[fsmnutter]

The rules against feeding kitchen waste apply regardless of whether the meat or eggs go into the food chain. It is law that was put in place to reduce risks of disease. In 2001 we had a massive foot and mouth outbreak, which started due to feeding swill to pigs. Any kitchen waste that carries contamination from infected meat can spread disease to the farm animals you feed it to, then wildlife such as wild birds can rapidly spread that around to neighbouring farms and further afield.
No-one will thank you if you can be traced as the start of the next big disease outbreak.

Regarding using cattle and sheep wormers, this is classed as "off label" use and should only ever be done in consultation with your vet, and bear in mind that withdrawal periods for meat and eggs must be applied. Your vet will be able to advise on how long this would be. Flubenvet has no egg withdrawal so is safest to use if you are selling eggs.

[Womble]

All good advice fsmnutter.

The trouble with following government advice though, is it can be so inconsistent! 

[fsmnutter]

Advice certainly can change as we learn from our mistakes.
"Dose and move" used to be strongly advised when worming as no more worms would be ingested if stock were moved to clean pasture, but as we learnt about resistance to wormers, the advice changed to leave them on dirty pasture to prevent only resistant worms from surviving and populating the clean pasture!

[Eve]

Personally I worm only once a year because it's the only time of year - mid-winter, preferably with the ground frozen hard - that I can be sure they're getting all of their food from the pellets and not foraging additional stuff. But I do know that the only time I've had sick chickens, they have tested with quite a few worms - and the first was only a few months after moving into a new run, with lots of free ranging too (and the run itself is 160m2 and at that stage only had six chickens in it so hardly overstocked). I think it was more because they were sick, they were less resistant to worms but we do now automatically worm them with Panacur if they're sick with something else.

Hester

It's the other way around, having worms denies them good nutrition and hence strong health.
So you know your birds have worms yet you don't worm them unless it runs them down so badly they also come down with something else...

[Marches Farmer]

Article in this week's Farmers Guardian about a study done on lambs by the University of Dublin, where they found lambs on pasture containing six types of grass weighed an average of 4kg more at weaning than lambs on just rye grass and white clover, and needed worming less often.  Those on nine types of grass did even better.  Could be the variety of nutrients produced healthier lambs all round, more able to cope with a worm burden.

[farmers wife]

yes we mob graze our sheep and cows on good grazing so far not bought any wormer in some time.  Seeing that you guarantee to need to buy 2 bottles here could mean a £200 - £300 fee to pfizer thank you very much.  We need to plant some new lays which will incorporate lucerne and clovers but too pricey at the mo.

[Stereo]

I believe it's illegal either way. Hens are 'livestock' and musn't be fed anything which has been through any sort of kitchen. If you are selling eggs it would be foolish to ignore this. For a few hens in the garden for your own use...........it's still illegal but then so are a lot of things.

[HesterF]

So you know your birds have worms yet you don't worm them unless it runs them down so badly they also come down with something else...

No, as I said, I worm them yearly - and at any other time of year, I would have to contain them inside for a week which is just not doable with 80ish birds. But only a few months into owning chickens (four years ago), one of my bought in birds brought in avian leucosis with it which then killed half my (at that stage small) flock and meant I had to keep a closed flock for six months until they were tested clear. So the disease was irrelevant of worm burden but part of the post-mortem testing revealed those that died were high in worms. Testing since of healthy birds has only shown very low worm counts. But thanks for the judgement without actually reading my reply or checking your facts!

[Eve]

Yes, you wrote that you worm once a year - in the same paragraph that you said your tested hens had "quite a few worms" which obviously makes worming once a year so insufficient it's not much better than not doing anything at all.


If you don't like someone's judgment, maybe you should look at what you originally wrote and the facts you did and did not include.


And you still have the link between illness and worms wrong, that's basic chicken care.

But anyway, this is an old thread now, the original OP got useful information out of it so I consider this now closed.

[Womble]

Surely both of these views are correct though?:  Worms can make otherwise healthy hens ill. Also hens that become ill for some other reason (or even just moulting) will start carrying more worms, because their own natural resistance has declined.


The same thing is seen in sheep where worm numbers in the gut increase around lambing time because the rest of the body and immune system is under additional pressure. That's my understanding anyway!

[HesterF]

Thanks Womble - that's exactly what I'm saying. In fact, it was the vet that said it. So when the hens were ill (only a few months old, irrelevant of my yearly worming routine, they'd been wormed on arrival and were already high worm count just weeks later), the vet explained that if they were ill with something else, their immune systems were compromised and they would therefore find it harder to fight the worms. So it's chicken and egg - or in this case ill hen and worm.

I just object to the immediate leap from that point to the conclusion that I wait for all of my hens to get so ill with worms, they then come down with something else because there is absolutely no evidence of that. In respect to the original thread, my hens have a lot of space so their natural worm burden (as evidenced by vet testing) is extremely low to zero despite the yearly worming routine. My point was that if a hen gets ill with something else, it is worth worming them so that they have one less thing to compromise their immunity. So just to clarify - my chickens are all healthy, happy chucks. I can't remember when I last lost one - certainly none since last year - and many are now three or four. BUT if any of my birds get ill, the vet will normally give me a wormer in tandem with any other medicine they need so that we can be sure they are clear of worms. OK?

As for old thread, closed or not - that's not really up to you Eve. The joy of a forum like this is that it's possible to return to threads that are several years old to remind yourself of advice. In fact, I must go back to one on Fresias from years ago because I've found a solution to something I was requesting help on then!