Posh and Pecks love their afternoon free ranging in the garden as they generally get a handful of meal worms between them.

Although recently, we have decided to reduce their treats for a week to ensure that they eat all of their layers pellets as we have added some Flubenvet which is a game bird and poultry wormer. We have 2 hens and the recommended dosage per hen (per week) after you break down the huge sizes on the label is:

1Kg of feed and a quarter of a teaspoon of Flubenvet…tiny amount!

So with two hens we’ve prepared 2Kg of layers pellets with a half teaspoon of flubenvet. You can double this to deal with gapeworm making it a teaspoon to 2Kg of feed for two hens.

Be aware of the manufacturers warning:
Birds may only be slaughtered for human consumption 7 days after the last treatment (no problem for eggs).
Avoid direct skin contact, avoid ingestion by humans. Wash affected parts if skin contact occurs. If eye contact occurs immediately rinse thoroughly with water.

There are size differences between birds to consider but hens generally eat the right amount according to their size. There are also other ways to dose the Flubenvet such as putting the dosage on a grape and feeding it to each hen, unfortunately ours don’t like grapes yet. So we chose the layer pellets approach.

Nosey chickens

Whilst the girls were happy foraging around the garden I carried on with my daily task of poop clearing. This is when I generally examine their little thank you parcels, bizarrely, this can be important because you can determine whether they may have anything wrong with them. So far so good.

After completing the most exciting job of the day I sat on the steps to enjoy my cup of coffee with them which has become a ritual. As soon as I sat down they were both all over me pecking at pockets and buttons looking for treats. I was conscious of not allowing them too many so they’d eat the dosed layers pellets more but wanted to give them just a little treat.

Mealworm chaos

As I took the lid off the tub of mealworms they lunged forward causing me to spill about a quarter of the tub over the steps, you can imagine me trying to scoop up the mealworms whilst they were happy pecking between my fingers stuffing their faces. Chaos ensued!

More mealworms

So if you want to tame your hens and ignore your own Flubenvet dosage plans simply tip a tub of mealworms over yourself in front of your hens (p.s. not recommended.)