Actual Correct Dosage for Safeguard Dewormer for Chickens

[ZedikerStation]

Safe-Guard is made by MERCK. About 4 years ago their Vet gave me this information:

Safe-Guard (33534,16538,16539) is an effective poultry dewormer and is widely used in turkeys, chickens, quail, chucker, peacocks, pheasant etc.

The dilution commonly used in drinking water by poultry farms: 150 ml. (5 oz.) Safe-Guard Suspension 10% in 1 gallon hot water, and shake to make stock solution. Use 1 pint / 350 lb. of birds daily for three days. It is very safe.

Or, mix 125 ml (4 oz.) Safe-Guard Suspension 10% (33534) in 4/5 gallon hot water, and shake to make stock solution. Use 1 pint / 350 lb. of birds daily for three days. It is very safe.

Or, mix 20 ml (2/3 oz.) Safe-Guard 10% Suspension (33534) in one (1) pint of hot water, and shake to make a stock solution. From that, use 1 oz. per 20 pounds of birds daily for three days. It is very safe.

Or, mix 2 tsp. Safe-Guard in 8 oz. (1 cup) water. From that stock solution, use 1-1/2 oz. (3 Tbsp.) per quart of drinking water. Do the procedure daily for three days. Very safe.

Or, give 0.25 ml Safe-Guard per pound of body weight, daily for three days. Very safe. Could dose each bird by mouth.

Effective against round worms, capillary worms, cecal worms & gape worms.

Normal droppings are round with a white cap. When it flattens out and has mucus &/or bubbles, they need worming. Some poultry producers worm once a month.

With Safe-Guard, poultry raisers typically use no withdrawal time, just as there is no withdrawal time for milk in dairy cattle.

Yeah, that might be a bit confusing, so here is the recipe to make 2 quarts from the above. It has always worked for me.

Warm 1 cup of water.

Put 1 cup of warm water in empty water bottle.

Add 10ml of Safe-Guard Wormer. Shake well.

From that mix, add 89 ml with 2 quarts of water and provide as only source of water for chickens.

 

[dawg53]

Safeguard is an excellent effective wormer. I've used it many times over the years.
The problem with adding Safeguard to water, or adding any wormer in water is that you dont know if your birds will drink enough of it to be effective, or drink it at all, sick wormy birds dont drink or eat. In cool or cold weather, birds dont drink as much. It's guesswork if they've been properly wormed.
It's best to give it to each bird orally using a syringe without a needle.

See posts #2 & #4 in this link on how to worm birds orally and how to worm a large flock.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/worms-in-chicken-poop.1575508/#post-26765905

 

[newchickcouple]

Hello backyard chicken people,
I was browsing the web for the dosage of safeguard dewormer for my flock and was met with a bunch of conflicting info and what seemed to be incorrect info according to my calculations so I wanted to post this and maybe use it as reference for my future self should I ever need it.

There are a lot of posts regarding the dosage for chickens for Safeguard suspension dewormer. The consensus seems be a around 0.23ml or approximately 1/4ml per pound of body weight per chicken. I want to say that this is most likely incorrect. Now before anybody refutes me or starts an argument, please know that I'm not here to change your ways and if this has worked for your flock in the past then by all means continue. Sometimes experience is key and I'm just here to show you my calculations.

I know most people here use the Safeguard suspension 10% dewormer for beef, dairy cattle and goats as the Safeguard Aquasol is expensive and difficult to find. These numbers will be for people using Safeguard Suspension 10% dewormer.

First of, let me show why I believe the dosage of .23ml per pound of body weight to be incorrect. I know most people are using the 2.3mg/lb to calculate the dosage that's on the safeguard website. But that is actually quite misleading.
It's 2.3mg/lb for 100lbs.
There is 100mg of fenbendazole per ml of liquid.
It means it's actually 2.3/100 == 0.023ml/lb of body weight.
The prove is in the chart on the same site: https://www.merck-animal-health-usa.com/safe-guard/cattle/products/safe-guard-suspension
A goat weighing 25lbs would require a dosage of 0.6ml since 0.023 * 25 == 0.575 ~= 0.6

Now does that mean a chicken weighing approximately 5 pounds would require 0.115ml of the dewormer?
NO. It does not. Because the dosage for a chicken is actually 0.454mg/lb as seen on the Safeguard Aquasol page: https://www.merck-animal-health-usa.com/species/poultry/products/safe-guard-aquasol

I quote from the Safeguard Aquasol page:
"Chickens: Dose calculation:
The daily dose of 1 mg fenbendazole per kg BW (0.454 mg/lb) is equivalent to 0.005 mL Safe-Guard® AquaSol per kg BW (0.00227 mL/lb). The required daily volume of product is calculated from the total estimated body weight [kg] of the entire group of chickens to be treated."

Now as it states above, when using safeguard Aquasol, the dosage is 0.00227ml/lb of the chicken's body weight. But as I said before, most people aren't using Aquasol, they're using the 10% suspension meant for cattle and goats. The main difference that I've seen between the two safeguard products is just the amount of fenbendazole per ml of liquid.
Safeguard Aquasol contains 200mg/ml.
Safeguard Suspension 10% contains 100mg/ml.
The cattle dewormer is half as strong as the Aquasol. Thus for chickens the dosage to administer is 0.00454ml/lb.

Here is also some more math if it feels like it shouldn't be this simple.
For the site to say that 0.00227mL/lb of Aquasol is equivalent to 0.454g/lb of 1mg fenbenazole, they had to divide 0.454 by 200 since Aquasol contains 200mg/ml of fenbenazole.
0.454 / 200 == 0.00227mL/lb
Using this formula, where the 10% suspension contains 100mg/ml.
0.454 / 100 == 0.00454mL/lb

Also I know the dosage for the 10% suspension and Aquasol both seem quite low but it you refer back to the Aquasol website, it states to use 25ml per day for 11,000lbs worth of birds. The 10% suspension is also only using a mere 0.6ml for a goat that weighs 25lbs. So 0.23ml/lb for a chicken is actually a very very high dose.

You can also read the labels for both medications here for more details: https://merckusa.cvpservice.com/product/basic/view/1047396?key=label
https://merckusa.cvpservice.com/product/view/1047550

TLDR: The dosage for chickens using Safeguard Suspension 10% is 0.00454mL/lb of body weight

Yes! Thank you!!

 

[casportpony]

I think I see the issue now and I believe it's caused by the discrepancy between the amount of fenbendazole per mL vs the amount of liquid per mL.

We don't care about the density of the liquid in an ml, all we care about is the medication in one ml.

When converting from mL to mg, you're supposed to multiply by 1000 and the density of the liquid. The density of water is approximately 1g/cm^3 or 1g/mL. So we usually just say that there is 1000mg/mL.

I get what you're saying, but there is no need to calculate this.

Now the tricky part appears here, at least for me.
In a bottle of Safeguard for cattle/goats, there is 100mg of fenbendazole per mL. BUT this does not mean there is 100mg of LIQUID per mL or does it?

I think you're overthinking it. 10% Safeguard liquid comes in two sizes of bottles - 125 ml & 1000 ml (1 liter).

10% means that

I'm not saying the dosage of ~0.23mL/lb(rounded up tp 0.25mL/lb) is incorrect and as you've mentioned, some worms require a bigger dose. But as I mentioned in my original post, a cow at 100lbs only requires 2.3mL of the liquid which equals to 0.023mL of liquid per pound of cow. Even when a bigger dose is needed, how could it be 10 times more per pound of bird than it is per pound of cow.

The poultry dose to treat some worms is 50 mg of fenbendazole per one kilogram of body weight. This is written as 50 mg/kg.

The cow dose for most worms is 5 mg of fenbendazole per one kilogram of body weight. This is written as 5 mg/kg.

The *labeled* cow dose is 1/10 of the poultry dose.

In my head, 0.23mL of fenbendazole per pound of bird makes sense but 0.23mL of liquid which should contain 23mg of fendendazole per pound of bird doesn't sound right.

There are 100 mg of fenbendazole in one ml. That's what 10% & 100mg/ml mean.

And please by all means, correct me if I'm wrong or misunderstanding anything. I do want to wrap my head around this somehow.

I think you're getting hung up on converting ml to mg or something.

All liquid medications have some percentage of medication in them. Here are some examples:

1% Injectable ivermectin = 10 mg ivermectin per ml (10 mg/ml)
Pour on ivermectin = 5 mg ivermectin per ml (5 mg/ml)
Di-Methox 12.5% = 125 mg sulfadimethoxine per ml (125 mg/ml)

So let's make a liquid drug! For this example, we'll use two 444 mg fenbendazole capsules:

To keep the math super easy, we'll use two pills and about 10 ml of liquid.

Start by grinding the capsule's contents into a fine powder.
Then add the powder to a beaker:

Fill with liquid to the 10 ml line.

Once filled, you have 888 mg in 10 ml of liquid, right?
888 mg per 10 ml = 88 mg per one ml.

Based on the above poultry & cow doses, you would give the following:

5-pound chicken gets 1.3 ml
100-pound cow gets 2.58 ml

Math for chicken:
5 / 2.2 x 50 / 88 = 1.3 ml
Math for cow:
100 / 2.2 x 5 / 88 = 2.58 ml

 

[esturtz27]

I finally had to just do what YouTubers said which was to give 3-4ml of the goat SafeGuard per gallon of water daily to my hens. I did that for 4 days because it was probably only two who had worms (as proven by the two who pooped out worms after dosing them in the water).

But for a second round, I let only one hen at a time out of the pen in the morning and fed each one a pea-sized bit of the horse SafeGuard paste mixed into a bit of hard-boil egg yolk. Each hen got her own dose, ate it happily, no fuss, no catching and prying open beaks. Did that for 5 days. Done.

Both methods and dosages were run past by my vet who approved. I did not have Aqua-Sol available in my town, but Aqua-Sol has instructions that are very clear if you can get it.

That's what I did anyway and it seems to have worked a charm.

That is a great idea I may have to use next time as my girls are soooo picky when I make them the mash

 

[Goldie7]

I did use the SafeGuard for goats in their water, but decided to also get a dose of the paste into the one I knew had roundworm.

She's the oldest and when I let them all out into their yard in the morning, she's the last. I was able to let them out and keep her in easily. Then I gave her a small bit of hard-boiled yolk mixed with the paste and she ate it right up. Easy peasy!

I'm going to do the follow-up round the same way with all 13 to make sure they are getting dosed. Just let one bird out at a time into the fenced yard, feed them their egg yolk and paste, and let that one out to free-range. That way I have only one bird to deal with at a time and no one pushing in and eating the other hen's dose.

Maybe that will help you. I have the same issue. Half of mine will sit on my lap and let me do anything and the other half is not so compliant. But they all love hard-boiled egg yolk!

What was the paste you used? I've used the safeguard goat dewormer in their water.

 

[RubyLady]

SafeGuard paste for horses.

 

[Sally PB]

Safeguard is an excellent effective wormer. I've used it many times over the years.

I've read NOT to give Fenbendazole to molting chickens. Most of my chickens are molting, and I have found roundworms in poop recently.

Suggestions?

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I've read NOT to give Fenbendazole to molting chickens. Most of my chickens are molting, and I have found roundworms in poop recently.

Suggestions?

You are correct that Fenbendazole shouldn't be use during molt, it can affect feather quality (usually stunted feathers).

For molting birds, use Albendazole (Valbazen) instead. Dose is 0.08ml per pound of weight given orally once, then repeat in 10days.

 

[burchy]

Does this need to be refrigerated after you open it