Worms, Mites, Coccidia… Oh My. Backyard Poultry Deserves Real Veterinary Medicine.
In this Purely Vetted live episode Purely Chickens and The Poultry Doc sit down to tackle internal and external parasites from the ground up: when to run fecal floats, how often to deworm, what’s actually labeled for poultry (like Safe-Guard Aquasol and Elector PSP), how to think about egg withdrawal and food safety when you’re sharing or selling eggs, and what to watch for with dirty vents, bloody droppings, feather loss, mites, and lice.
There is a lot of conflicting advice online about how to treat parasites- so we made some handy cheat sheets:
Drugs used to treat common gastrointestinal parasites in backyard poultry
Drugs used to treat common ectoparasites in backyard poultry
0:00 Parasites in backyard chickens – Intro
02:12 When to deworm vs “wait and see”
02:31 Fecal float tests
03:00 How often to deworm
06:20 Fenbendazole, Levamisole, Praziquantel
07:03 Egg-withdrawal times
07:55 Ivermectin
09:01 Other causes of diarrhea and when to adjust dose
10:40 Chicken anatomy & the cecal worm
12:05 Can you find worms in eggs?
13:48 Lifecycle of the roundworm and cecal worm
15:05 Does Safe-Guard Aquasol cause feather loss?
17:11 Treating and identifying depluming mites
18:09 Ivermectin and residue
18:46 How a fecal float is done
20:46 Coccidiosis
25:11 External parasites – intro to mites and lice segment
25:18 Scaly leg mites
27:01 Exzolt (fluralaner) treatment
32:37 The Poultry Doc
35:20 Elector PSP
35:40 Permethrin treatment
36:41 Life cycles of external parasites
40:01 Preventive spraying vs treating when needed
44:44 Tapeworms
49:17 How common worms and mites really are in backyard flocks
49:07 Do birds build a resistance to these meds?
52:17 Resistance – why targeted use matters