Chicken Health For Dummies^®

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Introduction

Welcome to Chicken Health For Dummies. If you want to know practical ways to keep a small flock healthy, or know what to do when a backyard chicken is ill or injured, this book is for you.

At this point in your chicken-keeping career, more than likely, you’re already (or you’re about to become) thoroughly hooked on the freshest of eggs, you’re perpetually surprised by the voracious curiosity of your foraging flock, and you’re up-to-date with the soap opera of the hen house. Along with the joys of raising chickens, though, you (or one of your flock-keeping friends) probably have experienced at least one disappointment: a devastating predator attack, a droopy chick, or the horrifying discovery that the gorgeous hen you picked up at the swap meet is crawling with lice.

We’ve been there, and dealt with that, and we want to share our experiences — joyful and dismaying — to help you fly through the challenges of caring for your flock. In these pages, we have something for everyone, from wanna-be flock keepers to old hands, and from high-rise rooftop farmers to people at home on the range.

About This Book

We want Chicken Health For Dummies to be your second book about caring for chickens. Your first chicken raising how-to manual, Raising Chickens For Dummies by Kimberly Willis and Rob Ludlow (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), can help you begin with these feathered friends by giving you plans for hen starter homes and dropping hints about critical basic points on flock keeping, such as, “hens don’t need a rooster to lay eggs.” That book touches on chicken health problems, but Chicken Health For Dummies can take you to the next level — what you need to know as a small flock keeper about keeping chickens healthy and treating illnesses and injuries. We wrote this book so that you can have an easy-to-use reference for poultry preventive care and chicken repair.

We’re confident that every procedure we guide you through is doable and practical in a backyard setting — because we’ve used the procedures ourselves to manage our own backyard flocks.

Another great part about this book is that you decide where to start and what to read. It’s a reference you can jump into and out of at will. Just head to the table of contents or index to find the information you want.

Conventions Used in This Book

We use the following conventions throughout the text to make things consistent and easy to understand:

All web addresses appear in monofont.

New terms appear in italics and are closely followed by an easy-to-understand definition.

Bold is used to highlight the action parts of numbered steps and emphasize keywords.

Traditionally, books about animal health refer to livestock in a gender-neutral way, but we feel coldhearted calling a hard-working, personable hen or rooster “it.” The majority of backyard chickens are female, in part because rowdy roosters are unwelcome in many suburban and urban communities, so we bow to majority rule and refer to any chicken with the pronouns she, her, and hers (except when we are specifically talking about male chickens, in which case, he, him, and his apply). We also use the word who, not that, to refer to our poultry companions. It and its are reserved for chicks or birds of unknown gender and inanimate objects.

What You’re Not to Read

Although we’re attached to every word on these pages, and we hope you feel the same way, we understand if you don’t read the book cover to cover, and want to skip around instead. That’s why we’ve set some text off from the main information, stuff that will fascinate poultry science nerds and start some unusual conversations at parties, but it’s not crucial for most small flock keepers to know. You can live without reading these items, but they’re interesting, so come back to them when you get a moment. These items are:

Text in sidebars: Sidebars are shaded boxes that discuss poultry science topics in more depth or give information that’s important to a small segment of flock keepers, such as organic producers.

Anything with a Technical Stuff icon: If the information in these tidbits applies to your exceptional situation, you’ll be really glad we answered your pressing, but not-so-common technical question.

Foolish Assumptions

We love to talk chicken: broilers, gamefowl, bantams, wild junglefowl, and fowl of all purposes and all sizes — they’re universally interesting to us. Going off on a tangent would be easy for us (What’s your favorite “Why did the chicken cross the road” joke?), so to keep us focused on what you, a backyard flock keeper, want to know about chicken health, we need to understand your goals and concerns. We figure that your goals and concerns are similar to ours, because we’re backyard flock keepers, too. Based on that connection, here’s what we assume about you:

Although you have some basic knowledge of chickens, you aren’t a poultry expert.

You take care of chickens (or plan to) and you want to find out more about keeping them healthy.

You like animals and believe that taking good care of them involves understanding their needs and treating them with kindness.

You keep (or are planning to keep) a small home flock. You don’t intend to raise chickens on a commercial scale of 1,000 or more laying hens or broilers.

You have some very basic first aid, gardening, carpentry, or crafts skills (or a friend who has these skills) and a desire to use them.

You’re not afraid to handle chickens or get your hands dirty.

Some things we won’t assume about you are the reasons you keep chickens or your specific flock keeping philosophy. We think chickens are great, for many reasons — they’re great for pets, eggs, meat, competition, a small family business, garden decorations, and more. In this book, we try to include a wide range of perspectives of small flock keeping. We’re sure you can find tips and information in these pages that can suit your style of flock keeping, whatever that may be.

Just as you’re certain to find advice in these pages that suits your particular style, you’re bound to come across some uncomfortable notions, too. Is a diapered apartment chicken not your kind of pet? Skip that point and move on to the next. Does the thought of eating a chicken disturb you? Forgive us, please; the references to the nutritional qualities of chicken eggs or meat aren’t aimed at you, but someone else who values that information.

How This Book Is Organized

Chicken Health For Dummies is organized into seven parts. We provide a nugget of an explanation for each part’s topic here.

Part I: The Healthy Chicken

In order to spot a sick chicken, you need to know how a normal one looks and behaves. In Chapter 2, we provide a primer on chicken anatomy and body functions, so you can recognize a healthy chicken, inside and out. Chapter 3 gives a view of fowl society, behavior, and communication. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 focus on maintaining a healthy flock by keeping chickens clean, comfortable, and well-fed.

Part II: Recognizing Signs of Chicken Illness

How do you know a chicken is sick? In this part, we help you distinguish normal from abnormal chicken body functions and behavior, narrow down the possibilities to get you closer to a diagnosis, and provide advice about common concerns of flock keepers. We cover the most common ailments of adult chickens in Chapter 8 and health problems of chicks in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 tackles the extremes of chicken disease: mild, hard-to-put-your-finger-on-it illnesses on one end of the spectrum, and mysterious sudden death on the other.

Part III: A Close-Up Examination of Chicken Woes and Diseases

In this part, we discuss the major chicken diseases, briefing you on the cause, the signs and means of spread, prevention tips, and treatment advice. The chapters in this part are very helpful if you need to zoom in to a particular chicken disease that you’ve heard about. Wonder why you should buy chicks from a pullorum-clean flock? Chapter 12 is the place to look. Worried about worms? Check out Chapter 13.

Part IV: Your Chicken Repair Manual (and Advice for When to Close the Book)

We get down to the dirty work in this part. Here we help you make a diagnosis for a flock problem, whether you have the help of a chicken health advisor, or you’re on your own. We show you how to do basic procedures, such as giving an injection or trimming a wing. Finally, we provide advice on closing the repair manual and killing a sick or injured chicken humanely.

Part V: The Chicken/Human Interface

The chicken/human interface is the time and place where chicken health and human health collide. These accidents can happen, but they’re not common and they’re rarely serious. What’s good for you is often good for your chickens, and vice versa. Find ways to protect yourself and your chickens in this part.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

In this part, we take ten questions that we hear backyard flock keepers ask frequently and we answer them as succinctly as possible. We also take on ten common misconceptions about chicken health and present the facts, briefly.

Appendix

The appendix contains a few important lists. We’re sure you’ll find the chart of medication dosages for chickens in small flocks an extremely handy reference when you need it. The same goes for the list of disinfectants and the list of parasite treatments that we refer to in other parts of this book.

Icons Used in This Book

To make this book easier to read and simpler to use, we include some icons that can help you key in to main ideas.

This icon appears whenever an idea or item can save you time, money, or stress when taking care of your chickens.

Any time you see this icon, you know the information that follows is so important that it’s worth reading more than once.

This icon flags information that highlights dangers to your chicken’s well-being or to human health.

This icon appears next to information that’s interesting, but isn’t essential for all backyard flock keepers to know.

Where to Go from Here

Although starting at the beginning is customary, this book is organized so you can jump to whatever chapter you urgently need and find complete information. Got a sick hen? Head straight for Chapter 8. Concerned about a chick? Go to Chapter 9. Are you standing in the feed store, puzzling over crumbles or pellets? Check Chapter 6.

If you have no pressing concerns and all’s well in the backyard, you may want to start with Part I, which can help you keep your happy flock healthy. You can also peruse the table of contents or index, find a topic that interests you, and go there. We wish you and your coop’s residents health and good fortune!

Part I

The Healthy Chicken

Chapter 1

A Picture of Backyard Flock Health

In This Chapter

Appreciating the useful and fascinating backyard chicken

Increasing your awareness of the hazards of the backyard chicken’s lifestyle

Scrutinizing the stats of common backyard chicken illnesses, injuries, and causes of death

Investigating how flock keepers prevent, treat, and find help with chicken health problems

Chickens have fascinated people for thousands of years, ever since humans and red junglefowl met in Southeast Asia and began a productive relationship together. Humans have taken full advantage of the partnership and of the chicken’s versatility. The wild junglefowl hen lays a scanty 15 to 30 eggs a year; after thousands of years of selection and care by people, modern domesticated hens can surpass the 300-egg-per-year mark. Today, chicken meat is a major source of protein for human nutrition around the globe.

People clearly benefit from the human/chicken bond, but what does the chicken get out of this relationship? In exchange for eggs, meat, entertainment, and a wholesome connection with nature, backyard flock keepers protect their birds from danger and disease, and free them from worries of finding a good meal and a cozy place to sleep at night. In this book, we offer advice to help you keep up your end of the bargain.

Ideally, flock keepers also remember that chickens are, down deep, still wild junglefowl, driven to dustbathe, forage, and establish pecking orders. Caretakers can and should provide opportunities for chickens to be chickens and to express their inner junglefowl.

In this chapter, we introduce you to backyard chickens, their troubles, and what you can do to prevent health problems and respond to unfortunate events.

Introducing the Backyard Chicken

Throughout this book we make the distinction between backyard and commercial chicken flocks. Although you can probably point out general, sometimes overlapping differences between commercial and backyard flocks in terms of management style, reasons for raising chickens, types of birds, and farm sizes, we stick with a simple definition. For the purpose of this book, we consider a farm with 1,000 or more chickens a commercial flock, and call a place with fewer than 1,000 chickens a backyard flock.

Okay, 999 birds is extreme backyard flock keeping, and as you may suspect, most backyard flocks have far fewer than 1,000 birds. The majority of backyard flock keepers in the United States have fewer than 25 chickens, according to informal surveys.

You may already be savvy to the lingo of backyard flock keepers, but to keep us all on the same page, we provide a list of poultry terms used in this book:

Pullet/hen: In poultry show circles, a pullet is a female chicken less than a year old, and a hen is a female chicken 1-year-old and up. Other folks consider a pullet to be a female chicken that has not yet laid an egg, and a hen as one who has.

Cockerel/rooster: A cockerel is a male chicken less than a year old. A rooster is a male chicken 1-year-old and up.

Egg-type chickens: Chickens of breeds developed for egg production. Commercial white egg layers are Leghorns, and commercial brown egg layers were developed from the Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, and Plymouth Rock breeds of chicken.

Broiler: A young chicken suitable for grilling, roasting, or barbecuing. Very fast-growing meat-type chickens that make excellent broilers were created from the Cornish and Plymouth Rock breeds of chickens. You may hear meat-type chickens described as “Cornish cross” or “Cornish Rocks.”

Dual-purpose chickens: Chickens of breeds that are suitable for both egg and meat production, such as the Delaware or Plymouth Rock breeds.

Gamefowl: Chickens of breeds developed for the purpose of producing fighting cocks, such as the Modern Game and the Old English Game breeds.

Bantams: Very small chickens belonging to breeds that are often miniature versions of larger chicken breeds.

Heritage breed chickens: Chickens belonging to breeds that were recognized by the American Poultry Association prior to the mid–20th century. Heritage chickens are ideal for backyard settings, because they’re active, long-lived, outdoor foragers.

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Visit the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy website at www.albc-usa.org/heritagechicken/definition.html for more information about heritage breed chickens.

Creating a Healthy and Contented Life for Your Flock

A free-range backyard hen seems to have an idyllic life, enjoying the freedom to scratch and forage for interesting, wiggly things to eat, and experiencing the contentment that comes with flopping in a dustbath and snuggling close with her flock mates on a nighttime perch. See Chapter 3 for a more complete account of chicken behaviors that apparently express a cheerful enjoyment of life.

A backyard hen, however, trades that full and interesting life for a higher risk of early death due to predators or disease, compared to hens kept in cages on commercial poultry farms. In fact, surveys from around the world have shown that the typical mortality rate in free-range chicken flocks is at least twice the mortality rate of flocks kept in cages.

Despite the stacked odds, you can prevent many of the injuries and illnesses in backyard chickens. That’s why good management of a backyard flock is so important — to make sure that rich quality of life is also a long and healthy life. These sections highlight a few areas that you can help make your flock safer and sound. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 cover additional ways to protect your flock by keeping your birds clean, comfortable, and well fed.

Recognizing risky free-range encounters

Almost all backyard flocks are free-range — by that, we mean they have at least part-time access to the outdoors. Some backyard flock keepers have an extremely liberal free-range policy and allow their chickens to roam away from their backyards; the rest confine their birds to a yard, coop, barn, or less commonly, cages.

Most backyard flocks have regular contact with other animals. The animals that often coexist in a backyard with a flock keeper’s chickens are

Wild birds

Flock keeper’s dogs or cats

Neighbors’ dogs or cats

Neighbors’ poultry

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Free-range chickens risk becoming the neighborhood dogs’ next snack (or chew toy), or picking up an infectious disease from wild birds or someone else’s backyard poultry. See Chapter 4 for tips on protecting your flock from hazards outside of your yard with common sense biosecurity measures.

Feeding chickens for good health and production

Feed is the major ongoing expense of raising chickens. Good nutrition pays off in healthy chickens who lay lots of eggs, so wise flock keepers carefully consider what they pour into the feeder each day. Chickens must get protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals from their food. Daily requirements for these nutrients change according to the bird’s age and occupation. Flock keepers can choose among different diet formulas for different types of chickens and stages of life, including:

Meat-type chicken starter, grower, and finisher diets: These rations are intended for broiler chicks as they grow up.

Egg-type or dual-purpose chicken starter, grower, and finisher diets: These rations are designed for feeding chicks destined to lay eggs. They work well for young pet chickens.

Layer diets: These rations are formulated for hens laying eggs for eating or hatching.

Commercially prepared feed takes the guesswork out of chicken nutrition. The tag on the feed bag tells you what type of chicken the feed is designed for, and how to feed it. Flock keepers can prepare nutritious homemade chicken feed, but that’s a project that takes more time, skill, and attention to detail than opening a bag of complete commercial chicken feed. Chapter 6 provides more information about practical options for feeding your flock well.

What Can Go Wrong?

Chickens that are well fed and kept in clean, comfortable quarters have remarkable natural resistance to disease. As tough and resilient as chickens are, however, they’re far from invulnerable or immortal. Despite your best care, you’re likely to be faced with a sick chicken at some point in your flock-keeping career. In this book, we cover common health problems of adult chickens and chicks, guide you to a diagnosis for puzzling signs of illness, and help you investigate sudden death when it occurs in your flock. Read on for a preview.

Common health problems

In general, larger backyard flocks are more likely to suffer health problems than smaller flocks. Closed flocks (ones in which no new birds are introduced) are less likely to catch something than flocks where birds come and go. The following list gives common backyard chicken health problems along with the chapters in this book where you can find more information:

External parasites, such as mites, lice, and fleas (see Chapter 13)

Unexplained death (see Chapter 10)

Respiratory signs, such as cough, sneeze, swollen face, or discharge from nostrils or eyes (check out Chapters 8 and 9)

Weight loss (refer to Chapter 10)

Diarrhea (check out Chapters 8 and 9)

Droopy birds (birds who show they don’t feel well for any number of reasons by drooping their heads) (see Chapter 10)

Lameness (refer to Chapters 8 and 9)

Decreased egg production (check out Chapter 10)

Neurologic signs, such as lack of coordination and weakness (flip to Chapters 8 and 9)

Major causes of death

Most backyard flock keepers experience the death of at least one of their chickens each year (other than chickens slaughtered for human consumption). On average, about one out of ten chickens in a backyard flock dies during one year (a mortality rate of about 10 percent).

The following list shows major causes of death for free-range hens that we compiled from a number of surveys around the world. We list them roughly in order of importance along with the chapter where we discuss the cause of death in greater detail.

Predator attacks: Almost everywhere in North America, raccoons, opossums, foxes, and skunks prowl around chicken coops, and hawks and owls patrol the skies. These predators love a nice chicken dinner. See Chapter 11 for how to protect your flock from four-legged and winged marauders.

Cannibalism or vent pecking: They’re aggressive acts by flock mates; refer to Chapter 11.

Colibacillosis: Also called egg peritonitis; check out Chapter 12.

Vent prolapse: This is when part of the internal reproductive tract becomes misplaced and protrudes outside a hen’s body; refer to Chapter 8.

Fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome: This is internal bleeding from a diseased liver; see Chapter 10.

Flock keepers can take many precautions to prevent predator attacks, cannibalism, and vent pecking, three of the most common causes of death for backyard hens.

Doing Your Part to Keep Your Flock Fit

Preventing disease is far more successful and less frustrating for small flock keepers than treating health problems after they appear in the flock. We emphasize prevention over cure throughout this book.

Although you can’t keep your chickens in a sterile bubble, we have some practical tips to help you maintain a healthy flock. Start your flock with disease-free chickens, and help keep them that way by choosing new birds wisely and building biosecurity routines into daily flock chores.

All’s not lost if a minor disease does show up in your flock. Often, you can medicate or vaccinate chickens to limit the damage, and chicken health advisors are available to coach you in your battle against flock ailments.

Safely sourcing new birds

About one-third of backyard flock keepers in the United States introduce at least one new bird each year to the flock. Most flock keepers get their birds from friends or neighbors, a feed store, or by mail-order. Auctions, flea markets, fairs, and shows are other places where chickens destined for backyards can be found. Bringing home new birds is risky business, because a flock keeper can unknowingly bring home an infectious disease along with a new chicken.

Some sources and age groups of chickens are riskier to bring home than others. Generally, younger chickens are less likely to be carriers of infectious diseases than older ones, so hatching eggs and day-old chicks are safer to add to a flock than adult birds. (Notice we didn’t say “completely safe.”) See Chapter 4 for more tips on reducing risk to your flock when you introduce new birds.

Practicing biosecurity

Biosecurity is a set of practices — things you do every day — that helps keep infectious organisms, such as viruses and bacteria, out of your flock. If a disease-causing organism manages to find its way into your flock, the same biosecurity practices can help prevent the spread of the disease between your chickens, or the spread outside your flock to someone else’s chickens.

The following list presents some biosecurity practices that are practical for most backyard flock keepers:

Control rodents in bird areas

Isolate new birds before adding them to an existing flock

Keep birds confined to their own yard

Dedicate footwear for bird area or clean footwear before entering bird area

Wash hands before handling poultry

How does your biosecurity compare with that of your fellow flock keepers? Take the biosecurity self-assessment test in Chapter 4 to rate your efforts to protect your flock from infectious diseases.

Medicating and vaccinating backyard flocks

Flock keepers in the United States can purchase medications over the counter to treat their chickens according to the directions on the label. The most common place to buy them is at a local feed store. Backyard flock keepers most frequently use antibiotics, coccidiosis preventives or treatments, vitamins, and dewormers.

Any use of a medication in a way that isn’t listed on the label is called extra-label use, which is illegal in the United States without a prescription from a licensed veterinarian. Talk to a veterinarian if you’re considering using a medication for a chicken in an extra-label way.

Most backyard flock keepers don’t find it necessary to vaccinate their chickens. We tend to agree, but we think vaccination may be useful in these circumstances:

You take chickens to poultry shows and bring them back home.

You buy chickens from auctions, poultry shows, or other places where birds gather, and add them to your existing flock.

Your flock has had a vaccine-preventable disease problem in the past.

Outbreaks of a vaccine-preventable chicken disease occur in the area where you live.

In Chapter 16, we show you how to administer medications and vaccinations to your chickens. The most common methods for getting medications or vaccinations into a chicken are by mouth, by eyedrop, into the skin of the wing web, or by injection under the skin or into a muscle.

Finding help for chicken health problems

Backyard flock keepers consult a variety of sources for chicken health advice, most often the Internet, feed store staff, or other flock keepers. A few flock keepers consult a veterinarian who is willing to work with poultry. We suggest the following go-to people who are in the best position to give you expert advice for treating a sick chicken or managing a backyard flock:

Avian veterinarians

Cooperative Extension Service agents

Veterinary diagnostic laboratories

Poultry nutritionists

National Poultry Improvement Plan inspectors

Poultry veterinarians

State veterinarians

Chapter 15 offers suggestions for finding and working with these chicken-savvy professionals.

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