parasites (photos included), needing advice

Hello Everyone

I am upset and alarmed to have found parasites in the poop of one of the hens. The parasites seem to be dead, at least they are not moving. The parasites look large to me. The metal bowl that the specimen is in is 6 and 1/4 inches in diameter.

I have a few questions: 1) How concerning is this for the hen's health? 2) Is it almost certain that every chicken in the flock has these worms in them? 3) Is there concern that humans may contract these worms? 4) What is an appropriate response to this finding?

Thank you

I'm a poop parasite amateur so please wait for someone to either confirm or give a better diagnosis.

From what I am comparing to the images in a couple books I have, that appears to be round worm. This is a common chicken internal parasite.

For an organic treatment, crushed garlic cloves in a sock submerged in their water for a week is reported to be helpful.

I've heard that pumpkin seeds can be used to 'paralyze' internal parasites so they get expelled.

Round worms become a problem when the larval load is high in a chicken. Some worms can be expected but its a good idea to keep an eye on them like you are doing.

Helen and Timothy, thank you both! Thank you for the information and putting my mind at ease. It's good to know that some amount of parasites is not concerning if the chickens are looking and acting healthy. They are a healthy weigh and are not low energy, but the egg production is poor, so natural means will be the course of action here and then reassess. Thanks again

Roundworms. The general wisdom is that if one chicken has them, then the whole flock must have them. But in practice, I found out that this is not necessarily true. I kept many birds over the years, and I met a lot of health problems with them, but it was always just one suffering from something, even if that something was reputedly contagious. This actually makes sense, because they are all individuals, with different genetics, different personalities and places in their coop hierarchy, so with different levels of stress. Something else that varies is also what they get to eat, maybe the shy ones don’t eat as many of the scarce goodies. Anyway, I had only one with worms, and it was exactly the one who was also the most susceptible to scaly leg mites.

In this case, if the egg production is poorer than it should be for her breed and age, then I would do something. Not mainly to get eggs, but because not laying as she should is an indication of all not being well with her.

Actually, Yeka, I saw your other post recently about the hen Muffy, and was meaning to ask what you feed them as a staple and what extras they get, because it’s possible by the look of her feet that Muffy could have gout. We’ll talk about that in the other thread, but it’s relevant here too, what do you feed them?

About de-worming medication: pharma has quite a few products that paralyze or kill the worms, but the drawbacks are:
1. Even if they get rid of the worms present in the body, they don’t make the body unwelcoming to worms in the future. So the chicken(s) susceptible to worms will remain susceptible to worms.
2. Liver toxicity. This one happens because it’s difficult to dose and monitor everyone carefully. Some can get too much. Maybe there’s one who can’t tolerate even the correct dose, and tragically maybe that same one didn’t even need to be treated in the first place. Deaths and injuries can happen from de-worming gone wrong.
3. You have to throw out the eggs for a while.

Luckily, in homeopathy we have something just as strong as a pharma chemical, but with none of the drawbacks, and lol it’s not “too good to be true”. By the way, there’s a professional homeopath here on permies who started a thread last year, I’ve been meaning to contribute there with a little history about the events that led to the state of affairs of today, when so few people know and use homeopathy.

To get started, I suggest this short article by another professional homeopath, who gives a lot of free advice to the permies. This specific article deals with the treatment of roundworms. Even better to go through the comments too.
https://joettecalabrese.com/blog/what-you-cows-and-worms-have-in-common-cina/

My hen really needed to be treated so I ordered her homeopathic pills and waiting for them to arrive I gave her a little freshly minced garlic in her feed (daily, because it was an emergency, but just a little). The Allium family plants (meaning mainly onions and garlic to a lesser extent) are to be given sparingly and occasionally because in large quantities they give the birds hemolytic anemia. Anyway, this is what I read, and the problem is with the onions mainly. Garlic is so great that it’s tempting to give some daily, but because avian vets warn about hemolytic anemia, I usually add it just once or twice a week. Except for the worm emergency.  
 

Lillian, thank you so much for all this information!

Very interesting that you noticed that not all birds in the flock were suffering with something contagious, but just the susceptible one or ones. This does make a lot of sense for all the reasons that you stated. They are individuals, they have different genetics, different behaviors, stress level, access to food, etc.

The one with the visible worms is Muffy. But her egg production was top notch until she got broody again a few days ago. The poor egg production is in the other hens, but I have not seen visible worms in their excrement.

I assume that Muffy's deformed feet are related to an old bumblefoot infection. I assume this because she had bumblefoot last year that was really bad (the post has the long story associated with that issue). And now, when I touch the swollen part of her left foot, it feels like there is a hard, movable kernel in there. The bottom of her right foot still has that bumblefoot scab.

Their diet has been all over the place the last couple of weeks because of some special scraps have been available. But typically they get layer pellets, cracked corn, sunflower seeds, black soldier fly larvae (dehydrated), and whey (from homemade yogurt).

So fabulous that homeopathy has such effective treatments! And can be used on a whole range of farm animals! Thank you for sharing the link. There definitely was and is a concerted effort to delegitimize and discredit holistic healing modalities, so people don't even consider them. I was talking to a former WWOOF host the other day who said that pinkeye in cattle is the result of iodine deficiency. And that free choice kelp solidly takes care of that problem. But instead, people vaccinate, pierce with medicated ear tags, use harsh repellents, etc.

Thank you for informing me about the possibility of hemolytic anemia. I was not aware.

On a side note. I WWOOF, so I stay and work at different farms. This farm with Muffy is my friend's farm that I come back to often, but I am not here all the time and I am not the decision-maker for the animals. However, I care about the animals very much (on all the farms that I stay at), so I research and inquire, and then share the information with the owner. They do often integrate my suggestions into animal care.