Worming chickens.

[dawg53]

Flies and other insects that chickens eat can be tapeworm egg carriers, this is what is most likely happening and/or you've been underdosing with valbazen. See, when I tell folks that tapeworms are difficult to get rid of...you can now attest to that fact! It's time to stop the valbazen for the tapes. Save it for your regular worming schedule. Purchase Zimectrin Gold equine paste wormer at your feed store, see pic:
Zimectrin Gold contains praziquantel which kills tapeworms. Withhold feed for 24 hours. After 24 hours are up, give each bird a regular "pea" size amount of the paste orally. You can put it on a small piece of bread and give each piece of bread to each bird individually. It would be best to separate your birds and give the treated piece of bread to only one separated bird at a time. If you dont, others will steal the treated bread and run off with it, then you'll never know which ones got treated or not, and run the risk of overdosing or not getting dosed at all. Repeat this procedure in 10 days.
If your birds are penned, consider hauling in sand and putting it in the pen/run, about 5 to 6 inches deep. Sand helps deter insects and helps in keeping everything dry as you already know. It wont wash away like dirt and dries quicker than dirt after it rains. It will deter flies as well and it's easier to scoop poop, kinda like cat litter that clumps urine and feces.

 

[desertmarcy]

Flies and other insects that chickens eat can be tapeworm egg carriers, this is what is most likely happening and/or you've been underdosing with valbazen. See, when I tell folks that tapeworms are difficult to get rid of...you can now attest to that fact! It's time to stop the valbazen for the tapes. Save it for your regular worming schedule. Purchase Zimectrin Gold equine paste wormer at your feed store, see pic:
Zimectrin Gold contains praziquantel which kills tapeworms. Withhold feed for 24 hours. After 24 hours are up, give each bird a regular "pea" size amount of the paste orally. You can put it on a small piece of bread and give each piece of bread to each bird individually. It would be best to separate your birds and give the treated piece of bread to only one separated bird at a time. If you dont, others will steal the treated bread and run off with it, then you'll never know which ones got treated or not, and run the risk of overdosing or not getting dosed at all. Repeat this procedure in 10 days.
If your birds are penned, consider hauling in sand and putting it in the pen/run, about 5 to 6 inches deep. Sand helps deter insects and helps in keeping everything dry as you already know. It wont wash away like dirt and dries quicker than dirt after it rains. It will deter flies as well and it's easier to scoop poop, kinda like cat litter that clumps urine and feces.

Yeah, I tried that too last year when the Valbazen didn't work. It went a lot faster than I thought (one tube that is) and I didn't like the "guessing" on the dose

I'm between a rock and a hard place. The soil here is rock and clay where I have my pens. They are large pens, I have 8 that are about 10' X 18', one long one that is about 9' X 40, another one that is about 30' X 20' plus 9 turkey pens that vary in width but all are 25', then 8-10' wide. The turkeys don't seem to have any tapeworm. Never seen it in their poop. It would cost a fortune and a lot of work to put that much sand in the pens. I have to buy it, $240 for 8 yards delivered and then I have to wheelbarrow it one load at a time to the pens from a long distance away. Can't get it dumped any closer because of fencing. But I have been slowly trying to add sand. It does help in the cleanup and keeps the birds cleaner when it rains. One wheelbarrow load of sand does not go very far!

 

[desertmarcy]

@dawg53 okay I am into a schedule of worming with the Zimecterin Gold. I've done 4 pens so far with it, about 23 birds. Just finished another 23 in two more pens. I have a stainless steel small measuring spoon and am using that. Put the dose in, then swipe it out with my index finger, open birds mouth, and stuff it in. Then I hold them until they swallow it all. Giving a little bit of water with a 1 cc syringe to help them get it down. Pretty sticky stuff.

So 1 tube is doing about 5 birds. That is about $2 per bird, $4 if I end up doing 2 doses (repeat at 10 days). Do you really think the repeat is necessary? This is getting expensive. I did knock down the # of tapeworm I was seeing in the poop after the albendazole. Some of them might be clean now but too hard to figure out which ones. I saw one fresh poop in a pen that hadn't been treated with ZG yet, full of worms segments. They had all had the 4-pill X 3 doses albendazole treatment not too long ago!! That's one of the pens I just finished with the ZG. If I don't get rid of the tapeworm this go around, it's either butcher birds that still have it or live with it. I am getting sand moved into the pens, but it is a very slow process. It does make cleaning up so much easier. Not sure what will happen when it rains, though.

 

[dawg53]

@dawg53 okay I am into a schedule of worming with the Zimecterin Gold. I've done 4 pens so far with it, about 23 birds. Just finished another 23 in two more pens. I have a stainless steel small measuring spoon and am using that. Put the dose in, then swipe it out with my index finger, open birds mouth, and stuff it in. Then I hold them until they swallow it all. Giving a little bit of water with a 1 cc syringe to help them get it down. Pretty sticky stuff.

So 1 tube is doing about 5 birds. That is about $2 per bird, $4 if I end up doing 2 doses (repeat at 10 days). Do you really think the repeat is necessary? This is getting expensive. I did knock down the # of tapeworm I was seeing in the poop after the albendazole. Some of them might be clean now but too hard to figure out which ones. I saw one fresh poop in a pen that hadn't been treated with ZG yet, full of worms segments. They had all had the 4-pill X 3 doses albendazole treatment not too long ago!! That's one of the pens I just finished with the ZG. If I don't get rid of the tapeworm this go around, it's either butcher birds that still have it or live with it. I am getting sand moved into the pens, but it is a very slow process. It does make cleaning up so much easier. Not sure what will happen when it rains, though.

I sure hope this works for you, tapeworms are a pain in the neck to get rid of as you've found out. I've gone so far as following the birds around when I let them out in first thing in the mornings and checking their feces for segments. If I observe segments, I catch the guilty bird using a net and cage her....same with any others if I see segments. Then I treat them with z-gold or valbazen while caged. It's time consuming following them around and watching for one of them to take a dump, but it works. The only reason I do this is because I know that not ALL the birds are tapeworm infected as evidenced by clear feces. Here's a couple of pics of several of my hens in cages being treated for tapes several years ago



:Here's a pic of stringy tapeworm one of them excreted:



Separated segments seen at the point of the toothpicks from caged hen. (Pic not focused too well.)

 

[desertmarcy]

I sure hope this works for you, tapeworms are a pain in the neck to get rid of as you've found out. I've gone so far as following the birds around when I let them out in first thing in the mornings and checking their feces for segments. If I observe segments, I catch the guilty bird using a net and cage her....same with any others if I see segments. Then I treat them with z-gold or valbazen while caged. It's time consuming following them around and watching for one of them to take a dump, but it works. The only reason I do this is because I know that not ALL the birds are tapeworm infected as evidenced by clear feces.

I think I will do that with the remaining chickens that haven't been treated yet, follow them or cage them for a while to check feces. I don't think every poop they excrete contains the worm segments.

 

[dawg53]

Right. It'll save you time and money in the long run. Also, you'll only have to discard eggs laid from the caged hens after treating them with the wormer.
I think it took me about 3 hours observing 22 birds to excrete feces. The best time to do this is after they are first let out in the morning. Each infected hen should be put in her own individual cage. If you put two hens in the same cage, they'll most likely pick or fight each other.
Here's how a feeder or waterer fits perfectly in corners of cages. I use clothesline to adjust and tie them off:

 

[desertmarcy]

Right. It'll save you time and money in the long run. Also, you'll only have to discard eggs laid from the caged hens after treating them with the wormer.
I think it took me about 3 hours observing 22 birds to excrete feces. The best time to do this is after they are first let out in the morning. Each infected hen should be put in her own individual cage. If you put two hens in the same cage, they'll most likely pick or fight each other.
Here's how a feeder or waterer fits perfectly in corners of cages. I use clothesline to adjust and tie them off:

There is no "letting out" of the birds around here. They all live in large enclosed pens. Too many predators to be free ranging. They are already up and about for hours before I get out there, so I'll just have to do the best I can. I like your milk jug idea

 

[dan buss]

hi im very well in gape worm fenbendazole is what you need to use. look on the internet type in swine wormier a site will come up in fife WA USA that's where they ship from 10lb pale feed in a cake pan mix in your grain or turkey grower or both then mix in some vegetable oil mix it up then add lots of wormier 6 or 7 table spoons to 6 cups of food. feed for six days worms and eggs are dead.but now you have to clean out the pen that's going to be a hard one as the worm egg's are in the dirt floor use a tiger torch burn the crap out of it then after it cools water it down good then spray bleach in the dirt so it socks into the ground i use 100% bleach to spray on the ground that should kill the egg in the dirt use a sprayer a gallon at a time i had a hell of a time getting rid of them but that works in that order

 

[lil bird lady1]

Quote:

Probably where ever you read this Gapes were misdiagnosed, as it is 99% of the time, Chicken yawns or coughs for whatever reason and automaticaly has gapes, Chicken is givin whatever and cured, Levamisole.Albendazole.Fenbendazole and Ivermectin will control gapes if caught in time. Levamisole is in the bloodstream quicker than the others, With either of these four it has to be in the bloodstream long and high enough to be effective..See post above

What should one do in order to keep it in the blood stream long enough? I have ivermectin and I plan on giving each bird 1 ml of the pour on solution would this suffice?

 

[2knoxs]

@dawg53 , if the hens are laying eggs do they need to be disguarded while treating with the zimectrin gold? Definitely have tapeworm. Blah.