Chick Disease: Symptoms, Prevention, and Treatment

In our world, livestock or poultry farming is one of the most profitable branches of agriculture.

But in order to grow a healthy bird, you need to monitor their conditions of detention.

Your profit directly depends on it.

It is important to note the fact that many diseases depend on proper feeding and microclimate.

Based on this knowledge, you can improve the conditions of housing and nutrition of chickens. In this article we will talk about the diseases that chickens are exposed to, about precautions, as well as the treatment of infected chickens.

  • Non Chick Disease
    • Hypothermia or hypothermia in young
    • Hyperthermia or overheating
    • Atrophy of the muscular stomach
    • Indigestion or dyspepsia in young
    • Avitaminosis
    • Peck or cannibalism
    • Zinc phosphide poisoning
    • Poisoning by nitrites and nitrates
    • Salt poisoning
  • What infectious diseases can occur in young animals?
    • Pulloz - typhus
    • Paratyphoid or salmonellosis
    • Colibacteriosis
    • Pasteurellosis
    • Newcastle or pseudo-disease
    • Smallpox
  • Parasitic diseases catching up chickens
    • Coccidiosis
  • Diseases of the organs of egg formation
    • Inflammation of the ovary
    • Frostbite

Chick diseases can be divided into several categories:

  • The first is contagious, which in turn can be infectious and invasive.
  • The second is non-contagious.

In order to detect the disease in time, it is necessary from time to time. inspect the chickens. During the inspection it is necessary to pay attention to: the condition of the feathers, the oral cavity and the mucous membrane of the eyes.

Non Chick Disease

The main causes of such diseases are the conditions of the birds and their nutrition.

Hypothermia or hypothermia in young

In the first month of chickens life, the thermoregulation system is still not working well for them, so they need to be warmed. If this is not done, it becomes cold, as a result of which chickens gather in piles and squeak, crawl at each other to warm themselves, and as a result they may die.

Symptoms: Chickens do not move much, respiratory diseases begin to attack them, and intestinal upset is sometimes manifested. When the chickens are more than a month old, their growth and development stops, the plumage will dull.

Treatment: for a start, it is necessary to move the youngsters to a warm room, then pour them a warm drink, after which the bird begins to warm up and heals.Prevention: you need to monitor the temperature of the air in the room, to avoid drafts.

Hyperthermia or overheating

Increased air temperature is also very bad for the development of chicks. Overheating may occur on the walking of birds, when exposed to the sun. Especially overheating is possible in the absence of ponds

Symptoms: blueing and wrinkling of scallops, lack of appetite, indigestion.

Treatment: for treatment, remove the source of overheating.

Prevention: keep young stock in the shade, and chickens should have constant access to water.

Atrophy of the muscular stomach

The cause of this disease is feeding the chicks with the same mealy feed, and also if there is no gravel in the feeder. Most often, the disease manifests itself in chickens from a month to three.

Symptoms: increased attraction to water, eating food all the time, in the litter you can see undigested food, weight loss.

Treatment: In the treatment, crushed grain is introduced into the diet, as well as gravel is added.

Prevention: you need to feed the chicks only high-quality food, while giving them finely chopped grass several times a day.

Indigestion or dyspepsia in young

The disease manifests itself at the age of chickens for about a month, with poor feeding, watering them with poor water, while feeding them rough and hard-to-digest food, with a lack of vitamins in the diet.

Symptoms: Inflamed gastric mucosa, nausea or vomiting. Indigestion is divided into simple and toxic. With simple indigestion, weakness, increased ruffling, immobility, closed eyes, diarrhea with mucus and undigested food, dirty fluff near the cloaca, slimming chickens, convulsions are observed.

In case of toxic indigestion, the same symptoms appear, but accompanied by high fever and all this leads to the death of the chickens.

Treatment: introduction to the diet of light feed chickens, give them yogurt, cottage cheese, milk whey, greens: onions, garlic or ramson. Instead of water, give aqueous solutions with soda or potassium permanganate. In the severe stage, antibiotics and sulfa drugs are given.

Prevention: you need to feed the chickens only good feed, light and full. The house should always be clean. Wash troughs and drinkers, disinfect them every week, or wash them with boiling water. Monitor the temperature of the air in the building, avoid hypothermia and hyperthermia.

Avitaminosis

Most often there is a lack of vitamins A, B and D, and sometimes it is also a vitamin deficiency.

Symptoms: with a lack of vitamin A, weakness in the legs, conjunctivitis. With a lack of vitamin A, the wings soften, developmental delay, convulsions, head thrown on the back.

With a lack of vitamin D (manifested at the age of two weeks or more) loss of appetite, weakness, small growth, bones soften, sometimes rickets develop. With a lack of vitamin K (appears on hot days and with respiratory diseases), lack of appetite, dry skin, comb, eyelids, hemorrhage may appear.

Treatment: As a treatment, chickens should be given preparations containing such vitamins. And also monitor their proper nutrition.

Prevention: for prevention, it is necessary to add vitamins A to the chicken feed (shabby carrot and greens), vitamins B (greens, germinated grain, fresh yeast, dairy whey, grass, meat and bone meal and fish meal), vitamins D (fish oil, grass meal, nettle mineral elements), vitamins K (nettle, clover, alfalfa and carrots).

Peck or cannibalism

The reasons for this behavior are irrational feeding, a small room, when not letting the birds out on the street, bright and long lighting.

Symptoms: chicks with this disease begin to pluck out each other feathers and body parts.

Treatment: Damaged birds are transplanted to another place, wounds resulting from pecking are disinfected with iodine, tar, potassium permanganate or sintomycin emulsion.

In the food add bone meal, herbs, yeast, give dissolved salt with water, citric acid with water. Pharmaceutical preparations can be applied aminazin.

Prevention: for this you need to monitor the correct content of the birds. Also, when this disease appears, eliminate the cause.

Zinc phosphide poisoning

Zinc phosphide is a medicine used to bait small rodents. Chicks may accidentally eat these kernels.

Symptoms: depression, irrational movements, poor breathing, saliva outflow, diarrhea with blood, paralysis and convulsions, and eventually death.

Treatment: Lugol solution and potassium permanganate solution are used.

Prevention: do not put poison in those places where there may be chickens and eat it.

Poisoning by nitrites and nitrates

Such poisoning occurs as a result of eating pesticides, which are used in agriculture, as well as when eating feed containing high doses of these substances.

Symptoms: severe agitation, conjunctivitis, redness of the mouth and earrings. You may experience shortness of breath, saliva outflow, and cramps. But in the end the chicken can die.

Treatment: lactic acid is considered a good remedy for such poisoning.

Prevention: keep these substances out of the reach of chickens. And also sometimes to investigate food and water for the content of such substances.

Salt poisoning

The causes of this disease may be due to an excess of salt in the feed, when feeding fish, cucumbers or water.

Symptoms: they may appear within two hours after poisoning, they will be noticeable in loss of appetite, great thirst, depression, too frequent breathing. After that, diarrhea, paresis, paralysis of the limbs manifest, and as a result, the death of chickens can occur.

Treatment: In this poisoning, a 10% glucose solution with a prick or a heavy drink helps a lot.

Prevention: you need to monitor the feed you give to the chickens so that there is not a large amount of salt in the table.

What infectious diseases can occur in young animals?

Infectious diseases can be of two types: bacterial (salmonellosis, colibacteriosis, tuberculosis, pasteurellosis) and viral (pseudo lens, laryngotracheitis, flu).

In such diseases, a sharp increase in body temperature, manifestation of drowsiness and poor condition can be noted, eyes closed and wings omitted, red mucous membrane, mucus accumulation in the oral and nasal cavities, poor breathing accompanied by fluff and whistle, diarrhea, poor bird plumage.

Pulloz - typhus

This disease can overtake chickens as young as two weeks old.

Symptoms: sick chickens can notice a lack of craving for food and water, a sluggish gait, gathering in piles in warm places, closed eyes, lowered wings.

Little move and heard a squeak.Litter first as a slurry, and then diarrhea appears with a yellow shade of foam. Down near the cloaca is polluted. The chickens begin to breathe very tightly with a rattle and a squeak.

With long-term weakness, chickens stop walking altogether, tip over and die. The mortality rate for this disease reaches 60 percent.

Prevention and treatment: used drugs: penicillin, biomitsin, furazolidone, sintomitsin, a weak solution of potassium permanganate. These drugs give and as a prevention from the first days of life.

Paratyphoid or salmonellosis

According to the disease most sick chickens that are related to water. This disease is very common, and in many cases is associated with a fatal outcome, about 70 percent of the chicks die.

Reasons such a disease can become the consumption of contaminated feed and water. Carriers of the disease are pigeons and seagulls.

Symptoms: this disease is almost impossible to detect in the initial stages, since no symptoms appear, and immediately the young chicks die. Basically, the disease lasts up to four days, with this may appear loose stools, the nervous state of the bird, and abundant drinking.

Treatment and Prevention: use a variety of drugs that are effective in the disease pullorosis - typhoid.

Colibacteriosis

Most often, this disease is sick chicks under the age of three months.

The disease develops very acutely and chronically. This disease may be secondary.

Symptoms: during the acute development of the disease, there are high temperatures, depression, loss of appetite, thirst, there is bad breathing accompanied by wheezing, which can be noticed when the chicks are moving. You can also notice the defeat of the respiratory system, signs of enteritis and inflammation of the belly.

Treatment and Prevention: use of the drug furatsilina. Enter quarantine on the farm. It is necessary to disinfect the room well.

Pasteurellosis

These diseases can affect chickens between the ages of two and three months. Both poultry and wild can be sick. The disease most often occurs in the cold season.

Symptoms: during the acute course of the disease, lethargy, detached holding from others, all the time the chicken is sitting, mucus in the form of foam is released from the nose and mouth, wheezing occurs.The temperature rises to 43 degrees Celsius, dull and ruffled feathers.

The stool is yellow-green sometimes with blood. Difficult breathing, no appetite, abundant drinking. As a result, there is a strong weakness and the chicken perishes. In case of hyperacute course of the disease, the chicks immediately die. Mortality of chickens is about 80 percent.

Treatment: it is necessary to better maintain and feed the bird, as well as to apply drugs: hyperimmune polyvalent serum and antibiotics. And from the new drugs you can use trisulfone and cobactan suspension.

Prevention: it is necessary to comply with all sanitary requirements of keeping poultry, immediately remove infected birds from the flock, vaccinate chicks. In the diet add vitamins and minerals. In the event of a disease enter quarantine.

Newcastle or pseudo-disease

Not only chickens, but also adult birds are subject to this disease.

Symptoms: In some cases, the disease passes very quickly and is accompanied by the death of a bird within three hours.

Chronic disease progression is characterized by paresis and paralysis, sudden weight loss,high fever, drowsiness, mucus from the mouth and nose, snoring breathing, diarrhea of ​​yellow or gray-green color, this form lasts about three weeks.

Treatment: this disease is not treatable, so the infected bird is immediately destroyed. It is necessary to destroy a bird without blood, since the disease can spread with blood. This disease is dangerous for humans.

Prevention: when a sick bird appears, it must be immediately isolated from the rest, after which a strict quarantine should be introduced. Chicks need to be vaccinated. The room must be cleaned and disinfected.

It is also interesting to read about diseases of adult chickens.

Smallpox

Chickens are very susceptible to this disease.

Symptoms: already on the fifth day of the disease on the skin near the beak, the eyelid and on the whole body you can notice yellowish spots, which eventually develop into wart growths.

The condition of the bird is as follows: bad mood, ruffled feathers, no appetite. With diphtheria and mixed progression of the disease, a white rash can be seen in the mouth, which eventually interferes with breathing, so the beak is open all the time and there are wheezing sounds.Exactly such a diagnosis can be made by doctors.

Treatment: a disease is not treatable. If a sick bird appears, it is immediately removed from the rest, and informed to a specialist in order for it to take any measures.

Prevention: it is necessary to vaccinate young. Disinfect the house. Birds need to add dry ash, in which they bathe and at the same time get rid of parasites.

Parasitic diseases catching up chickens

Coccidiosis

This disease can occur from the very first days of the life of the young, but it also catches up at the age of a month.

Symptoms: depression, no craving for food, loose stools, dirty feathers around the cloaca, diarrhea may be with blood, at the end of the disease paresis of the limbs may appear.

Treatment and Prevention: use furazalidone, a solution of norsulfazol with the addition of water.

Heterosis

The causative agents of this disease are worms, up to fifteen millimeters long. Fifty to thousands of them can be found in a diseased bird.

Symptoms: with such a disease suffers stomach, lack of appetite, loose stools.

Treatment: use piperazine salt.

Prevention: With this disease, fetothiazine is used for about a month. You can give the birds a solution of potassium permanganate within a month.

Diseases of the organs of egg formation

Inflammation of the ovary

Such a process may occur with an injury to the ovary, which, subsequently, can lead to the manifestation of blood clots in the follicles. At the same time, the yolk does not enter the oviduct, but into the belly, which causes an inflammatory process called yolk peretonitis.

The inflammatory process can occur as a result of very frequent feeling of birds or due to some injury.

The result of inflammation can be the formation of two yolks in the egg, small eggs or eggs with a very thin shell, can also be eggs with only one protein.

Frostbite

It occurs most often in places that are not covered with feathers, it is a comb, earrings and toes. The scallop turns black and dies as a result of frostbite. Fingers can fall too. When frostbite spots appear, they should be rubbed with snow, treated with iodine and spread with ointment against frostbite.

Before the onset of frosts, it is good to lubricate the uncovered places with edible fat or Vaseline.

It is necessary to keep birds in warm rooms, and to warm the house before winter.