Deworming, the process of expelling intestinal parasites and worms in chicken, is a very critical aspect in raising healthy free-range backyard chicken.
A chicken with intestinal worms will be thin and vulnerable to other diseases since the resistance is weak.
This is a procedure which must be done every 45 days since free-range chicken are more vulnerable to intestinal worms than caged broilers.
There are two ways of introducing dewormers to chicken – dissolving deworming powders in the drinking water or giving them deworming tablets orally.
In my farm, we use the commercial water soluble dewormer for our chicks as they reach 1 month old and then as they are moved to the free range from the circular brooder, the chicken are dewormed orally.
Previously, we relied on commercially available deworming tablets, especially for gamefowl, and the most popular brand before was Wormal.
We could not afford commercial deworming tablets now.
Having thousands of chickens in the farm, using commercial deworming capsules or tablets which now cost P7 to P8 each could be a financial strain.
To save on money and to keep up with our desire to produce naturally grown chicken, the farm now uses the Betel Nut.
The Betel Nut belongs to the Palm Family and its fruits are chewed by old people as “Nga-nga” in Tagalog or “Ma-ma” in the Visayas dialect.
What we do is cut the Betel Nut meat into four parts and orally give this to our chicken.
It is very effective. In just about 15 to 30 minutes, you would see the worms being expelled.
The only problem with Betel Nut as dewormer is its availability.
In our case, we have linked up with an old farmer who grew Betel Nuts as windbreakers in his farm and for P300, he allows us to harvest as much as we need.
He has also shared with us planting materials and we are now planting many Betel Nut in the periphery of the farm to serve as windbreakers, copying the farmer’s good practice.
It is always good to learn from old farmers because they know of practices that are not taught in school, like the use of Betel Nuts as dewormers.
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