If you stock your coop with the best fit, best genetic potentials, and most pretty birds. They will not grow or produce eggs efficiently if they become infected with parasites or deadly chicken diseases.
There are five good poultry health management system which is an important component of poultry production in this write-up, we will discuss the
factors to be considered so that antibiotics can be reduced or completely avoided
thus reducing the cost of production from big ones up to menopause.
What are chicken diseases?
In common terms, a disease is an abnormal condition that is
caused by infection, basic weaknesses, or environmental stress. A disease is
defined by a specific group of signs or symptoms. Diseases prevent affected
animals from functioning normally.
Health is the overall condition of a chicken at a given
time. The disease causes this condition to weaken. This can result in poor
productivity and reduced quality of the affected animals. It could even lead to
the death or loss of one or all of the chickens in a flock.
Diseases can be categorized by common causes, such as genetic,
mechanical, toxic, and nutritional. Infectious diseases are caused by viruses,
bacteria, and fungi. Parasitic diseases are caused by protozoa, worms, and
external parasites such as mites and lice.
Infectious agents, commonly referred to as “germs,” move
from one susceptible bird to another in order to survive. For this to occur in
a flock, a sufficient number of disease-causing agents must be able to gain
access to the susceptible birds. These are birds that have no immunity or other
resistance against these agents or whose defense mechanisms have been reduced
or overwhelmed at the time of infection.
In avoidance of infectious Chicken diseases, know that these are the disease that spreads rapidly
from one chicken to another especially in deep litter or especially in flocks
that are densely populated, very common in broilers.
What are the causes of infectious diseases? Viruses,
bacteria, chlamydia, fungi, protozoa, internal parasites, and external parasites.
Importantly, virus antibiotics and other miracles as a rule do not affect
viruses and as a consequence, there are very few medications that can treat chicken diseases caused by viruses
although, there are times when a drug may be used to control the secondary
infections caused by a virus.
The best way to manage diseases caused by viruses is by
quarantine and good hygiene to lower the challenge and the vaccination to
maximize the birds’ immunity in resistance to future challenges.
Bacteria,
different types of bacteria harm the birds in two predominant ways those that
attack and damage the bad cells or spaces between the cells and those that produce
toxins or poisons that harm the buds.
There are several antibiotics and other drugs that can be
effective against different bacteria however quarantine in good hygiene that
lower the numbers to be targeted by the drugs are the important first lines of
defense against these organisms.
Chlamydia, these
are a little larger than viruses they live inside the cells and they affect
particularly cells in the respiratory system they are the major causes of
respiratory diseases especially chronic respiratory disease and can be treated
by antibiotics.
Stress reduces
the ability of the bird to fight infection by weakening the immune system.
A clinical Chicken disease is one where the signs are not obvious the bird does not appear to be
sick but the infection causes slog slower growth and drops in production when
you see these signs in your flock know you're in trouble. isolation sick birds
usually seek a quiet place where they can isolate themselves from others okay
diarrhea paralysis sneezing or coughing blood in their poop swelling in
joints injuries loss of weight okay unexpected changes in food intake and water
consumption and finally the moment you see a drop in egg production or a slower
growth something is wrong.
Enough of all the common and general chicken diseases, let go straight to my Top 5 Easy Ways to Prevent Deadly Chicken Diseases.
Biosafety standards are required for you to make sure
that you're not always treating diseases, this is a sort of economic benefit because
once you make an investment in poultry, and
you're not getting anything because your chicken are dying before they even get
to maturity or before they start to lay eggs due to chicken diseases, that would be a great loss to you and that is something
you do not want to keep occurring.
1.
To prevent diseases, the design and type of coop
or housing system that you use are very important. I will suggest a housing
system called a raised floor house. With
this system, the chicken house is built with a wire mesh lay. The droppings are
collected under the house and this prevents the chickens from sitting in their
droppings or manure. The chicken on the lower deck also has their droppings
falling to the ground. This prevents the chicken from stay on their droppings. Know
that the droppings are one major venue from chickens can be infected with
diseases.
2.
The second preventive mechanism is the control
and preventive movement in the poultry farm. If you are a poultry farmer with
many sectional farms. Workers in, let us say the layers section are not expected
to move into the broiler section freely with disinfectant because man can act
as a vector, chicken disease carrier from section A to section B. furthermore,
visitors to the farm should be given farm footwear to contain infectious diseases
and disinfected where necessary and not allowed to touch the farm birds anyhow.
3.
Very strict with your vaccinations. Following strictly
a vaccination schedule can be a battle for a poultry farm manager, however,
especially, birds that required vaccination from day one to 18 or 19 weeks. This
has to be done for effective productivity and disease prevention as one of the affected birds can infect all your flocks and you will not want that.
4.
Cleanliness is said to be next to godliness. And
Godliness is purity and healing. You must keep a high standard of cleanliness, as
far as the drinkers and the feeders for the chickens are concerned. An automated
water system would be suggested here if you can not manually keep to this
standard. Also having a horizontal positioning of feeding can also prevent
diseases on your farm. Chicken would only feed without putting their legs in
the feeder.
horizontal feeder, it actually
ensures that again the chicken and the human beings don't have any physical
contacts to minimize the chances of human beings going into the poultry
house and taking diseases to poultry.
5. The last and very important aspect of chicken diseases prevention is that you must be able to monitor your chickens on a daily basis and be able to analyze and know early enough just from the symptom that you may see. for example, diarrhea of a particular color, you should be able to assess and ascertain what kind of disease it is and treat it early to prevent motility after isolating the bird with the symptom.
Being a poultry farmer these five key points for avoiding disease at your farm is extremely important to go through them again. if you are already implementing these in your farm, what can you do to improve, and if you are just thinking of starting one, this is the point which you need to attend to before starting out.
You can reach me in the comment below for your
contribution and questions.