At my place, dogs, cats, chickens,horses and goats all run together.

Some of my barn cats have tapeworm, again. They sleep in the haystack. Last summer I had to treat a horse for tapeworm. Because of their symbionic relationship in the barnyard, I beleive EVERYONE has them now.

I used double does of Strongid C for the horse, does anyone know how I can treat all the barnyard critters without costing a fortune to the vet?

-- Laura (Ladybugwrangler@hotmail.com), February 10, 2002

Answers

I was fighting tapeworm in one of my house cats...yuck. I did some research and found that fenbendazole has been used with success on cats for tapeworm. This is the active ingredient in safeguard. So I put about the amount you'd use as if it were toothpaste on my finger and held the cat and shoved it down her throat. She forgave me in a few hours. They drool like crazy from the stuff, and this is an adult cat about 10 pounds. I wouldn't try this with young ones. There were no dosage amounts any place that I could find. Then I did it again the next day. Voila, no more tapeworms.

I haven't tried it on the dogs. I use Valbazen for the goats as it is an excellent broad spectrum wormer. For the birds I use piperizine(sp?) although I don't know if that is good for tapeworm or not. For some reason it seems that the cats get them more easily...I probably have them for that matter. It just seems weird that my animals are always getting worms and I don't have them. hmmm.

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), February 10, 2002.

Cats, fleas, and tapeworms all go hand-in-hand. The flea is a vector for the worm as it eats the dried up casings of worm eggs. Flea jumps on the cat, cat bites flea and swallows it, egg case hatches in cats digestive tract. Voila! tapeworms. If you have cats that are outdoors and pick up fleas (which virtually all of them do), your cats should periodically be wormed. What you use should be specifically labeled for tapeworms, as many wormers won't touch them. Piperazine won't, neither will Nemex. I'm not certain, but I believe the tapes that horses could get are species specific, and not the same tapes that cats and dogs get. Having been a vet tech, I have just enough info to be dangerous, not enough to be really helpful. One caution, cats are very different physiologically from other animals and some things that a dog could tolerate will KILL a cat.

-- melina b. (goatgalmjb1@hotmail.com), February 10, 2002.

The feed store here sells tapeworm pills for dogs. I believe they are made by Happy Jack. They worked really well when we used them. The dog has to fast for 12 hours, then be given the med, then fast another 2(?) hours after that. No problem at all. Any of the wormers that contain Ivermecten will kill a cat, so be very, very careful when substituting wormers.

-- Green (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), February 11, 2002.

Thanks all for the good information. Anyone have a clue how to worm 40 chickens? Stongid or Safeguard in their water dish?

-- Laura (Ladybugwrangler@hotmail.com), February 11, 2002.

Piperazine, in the water.

-- melina b. (goatgalmjb1@hotmail.com), February 14, 2002.