Coping with Blackhead

Anyone who is thinking about adding turkeys to an existing poultry family needs to be aware of the threat of Blackhead. But good information about dealing with this protozoan-based disease can to be difficult to come by. So maybe those of us who have experienced this ordeal can contribute to a new thread about what we have learned (and what more needs to be known)?

Last year I began letting my incubator-hatch turkey poults go out on pasture with the chickens at about 8 weeks and saw the first clear symptoms in the largest poult at about 12 weeks. Here is a good Blackhead symptom description: “Clinical signs in turkeys may include sulfur-colored droppings, lethargy, drooping wings, eyes closed, head held close to the body, weakness, or emaciation.” http://www.nwtf.org/conservation/bulletins/bulletin_25.pdf

This turkey died on the way to the vet office. Necropsy showed the unmistakable yellow liver lesions associated with blackhead and this diagnosis was confirmed by a lab tissue analysis. See the above source for internal lesion photos.

Our vet prescribed metronidazole for the 7 surviving poults, which had no symptoms. This is also available OTC in the aquarium trade. So if someone has the dosage for a water-based treatment, that would be a good resource (and a lot easier than treating turkeys individually).

If you have blackhead present, it will be both in your chickens and the soil. Chickens with blackhead typically have no behavioral symptoms, but apparently do have the internal lesions. So one way to check on blackhead in advance might be to check the liver on a chicken that dies for some other reason.

After finishing metronidazole treatment, I put the turkey poults on a Blue Seal medicated feed containing Histostat (Nitarsone) to prevent reinfection. This feed is selectively available on the east coast, but may be more widely available? Or there may be regional alternatives?

This feed contains an effective, arsenic-based Blackhead preventative for turkeys, but it should NOT be used in a mixed flock. It is highly toxic to ducks, geese and other waterfowl, and is not recommended for laying hens … Would you like some arsenic in your eggs this morning? But I kept the turkeys confined while creating a new turkey area.

Finally, once they were settled in their new area, I took the turkeys off the medicated food and waited to see if the soil there was clear of the dreaded Histomonas meleagradis. I now have 10 week old poults growing up with their mothers on this new pasture, and all seems to be well. So I am hopeful that our Blackhead ordeal is over.

blackhead is very much misunderstood

its a diseise that effects all poultry

the only difference is that chicken are resilient to it and don't show signs of illness

but they can be carriers for life

and turkeys are very much ceseptible to it so will get it easily

the recommended care is to keep away from chickens

some people will say they keep turkeys together and have done for years

and yes they may be right

but that's where the misunderstanding is

CHICKENS CAN BE CARRIERS BUT NO GET AFFECTED BY IT

so a Turkey living with a flock that is a carrier will contract it

and a turkey living with a flock that is not a carrier will never be affected

A chicken that is a carrier can be de-wormed and treated with metronidazole and no longer be a carrier.

The minimum effective dose of metronidazole is 30mg/kg of body weight, how that translates to fish-zole tablets in the water is way to difficult for me to calculate, and then there's the fact that it's very bitter tasting, so oral dosing is the preferred way to medicate, IMNSHO.

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/artic...d-organic-poultry-blackhead-in-turkeys-part-1

http://www.aaapjournals.info/doi/abs/10.1637/7420-081005R.1?journalCode=avdi

http://www.scribd.com/doc/62159343/1/By#page=73

-Kathy

FWIW, I have had my share of blackhead here with poults and peachicks, but only one chicken out of 25 or more that I have necropsied have had lesions on the liver and she also had cecal worms, but all of the others looked fine, including the ones that I sen to UC Davis for "proper" necropsies.

-Kathy

Thanks for sharing your experiences with Blackhead, as well as the references. That Poultry Site article on Blackhead is more complete than anything that I had seen before!

My suggestion about "chicken-testing" for Blackhead was based on some published veterinary research reports that had used chickens as lab subjects and tested for Blackhead by liver examinations. But your experience with lots of negative "chicken-tests" in areas where Blackhead is known to be present, suggests that this is not a reliable method for home poultry situations - generating too many false negatives.

I agree with all that chickens (and other non-susceptible poultry) that are exposed to Blackhead could be considered "carriers" and could also be treated with metronidazole and moved safely to new grounds. But this leaves the problem of what to do with the old grounds (and associated facilities) - where the soil remains contaminated by the protozoa and cecal worms for 3 years or more. (And the more generous we are in providing our birds with room-to-roam, the bigger this problem area becomes.)

My solution was to leave the chickens in place and move the turkeys to new ground. But I hope to learn that there is a better way.

I have read that cayenne pepper in the food and water works well to treat it. Is that true?

K R 2709 said:

I have read that cayenne pepper in the food and water works well to treat it. Is that true?

Click to expand...

That is not something I want to experiment with, I'll stick with the metronidazole, fenbendazole and something like Clavamox or Baytril for the secondary infections they often get with it.

-Kathy

I had searched through the "cayenne cure" online discussions when I first encountered blackhead last year. Most of these discussions struck me as anecdotal, undocumented and pretty unconvincing . Most didn't even specify whether the cayenne was intended for prevention of blackhead infection or for treatment of birds already infected - two very different applications! And while I saw references to research studies at McGill and University of Georgia, these were just word-of-mouth, not the studies themselves. Does anyone have links to any scientific research reports on this topic?

I would love to have a natural food additive that would prevent blackhead infections in susceptible birds like turkeys! But until there is a valid research study, with treatment and control groups, that demonstrates cayenne's effectiveness as a blackhead preventative, my turkeys will be living separately from my blackhead-exposed chickens.

All drugs from the big pharma are based on a chemical make-up from the compounds found in nature in a plant.
Aspirin is a perfect example.
Acetylsalicylic acid is the compound found in Willow trees.
It is just one chemical compound taken out of context so it can be patent.
You can't patent the whole because you can't patent nature.
Aspirin starts to work faster but does not last as long and has side effects because it is isolated from the rest of the chemical make-up of the rest of the tree.
Willow tree starts to work slower but last longer and has no side effects.
The drier the year the stronger the chemical make up in the tree.
The wetter the year the more diluted the chemical make up is in the tree.

If you can find the plant that "metronidazole" chemical make-up is made from then you would find natures more effective method of killing these parasite with no side effects.


There are many herbs/plants etc. that kill parasites.
Some would be specific to the parasite of course.

Black walnut,
Wormwood,
Clove,
Thyme,
Pumpkin seed,
Papaya seeds,
Inner bark of Birch tree,
Garlic,
Golden seal,
Worn seed,
Anise,
Gentian,
Neem,
Olive Leaf,
Oregano,
Propolis,
Barberry,
Oregon grape,

I would imagine that each parasite would be effected differently from each herb/plant.

Papaya seeds is an interesting one.
It is known that man can eat one teaspoon of papaya seeds a day for three months that they will be practicing birth control.
So if you feed your turkeys papaya seeds for killing parasites you mite be neutralizing your tom.

wncpalm said:

I had searched through the "cayenne cure" online discussions when I first encountered blackhead last year. Most of these discussions struck me as anecdotal, undocumented and pretty unconvincing . Most didn't even specify whether the cayenne was intended for prevention of blackhead infection or for treatment of birds already infected - two very different applications! And while I saw references to research studies at McGill and University of Georgia, these were just word-of-mouth, not the studies themselves. Does anyone have links to any scientific research reports on this topic?

I would love to have a natural food additive that would prevent blackhead infections in susceptible birds like turkeys! But until there is a valid research study, with treatment and control groups, that demonstrates cayenne's effectiveness as a blackhead preventative, my turkeys will be living separately from my blackhead-exposed chickens.

Click to expand...

Well said... For me they have to live with chickens, so I'll just keep a supply of the drugs I mentioned above, lol.

-Kathy