Wormer and mite and louse salve you can make at home

[canecutter77]

I guess I'm not too unfamiliar with chemistry and biology to know that feeding chickens a caustic solution is more likely to harm or even kill them than have any positive anthelmintic success. Not too unfamiliar with animal historical husbandry to know that worming chickens is actually a relatively new phenomenon since most folk cycled out old birds for young and they didn't actually live long enough for worms to really be an issue. And that most methods used during those eras really didn't work, as scientific progress was just starting to look towards Agriculture and testing wasn't even close to what we had even 30 years ago. most practices have been thoroughly debuked or passed over for better methods.
Honestly, just because a method has been used a long time or recommend by (tongue in cheek) "experts", doesn't mean it's effective or even safe. History of use isn't a qualifier of quality or efficacy, unfortunately. Just means it was used.

Safe levels for ingestion by humans and animals of sodium hydroxide (lye) have been studied and published in scientific literature since the early 1900s. There are food grade versions available.

 

[nuthatched]

Safe levels for ingestion by humans and animals of sodium hydroxide (lye) have been studied and published in scientific literature since the early 1900s. There are food grade versions available.

Safe to say, the lye that is referred to in the thread isn't the "food grade" kind. Also pretty likely that the food grade kind is only "safe" in small enough amounts to not kill anything.

 

[canecutter77]

Safe to say, the lye that is referred to in the thread isn't the "food grade" kind. Also pretty likely that the food grade kind is only "safe" in small enough amounts to not kill anything.

I don't know about red devil lye, but red crown lye which is used for making soap is food grade. If you consider the proportions discussed in this thread the solutions are all considerably less than 1 PPT. The one mentioned for the hogs is conservatively approaching 0.1 PPT. I would think this is so weak it couldn't be effective, but maybe it works. I dont know what the difference is between 100% pure lye, and 100% pure food grade lye other than folks can charge more for the latter. But since one uses such small amounts, might as well buy the food grade variety just in case.