New Flubenvet Pack Sizes

Now one of the things that all Chicken Keepers will need to do at one time or another (unless you keep your chooks in a sterile environment) is to treat them for worms.

Now this doesn’t mean treating them for garden worms, rather it’s the internal parasites of Earthworms, Slugs, Snails that do damage to Chickens.

One of the more popular brands of Poultry Wormer is made by Janssen Animal Health and is called Flubenvet.

There is more information on the Janssen website here.

Now, the wormer is available in various different guises – if you are Tesco you probably want the version delivered by the metric ton, if you are a Home Chicken owner, a small tub is probably more suitable and a bit more manageable for the Postie.

The size of Flubenvet I have is called ‘Medicated Premixture 2.5%’ and 240 grams. This size pack treats 200kg of chicken feed, and cost me £13.50 including delivery.

Therefore, it costs me £0.07 (7 pence) to treat each kg of feed.

So let me put that into a easy to read table:

As you can see, the pot I have will treat 200kg of feed, assuming 125 grams per day per chicken and the 7 days worth of medicated feed required, this is enough to treat 228 chickens, and have a bit left over. Doing some quick calculations, I expect to have used all the pot by the time expiry gets here as we may add a few chooks in the future.

I know what you are thinking … buy a pot and with less chickens it’ll last a lifetime. Well, as the pot has a best-before-date of 5 years or so, it means that folks with two or three chickens will be throwing away the majority of their pot of Flubenvet before it can be used.

Now Janssen had been asked for some time by Domestic Chicken Keepers with a flock of two or three hens to provide more suitably sized packs of Flubenvet.

Now the next part is genius.

Janssen have released new worming mixture for the domestic chicken keeper. Basic common sense would say that the pot would be smaller, contain less Flubenvet, and therefore be cheaper to supply.

Lets have a look at their new product, called ‘Medicated Premixture 1%’ and is 60 grams, this size pack treats 20kg of chicken feed, and costs £15.50 including delivery.

Yep – you’re right, it’s time to set off *all* the alarm bells.

Therefore, it will cost £0.78 to treat each kg of feed with the ‘Domestic’ pack.

I told you it was genius.

So there you have it.

The new ‘pack’ is 1000% (ten times) the cost of the current 240 gram pack.

At this point it is not clear whether Janssen will discontinue the 240 gram / 2.5% product. If they do, I will find an alternative, even if it means a egg withdrawal period.

Either way, what a rip off for poor, unsuspecting, Domestic Chicken Owners.

In my opinion the whole thing stinks of corporate greed.

If I hear anything from Janssen, or indeed anyone else, I’ll update this Blog entry.

As this Blog gets a lot of hits from Google Search terms – if you want to buy Flubenvet get the 240 gram / 2.5% stuff!

Please note, Flubenvet is a Trademark of Janssen Animal Health.