Gapeworm in chickens
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2024
- Gapeworm is a nematode - Syngamus trachea - which infects a wide variety of birds all over the world, including chickens. If your chickens free-range anywhere there might have been other poultry, wild birds, or insects, then they have probably been exposed to gapeworm.
Most adult chickens have some resistance to gapeworm but chicks under two months old are more susceptible.
In a severe infestation, the gapeworms can block the chicken’s airway, so she makes a whistling or grunting sound with each breath, or even eventually block her airway completely.
Treatment for gapeworm requires an antihelminth that specifically targets gapeworm. The main classes of antihelminths suitable for use against nematodes in chickens are the Benzimidazoles, such as Fenbezadazole and Flubendazole, and an Imidazothiazole called Levamisole. Different products are administered in different ways, so do check with a vet about dosage and directions for use, as well as any egg withholding period.
For more fascinating facts, hints and tips about caring for your chickens, and the sheer pleasure of chickens, subscribe to my channel: Chickens in my garden - New Zealand
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I absolutely love how informative and well done your videos are. Know they are appreciated!
Thank you so much!
I can’t tell you how much I look forward to your chicken videos. They are so informative as well as entertaining. I have learned more from you than I have by reading five chicken books cover to cover. Thank you so much - looking forward to the next video. Diane in Oregon.
Wow, thanks so much!
Have a great day 🙂
Absolutely love your videos. They always teach me stuff
Thank you so much!
Thanks so much. Best explanation ever. ☺️
Thank you very much.
Have a great day 🙂
Always good informative videos, thank you
Thank you for watching. Have a great day 🙂
This is the best video I have found on gapeworm. Thank you so much!
Thank you. I appreciate the compliment 🙂
So so helpful, thank you!
Thank you! Have a great day 😊
Once again,Great information and video. Thank you.
Thank you very much 🙂
Thanks!
Very informative and thank you for this video!
Thanks for watching and for your comment 🙂
Thank you!!! ♥️
I love your videos they have been a great help… I love the animation and clear explanations…. Thank you so much
Thank you very much. It's great to hear that feedback. I sometimes think my videos are a weird mixture of amateurish cartoons and videos of chickens but the animations are fun to do and I think they help.
Thanks for watching 🙂
This video is excellent .
Thank you so much 😊
Very informative. Thank you.
Thank you for watching 🙂
Thorough as always! Thank you for the information. I brought a sample of droppings and three of my chickens to our country vet. He found no reason for the feather loss or the death of my one chicken. No parasites. Nothing. Perfectly healthy. Another chicken started to be disoriented and lay down sideways in the dirt. I picked her up and put her in the kiddy pool we keep in the yard for them in the summer. Then I sprayed the rest of the flock with the hose. They were not happy, but they were cooled off. The gaping mouths were likely panting. It seems the heat was the likely culprit. Perhaps the Cemani got disoriented by the heat, bypassed the drinkers and the kiddy pool, chose a hot spot in the yard to make a dirt bath, climb inside and died in the sun. Thank you for all of your research.
Hmm Mysterious but reassuring I guess. That part in my video where one of my dark Barnevelders is sitting in the nest box panting, she's just hot - it was summer and about 30°C and even though the nest box is shaded she was still quite uncomfortable there. Chickens really do not do well in the heat, some breeds worse than others. Cemani should be relatively heat hardy. It's good that you took the chickens to the vet and that they found nothing sinister.
Best wishes
@@chickensinmygarden I thought she should be too and she was only a year. Your Barnevelders are so beautiful!
Too beautiful! Because of that I really have too many! No room for more chickens, and I want more leghorns 😀
That pesky chicken math! 🤣
Another great informative vid. ☺ I am dumbfounded you don't have more followers though. 😢
Strangely enough, most people who watch my videos are not followers 🙂
But I just keep making videos because I love chickens and like to share what I have learned about them.
Have a great day!
Great video - thanks for sharing it 🐔🐓🐔
Thanks for the compliment 🙂
Thanks for sharing
Very very good!
Thank you so much 🙂
Thank you so much!! I'd never heard of "gapeworms" before. I have seen that motion of gaping in one of my chickens. Ugh! Now I will be more observant, and use some of your prevention suggestions.
Just an occasional gaping is no more to worry about than when we do an occasional sneeze or cough.
thank you sir. for the knowledge and the info is very useful for me.. best regards, greetings from the friendship of laying hen breeders from Indonesia
Greetings to you from New Zealand to you and all your chickens 🙂
thank you guys...let's share knowledge and experience with each other sir...at my place there are also lots of chickens of various types
I like seeing all the different kinds of chickens
This video inspired me to learn what to do if a chicken seems to be choking on food. I realized I had no idea. Thank you for another entertaining and informative video. I especially liked the differential diagnosis section.
Thank you.
Just recently I came across the question Can you do a Heimlich manoeuvre on a chicken. Chickens have very different respiratory systems to mammals and I think the Heimlich manoeuvre would not work. It might make an interesting video.
@@chickensinmygarden Right, seeing if I could clear the mouth or airway manually, or turning them upside down is all I could think of.
That seems to be the best option
Turning them upside down can cause them to aspirate though so be careful.
If you need to keep a medication in suspension a small fish tank pump or an airstone bubbler can help agitate the water. A pump will mix the liquid more thoroughly but will require a larger container.
A 90 gph mini pump is a little smaller that a 2"/5cm cube. They can be had for about $10 in the USA.
I use one in a 2 gal/ 8L water bucket with 4 nipple valves for medication. It took me a little poking at the nipple stud for the girls to figure it out. Once one had it they all did.
A bubbler might require more than one air stone to keep everything in suspension but it is also a cheap system.
Great information! Been looking for a video like it! Can any deworming medication like fendbendazole, be given that is sold at a feed supply store?
Yes Fenbendazole is effective against Gapeworm. Is that available at your feed supply store?
@@chickensinmygarden yes! I found some, I got the paste for equine (safeguard). I have three different breeds of Orpingtons. Some have been gaping without any other evidence of a respiratory disease. Only gaping. Two are making gurgling sounds when drinking water. What dosage would you recommend and how many days should I treat them?
It's usual to give it daily for 5 days.
But for the dose - you will need to find out what concentration is "Safeguard", then calculate the volume required per chicken.
This link might help. It recommends 20-50 mg per kilogram of body weight of each chicken
poultrydvm.com/drugs/fenbendazole
@@chickensinmygarden THANK YOU!!!
Those Silver Wyandot are such a nice breed to have. If you can get the other chickens to be nice to them, as they seem to want to beat them up, and it's ftustrating when they refuse to defend themselves...Yrs ago, I had to separate mine.
I have had silver-laced and gold-laced Wyandottes in the past as well as white-laced gold (usually called buff laced). But the black and white lacey looking birds I have at the moment are silver-laced Barnevelders. They are still quite young - hatched in April.
@@chickensinmygarden They are beautiful. I think the gold are prettiest, but the silver are better natured. At least mine were. I think they are likely related to the Wyandots, aren't they? Never heard of Barnevelders.
Barnevelders are a Dutch breed. They have a single comb, unlike the rose comb of the Wyandottes, and the Barnevelders lay dark brown eggs
@@chickensinmygarden Lol..I mever paid that much attention to the combs, so ya got me there. I have some bantys that look similar, but they were unnamed..I just like the speckles rather than the solid colors, and they actually are a much calmer and friendlier bird than my solid reds..or even that all others we've had. Mine lay light brown eggs. Small ones. Lol..But they are good girls. What do you do to keep feathers on their heads when the roosters are pulling them out all the time? Any way to stop that? I have some red ones that are bald..
Roosters do that - usually to their necks rather than their heads but maybe your rooster is a bit bigger than them. Sometimes a rooster will have a favourite hen and really make her bald but they shouldn't look too bad as long as there are enough hens for each rooster (about 6 to 10).
👍
Thanks for commenting. It's good to know you're out there and liking my videos
How many days do you treat them for?
Different medicines have different treatment regimes. For Fenbendazole it's daily for 3 to 5 days.
I would literally just put a tiny drop or two of organic small batch made turpentine in their water, or some wormwood or black walnut extract etc.
Hi, is that expensive to see a vet? How much it may cost each time for chicken approximately? Cheers
Well it wasn't expensive for me. I didn't take the chicken in for a consult, I just spoke to the vet over the phone and described the symptoms. The vet agreed it sounded like Gapeworm and prescribed the medication. When I picked it up all I had to pay for was the medicine itself, no charge for advice or prescription.
But I think the fee for examining a chicken is the same as for a cat or rabbit or any other small animal.
@@chickensinmygarden Thank you! Wondering do you know bit about botulism and treatment? Symptoms look bit similar? Yesterday I thought my chick got gapeworm, but now wondering it may also could be botulism 😰
I can't say I know a lot about botulism but from what I know the symptoms are quite different from those of Gapeworm. Botulism is an acute illness, i.e. it comes on quickly and the chicken goes from seeming normal to being droopy and sick looking to coma or death in just a few days. You don't say how many chickens you have but botulism would usually affect them all.
my hen is broody she sit on the place where she lays eggs but she is not sitting on her eggs ...plus whenever i try to sit her on eggs she run away the hen is first time egg layer ....
I have some hints about broody hens in this video
ua-cam.com/video/KqL6WZvLXF8/v-deo.html
My peafowl sometimes get gapeworm, and I see them gasping for breath. I put 2cc's of Ivermectin pour-on in a bit of bread rolled into a ball, and force-feed it to the bird. If the gasping doesn't clear up in 2-3 days, repeat with a higher dose, until breathing is normal again. Young birds are harder to treat early enough, and often die. 😢
Ivermectin is one of the commonly used worming products but I believe that it does not reliably kill adult gapeworms, although some people say it does. Perhaps that's why some of your peafowl are not recovering.
@@chickensinmygarden - Thanks! Visited NZ twice, love it! My place in Oregon, USA is very similar. My immature ones don't recover, maybe because their immune system is inadequate, as you said, or (my fear) the wormer is too strong for them. The older ones "live with" gaping for weeks, whereas it seems to kill young ones within a few days. I'll try Valbazen (albendazole) next time a young one gets it. I have these wormers on hand for my llamas, alpacas, and goats. Have a g'day, Kiwi! (My high school BFF moved to Oz).
Sorry but even chickens in coops with bare ground will have worms etc especially because the droppings from the chickens. That's where i collect worms for my garden and compost from is my moms coops.
Apologies for a late comment,thanks for this info.Ive commented like a year ago,u might not remember me
Hello again. It's nice to hear from you again.
Can gapeworm get in eggs? And if accidentally eaten, is it dangerous to humans health
I have never heard of adult gapeworms being found in chicken eggs and I think it would be highly unlikely, probably impossible.
However if humans eat the gapeworm eggs, then humans can be infected with gapeworms just like chickens are. This is rare but has been reported. The symptoms in humans are a chronic cough.
Deed you nott know about this worm exist? The Chikenowner can drag "orm" in to the house under the feet. So use different footwear : ) It wood be nice to see a garden video of your chickens agaain in the summer : )
We certainly do not wear our gardening shoes into the house. In fact we don't wear any shoes in the house, only slippers 🙂
Although we are just past the shortest day, three of my hens have just started to lay again. I'm looking forward to Spring
@@chickensinmygarden I was refering to shoes used outside and weard inside the chickencoop. Nott your personal home : ) Is summer here in the Hills of Norway : )
2 of my hens had that but I put dietomaceous earth and stuffed it into the throat and it stopped it in 30 minuets or in 2 hours
I'm glad they got better 🙂
@@chickensinmygardenmake sure that the chickens do not eat any bird or chicken poop some of my hens eat the chicken poop.