun at all.
I did an experiment once where I stirred up a fire ant mound and dumped DE on the ants.
Then I went to another mound, stirred it up and dumped Sevin dust on the ants.
The next morning I went and checked both mounds and stirred them up again. Again there were hundreds of live fire ants in the DE mound, all dead ones in the Sevin dust mound.
I used to dust the inside of my coops and birds with Sevin dust, but not anymore. I had a minor lice problem with my chickens last year and the Sevin dust did not kill the lice. I was shocked after using it successfully all these years!
I bought permethrin dust and dusted my chickens and inside the coop and nests. The permethrin killed the lice. I now use the 10% permethrin liquid to spray inside the coop and still dust my birds with the permethrin dust. I recently had another minor issue with lice in both coops, the permethrin did its job. The 10% liquid permethrin is persistent for 30 days after spraying the coops.
