Treatment: Flubenol, a powdered worming product (available online), or Aviverm (large birds), a specialist liquid bird wormer (available from vet clinics, pet stores, and online). Necropsy: long, bright-red worms, shaped like a Y, 5mm-20mm long, clumped in the trachea. Adult birds tend to show fewer obvious signs, and some may show no signs at all.Ĭauses of death: suffocation, dehydration/starvation. Young birds get weak and deteriorate very quickly if badly affected. Other symptoms: coughing, fast head-shaking (trying to clear its throat), loss of appetite, loss of condition, weakness, emaciation, grunting due to difficulty breathing. The first sign is a bird that is breathing with its mouth open (gaping), usually with its neck extended upward as it literally gasps for breath, often making a hissing sound. The symptoms of Syngamus trachea are obvious from its Latin name (trachea=throat) and its common name, gapeworm. All types of poultry can be affected, including water fowl and game birds, especially pheasants. Gapeworm can become so numerous they actually block the throat of an affected bird, stopping feed, water and eventually air from passing through, causing death. These then infect more members of the flock when they are eaten. They feed off it, creating eggs that pass through the bird or are coughed out so the next generation can be eaten up by flies, earthworms, slugs and snails. Male and female gapeworm spend their lives joined to each other, embedded in the throat of a bird. This won’t help if it’s gapeworm and the bird will continue to deteriorate. Many people mistake the difficulty a bird has with breathing as some kind of respiratory infection and may give their birds an antibiotic. “It’s a parasite that lives in the flesh of the bird’s throat and causes intermittent wheezing and gasping.” “If a hen doesn’t have any other symptoms of a respiratory problem (ie, runny nose, sneezing, coughing, runny eyes), then my first immediate thought is gapeworm,” says Sue. However, after a particularly bad attack of gasping, Martin got in touch with NZ Lifestyle Block‘s poultry expert Sue Clarke if she had any thoughts on what might be wrong. She wasn’t sneezing or coughing, and seemed fine the rest of the time. Goldie was still eating, drinking, and moving with the flock.