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Worms in poultry are a normal part of life for chickens and backyard chicken keepers. However, when your affected birds start showing signs of a serious infestation, you must work quickly to treat the worms before they can cause serious damage.
Keep reading to learn what steps you need to take when it’s time to treat for worms. Also learn about where worms and worm eggs thrive so you can take steps to prevent a severe infestation from occurring in the first place.
Choose the Appropriate Chicken Wormer
After confirming that your backyard chickens are suffering from a worm overload — preferably via an worm egg count or fecal float test by a local veterinarian — you must move quickly to minimize further injury to the flock.
If the infestation is severe and you must turn to a chemical dewormer to kill worms, you need to know what kind of internal parasites have infected your birds so you can choose a product that will effectively target that specific variety. If you’re unsure how to go about worming chickens, consult your vet.
Here are the most common chicken worms and the most effective dewormers for each:
- Cecal worms — Fenbendazole, Levamisole
- Capillary worms (hair worms) — Ivermectin
- Gizzard worms — Levamisole, Flubendazole
- Round worms – Fenbendazole, Ivermectin
Keep in mind that most worm medications have an egg withdrawal period — this is a time frame in which you must abstain from eating eggs from your treated birds as they may be contaminated with chemicals.
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Treat the Entire Flock Twice
Even if you suspect that only some of your birds are dealing with a worm infestation, or a worm egg count or float test confirms it, you should still treat of all your hens.
This is because it’s extremely easy for infested hens to infect healthy chickens through their contaminated feces. If you don’t treat all your birds at once, the healthy and infected may constantly pass the worms between each other.
When treating worm infestations, you’ll need to administer chicken dewormer twice. The first dose will kill the adult worms, while the second treatment will kill worm larvae that hatched from eggs after the first dose.
The time period between chicken wormer treatments will depend on the product you use. Generally, you’ll administer the second dose within 7 to 14 days of the first.
Clean the Chicken Coop After Treating Worms
Because worms and worm eggs are predominantly transmitted when a chicken eats infected droppings, it’s important to clean the entire chicken coop in the days following the second worming treatment. This will prevent worms from being reintroduced into the digestive tract of your hens.
It’s important to clear all chicken droppings from the coop and chicken run, but you should also pay attention to the areas where your poultry forage as these spots will also be contaminated.
As is can be difficult to clean grazing areas, the best solution is to simply change on a regular basis where your free-ranging birds are allowed to forage.
At the same time, be sure to keep the grass in all grazing areas cut short. This is an easy way to destroy worm eggs as UV light from the sun will do all the hard work for you.
FAQs
Using a commercial chicken wormer is the most common method of ridding birds of intestinal parasites. The most popular wormers include Fenbendazole, Flubendazole, Ivermectin, and Levamisole.
One of the most popular ways to treat chickens for worms naturally is with apple cider vinegar (ACV). The easiest way to use this safe product is to add one tablespoon of ACV for every gallon of drinking water in your bird’s watering pail.
You can also prevent or manage the worm load in a healthy chicken by supplementing their feed with diatomaceous earth, a natural substance that may prevent larvae from maturing. (Pro tip: Diatomaceous earth is also great for treating poultry lice!)
Keep in mind that using natural preventatives may not be enough to cure infested chickens of severe worm problems. In those cases of serious illness, a chemical treatment may be your only option for quickly eliminating the increased worm burden. Once your backyard poultry have been treated, you can focus on using natural remedies to support your flock’s immune system.
There are several symptoms that an infected bird may display if they’re being plagued by a worm overload. Common symptoms include:
- Bloody and/or loose stool
- Decreased egg production in laying hens
- Gasping and head shaking (gizzard worm)
- Increased hunger
- Lethargy
- Pale comb (anemia)
- Stunted growth (young birds) or weight loss (older birds)
- Worms in eggs (cecal worms)
To prevent resistance to wormers and limit both your and your chickens’ exposure to chemicals, you should always have a local vet conduct a worm count to confirm an overload of parasites before treatment. It’s the only way to be sure that the above symptoms can’t be attributed to another issue, such as poultry lice (which share some of the same side effects).
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