Natural remedies and thinking aloud.

On the heels of the recent horse worm catastrophe here, I am having some thoughts. These thoughts fly in the face of some wisdom here and I do not mean to offend anyone, just mulling this stuff over in my head. I admit that I believe in homeopathy, which many rank right next to Voodoo on the effective list, so I realize my positions are contradictory. I am always at odds with myself!

This rant is about DIATOMACEOUS EARTH, for which I can't seem to work up any enthusiasm. I tried it. I had it all over inside my hen house when I had the worst outbreak of mites ever! There was a lingering cloud of DE dust and rotenone hanging in the air and those horrid beasties moved in anyway. I will NOT be convinced that DE is nearly as effective as the manufacturers claim.

One DE site was waxing poetic about how it kills internal worms, by scraping their tender hides so they die of dehydration. How do you die of dehydration if you live in a constantly warm and moist, mucous filled intestinal tract? If you are a worm in the desert, yes, dehydration is a threat. But worms in the gut? Furthermore, the outside of a gut worm is very like the inside of an intestine. If DE lacerates worm hides, you have to assume it also lacerates intestinal wall. What's to make it attack worms but not intestinal lining? It's like throwing broken glass on the vinyl floor, walking on it and knowing it will cut your feet but expecting it to also NOT damage the floor surface. Wrong! Damage all around. This claim makes no sense to me.

Further along in the same promotional site, after saying that DE will rid you of every undesireable creepy crawly you can name, it says, joyfully, that it will not harm earth worms! What? It will kill a 6 inch long ascarid living in my horse's gut, but not a 6 inch earth worm? Explain this to me. The site did qualify this by saying DE should be applied slowly and sparingly to your garden soil so worms can slowly work it into the ground where it becomes non-threatening to them. So DE in an intestine kills worms, but DE in the garden does not. Hmmm...this is not adding up for me.

This all comes up because I was trying to find out if throwing DE onto the soil of the horse pen would kill the EGGS that are waiting to be carried into the horses gut. SInce roundworm eggs are present in the soil, a great place to control them would be at the soil level. I was hoping to find out if DE, suface applied, would lacerate eggs and cause them to die where they were, outside the horse. This question remains unaswered. I do not doubt that in dry conditions DE has the capacity to lacewrate exoskeletons, thus leading to dehydration death. But how much DE would one have to toss out, and would it affect eggs, which are non-moving?

And to further this...what effect does DE have on soil? Here, we have no clay. Our mud is not the kind that glops onto your boots and gets all sticky. There is a high rock/sand content to our soil, with very little organic matter. As mud goes, it's one of the better kinds to have, non-clumping and dries quickly. Some DEs have a very high clay content (judge by colour) will I be making a slippery situation even worse (we are on hillside, so are our horses) by tossing out a thin, greasy layer of clay? As little faith as I have in DE as an internal wormer (the mechanics of it just don't add up) I do see some benefit as an external application and would be happy to skip around with a wheelbarrow full of the stuff, tossing it out like the good fairy, IF I knew it would help, and not hurt.

I know some people here use it as a feed supplement and claim benefits. I would be interestd in the hard data, fecal egg count samples, has anyone here done this over an extended period of time?

I am now unsure of the point of this rant other than to say I am unsure. Wow, such personal clarity! I could be a therapist!

Or a scientist - you make some very good points, uno!
(Now, about those homeopathic remedies. . . .)

ipf, back away from the homeopathics, slowly, keep your hands where I can see them. Make no sudden moves. I am not joking.

Your concerns about DE are the same thoughts Ive had. I just don't know that the possible benefits of this product is worth the health risk.
I offered the hens a DE dust bath in the coop last winter but they really were not very interested in using it. I had thought about trying again, but while mulling this over during the summer Ive since changed my mind. Ive come to the opinion (just my own humble opinion!) that the potential damage it may do to their lungs (and mine) is not worth the benefits.
One of the deciding factors for me was an article written by a poultry vet who had some real concerns about using DE in an enclosed area. I could dig up the article if anyone is interested. But it raised enough doubts in my mind. I just don't want to expose them to something that may be harmful if it isn't necessary.

I too have my doubts about DE. I heard it was good for getting rid of ants in the garden. I never found it much use but I gave some to a friend and she said if you applied it frequently it did in fact work, on garden ants.
I also found my chickens were quite indifferent to it as a dust bath, in fact when I added it to their favorite dust bath spots they moved to a different spot. I also never found it did much good with regard to external parasites.
Maybe I wasn't using it often enough or used insufficient volumes.
Maybe it is just that the suppliers of DE are brilliant marketers.
Either way I don't plan to buy more of it.

I am a nonbeliever. Give me a good scientific study over cousin Ellie saying she had worms and gave her chickens DE and they all went away! Cure you say? Mere coincidence say I!

And sorry Uno, I am with IPF on those homeopathic remedies, too.

Sue

your cousin Ellie had worms? She should have tried a simple over-the-counter remedy instead!

I think I'm in the non-believer camp. I really wanted it to work, but haven,t seen results. Now that my asthma is so bad, I'm really afraid to use it.

Im a semi believer.
We use it for soaking up oil and gas spills, works like a charm.
I have used it for drying up stalls and odour control. Works well.
Works great for slugs and snails, drys them out, mixes with the slime etc. But you need a concentrated pile, not thinly spread.
My sister had more success getting rid of the ants in her unistone walk with the DE added to the foam she was using already.


My friend uses DE for internal parasites on her dogs and uses it a LOT, and Lots of it, and for years on end. I think that she is wrecking her dog's ability to digest thier food properly. This is my explanation for the unending green puddle poops in the yard and her dog's inability (some of them) to put on weight.

I used it on my chickens for lice, I put LOTS into thier digs and wallows. I dont think it did anything. They still had lice.

I would not be surprised if the DE would work to a certain extent on fleas and other similar bugs with hard exoskeletons, at least a bit, and on slugs/snails of course, drys them suckers right out!

I'm with you, Arctic. I never meant to impy that DE has no uses, because as an odour absorber, it works well. There are applications where it is useful, although if dust is a helath concern, I would avoid putting it in confinedspaces where you have to be, like the hen house.

I was wondering aloud about in its ability to rid a horse of worms.

Intersting comment about your friend's dogs and their liquid poo and inability to gain weight. When my little horse had the bad worms, she had chronic squirts. Her hind legs were soaked with poo dribble. Now that the worm load is gone, squirts are gone. I think anything that messes up an intestinal tract, be it worms or large doses of DE is NOT a good thing. An animal's poo can tell you a great deal about internal happiness. BELIEVE THE POO, it doesn't lie. There is a warningthere of trouble that your friend should pay attention to.

Considering how wormy my horse was, and how pervasive those worm eggs are in the environment, there's a good chance I ingested a few myself. I am thinking of dosing myself with Strongid...but think I will wait a while longer, until the advanced stages of severe weight loss kick in. So far, still looking pretty porky. Come on worms, do your thing!

Finally some sanity about DE! I am so tired of hearing people explain that DE "cuts up" or "dries up" internal parasites like worms and external pests like lice but won't hurt internal organs or skin. Makes no sense at all. And yes, having scarred lungs myself I worry about inhaling it. And getting it in my eyes. BUT the turkeys do love to bathe in it and mixed with peat moss and/or wood ash it makes a lovely outside dust bath in a big rubber tub. But I don't pretend it is a cure all... and I only buy it when it's cheap.

I mixed some with sand and gave it to the chickens last winter and they didn't bother with it. I was thinking of trying to add some ashes to the mix but maybe I won't bother.

We have a straight DE dust bath in the hen house and it is well used by 25-50% of the population. I find that those who use the dust bath have absolutely no external parasites whereas at the same time those who don't use it can have mites or lice on them.

I love honey (organic) on wounds. It really works well!!!

Other then that I'm not much for natural remedies.

Good topic Uno and I agree with lots of what others have said.

I think DE is bad for my lungs and the chickens. I mixed sand and DE for them to dust bath in last winter. I tried ashes and DE as well. Not going to be doing that again, way too dusty in an enclosed winter coop!

I do rub DE mixed with sand on the bottom of the nest boxes when I clean them out then put fresh wood chips on top. I figure it helps with odors and dampness and if it does work on mites and lice that's the place each of the girls wiggled her butt... I sometimes also sprinkle a thin layer on the floor when cleaning the coops and pens then put bedding on top.

As for how effective it is...not effective enough I would say...i have also seen my chickens crawling with mites and lice in the presents of DE and that horrible dusting powder AND in the presence of a fresh no pest strip! I have never fed it to my animals and have no faith in it's internal ability to control worms etc. Internal or external Eprinex is my go-to in such situations and is very effective.

Now those vapona strips, hung in the coop, worked extremely well for bugs (in my opinion). Last year was my first winter trying them and I had my fewest winter mortalities ever.

Yep, all natural vapona strips. Harvested from the... uh... vapona tree...