# Does anyone know of a wormer without any antibiotics



## hellofromtexas (Feb 16, 2014)

Massive wall of text question. I am tired so I outlined. I did 6 hours of driving to fill out a single form today (stupid form). Anyway....

Intro
I am looking for 2-3 wormer products that *don't have **any antibiotics*. I am very focused on eating the products from the chickens. So, my concern is when using a "mycin,"(i.e. duramycin) I then make my chickens and possibly myself immune to some of the important drug in the "mycin" family. Also, there can always be a bunch of other nasty side effects.

Story of Why
It reminds me of a hearing on the use of certain drugs and products on a Canadian cattle feed lot. The owner of the feed lot says something along the lines of, "So what, they (the beef cattle on the feed lot) are going to get slaughtered." The horrified vet replied along the lines of, "By god, they are going to be eaten (by people)." This is also to the effect of the side effects caused by the drug and the possibility of it causing more problems.

So, If it was my dog, I wouldn't have this much thought process and just make sure there were no harmful side effects, or consequences, and give proper dosage. Since it's my food, it has more direct consequences on my health and I don't want to even go near it, unless they are sick, and it is the recommended course for the illness.

Conclusion
It is mud season. I live in a somewhat swampy forested area. Most worms thrive in this area in general (according to my local vet for my dogs). I think should worm them as a prophylactic measure just like every other animal that lives here. Does anyone know of any plain simple wormers? I only want the wormer part and no antibiotics for an infection they probably don't have. They look pretty healthy and they are still laying decently.


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## OldBrickHouseFarm (Sep 30, 2014)

Most wormers don't contain antibiotics. Anthelmintics are just that "against" "worms". They don't work on bacteria. 
An exception is Hygromycin B which is not easy to use for small flocks.
Those that live in the south may want to prophylacticaly worm. As an alternative, I would recommend having a fecal sample read first. Not all wormers work well for all types of worms. We have long hot summers but extremely cold winters so that may be the difference but I've only wormed one chicken in my life. I don't even recall people worming chickens in the tropics. 
Chickens on the ground will have some worms. A healthy chicken can tolerate a certain amount of parasitic infestation.
I recently thought I had a few chickens with roundworms. Rather than worming, I had a fecal sample read and they didn't have worms but had a severe case of clostridial bacteria. If I had wormed them, I wouldn't have solved anything and prolonged the problem.
A fecal sample will tell you if you have nematodes, flatworms or no worms at all.

The only anthelmintics approved for chickens are* Piperazine* (roundworms), *Phenothiazine* (cecal worms), *Hygromycin B* (capillary, round and cecal) and *Coumaphos* (round capillary and cecal)
So those won't work on flatworms (the most deadly) and there are no wormers effective against flukes/flatworms approved for poultry so you would need a vet anyway.

Others not approved for poultry but commonly used are *Ivermectin, Levamisole, Thiabendazole and Mebendazole.*


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## Fiere (Feb 26, 2014)

There is a downtime for all chemical wormers as well, so if you worm your birds, you won't be eating their eggs until that period has passed. It differs between chemical families.


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## Sundancers (Jun 20, 2012)

You could try a natural wormer ...

D.E., pumpkin, garlic, cayenne and give the coop/run a good cleaning.

Best of luck.


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## OldBrickHouseFarm (Sep 30, 2014)

The herbal wormer route may be the way to go if you don't know for sure they have worms.
There isn't a withdrawal period with them either.
I've used this two stage one more as a preventative.
http://www.fiascofarm.com/herbs/mollysherbals.php/categories/herbal-wormer


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## hellofromtexas (Feb 16, 2014)

I think I will go the herbal route just because I don't like the idea of making immune bacteria and I can't find any in my area without. 

As for the birds health, they show no signs or symptoms of worms. They are molting but they are at that age and season, and I've checked several times for any signs of pest with none coming up. They are on a diet with 18-20% protein and look well. I mixed grower and layer. I've also been giving them lots of meal worms. They are still laying but it's roughly 75% of what they used to do and it looks like a pillow fight in the coop.

Does anyone have a recipe so I can whip it up from my pantry? I used to make dog food from scratch before regularly. They had an allergy to the only commercial food available. So, chicken wormer shouldn't be to bad.


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## OldBrickHouseFarm (Sep 30, 2014)

You can look at the ingredients in the link I gave. IMHO, it's sometimes just easier and cheaper to get what someone has already made. Lots of the things that will chase worms aren't in the average pantry. i.e. mugwort, hyssop, black walnut.
You may have cucurbits, garlic, fennel, thyme, etc..

18-20% protein is a good level for molting hens. Getting 75% production from molters is great.


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## chickengeorge (Oct 1, 2014)

Hi have you heard of a product called Verm-ex which is a 100% organic natural herbal product available as liquid or pellets. No withdrawal period of eggs or meat. Have a look on ebay if not in local stores, seems to tick all the boxes your after?


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## Cowchickfarmer (Sep 10, 2014)

I give my birds ivermectin 1 ml to big birds young birds 1/2 ml of it and some big birds some times I give 1 1/2 and this goes down the neck you can still eat eggs it kills mites and worms and lice


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## Akarnf2 (Dec 27, 2014)

*A natural wormer*

You can use a mixture of 200 grams of un peeled rare pumpkin seeds 400 grams of pumpkin pulp and 10 cloves of garlic that you mushed in a blender. You can add water to get a porridge like consistency. The chickens must eat this mixture for at least a week. You can add this mixture to shredded vegetable. The plant family of the pumpkin, cucurbitaceae, have in the fruit, and a specially in the seeds a chemical called cucurbitin, which paralyze worms in the gut, and the worms after that they have been paralyzed, they go out white the chicken droppings. You must return this treatment every 3 month.
Good luck!


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## zookeeper (Dec 5, 2014)

chickengeorge said:


> Hi have you heard of a product called Verm-ex which is a 100% organic natural herbal product available as liquid or pellets. No withdrawal period of eggs or meat. Have a look on ebay if not in local stores, seems to tick all the boxes your after?


I use this, my hens seem to do well with it.

Sent from my iPad using Chicken Forum


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## cgmccary (Jun 25, 2012)

fwiw, I live in SE USA and with the rains we get, humidity + warmth, I have to combat worms. There have been times I have seen them myself (tapeworms, round worms) and other times, from either an necropsy or fecal sample test (all the above and other types of worms). One time a friend brought me some birds, I isolated them and found they had capillary worms. It is good to know what kind of worms you have, if any, because the treatment can be different. For instance, most wormers will not kill tapeworms (and there are 4+ species of tapeworms that are poultry specific). 

I have used Fenbendazole, Ivermectin, a combination of Ivermectin & Praziquantel & Wazine (Piperazine) -- all these are effective against all or some of the worms above {only the Praziquantel kills a tapeworm & then only certain species}.. The advantage of Ivermectin is that it also kills mites, lice & scaly leg mite on your bird. The disadvantage to any wormer is that if you use the same one every time, then the worms become resistant to that wormer.

I have also used the herbal route: cayenne does NOT work; Diatomaceous Earth (DE) does NOT work (I used both DE and cayenne religiously and still had worms. The cayenne will ward off rodents from the feed initially until they start liking the heat.). Pumpkin seed works on some worms. I grow my own pumpkins and feed them to the chickens. They eat the seed and all. Also, Black walnuts works on some worms -- soak the walnut & their casings (as they fall from the tree) in water over night and give to your birds as their sole drinking water. The Verm-X someone mentioned is a good wormer. It comes in a gel you put in the water. One more thing is chewing tobacco (the nicotine or tobacco leaves) is a natural de-wormer. My great grandfather used to give chewing tobacco to his dogs (before there were all these fancy wormers).

NONE of what I have mentioned is an antibiotic.


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