Worms/Are eggs still good?

[AnnieMora]

One of my chickens I noticed had tiny white worms in her poop. We have 8, but I have only noticed it on 1 so far. I heard there are 2 different kind of worms and how do you tell which one it is, how can I treat it naturally, or should I buy a wormer? If the chickens have worms, are the eggs still good? How did she get worms? We just had a very heavy rain a few days ago, and the chickens got soaked. It was their first rain and for some reason they didn't run for cover, we had to go out and put them all in the coop! It stopped raining all they all came out and got dry and seemed fine, but the next day I noticed the worms on the one. Thanks for any help.

 

[Judy]

There are 5 or 6 kinds of worms; most are not seen in the poop, but if yours have tapeworm, you will see what looks a lot like rice in the poop. If that is what it is, you definitely need to treat specifically for roundworms with chemicals. See links below.

Worms are everywhere, in the soil, and more common if your soil is on the moist, warm side. All you can do is worm regularly. The eggs are still good. Seeing evidence of worms probably didnt have anything to do with the rainstorm. Maybe you just got a good look at the fresh poop.

Good pic of tapeworms, as well as a good thread on worm management:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...rd-parasites-are-rampant/160_20#post_10149787

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...peworm-or-any-worms-really/0_20#post_11670181

discussion on aternate treatments:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...r-crd-parasites-are-rampant/0_20#post_7474233

 

[Eggcessive]

All chickens can get worms if they live on soil. Chickens can get roundworm, cecal worms, capillaria worm, gapeworm, eye worms, and tapeworms. Those are the possible worms, but most don't get all of those, it just depends on your climate, presence of intermediate hosts, and your conditions. It sounds like you may have tapeworm, which can be hard to treat. Dawg 53 is the worm expert here on BYC, and he usually recommends wormers containing praziquantel. See post 9 of this link to see Dawg53's recomendation for tapes treatment: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/920278/tapeworms-yuck It would be best if you posted a picture of the droppings, but here is a picture of tapes:

 

[AnnieMora]

Yes, they look like that top picture for sure. So when I start treating them, we can't eat the eggs, but can we cook the eggs and feed them back to the chickens? Thank you so much foe all the help!

 

[Eggcessive]

No, I would just toss the eggs for a total of 24 days after Zimectrin Gold or praziquantel use.

 

[AnnieMora]

Thank you for your response. Can I feed the eggs to the chickens after I cook them at least?

 

[cafarmgirl]

Thank you for your response. Can I feed the eggs to the chickens after I cook them at least?

Just discard the eggs, do not feed them back to the chickens. The reason for this is that there are low/trace levels of the dewormer in the eggs. By feeding this back to the chickens you expose any parasites they have to those low levels of dewormer, that is a very good way to help parasites build resistance to that dewormer.

 

[AnnieMora]

Thank you everybody for all the advice. We started treatment yesterday. Pray all goes well.