'PetChickenDoc' -- a useful diagnostic tool for chicken disease

Hi. I have just build a software which I hope can help chicken owners diagnosing chicken diseases(that's how it's name come from). It's totally free and open source. It is a win32 software, and can run on Windows 2000 or above.

I love chickens, so it's really a torture for me to see lots of sick chickens die a violent death or culled by their owners just because they can't get a proper diagnosis due to the lack of time/knowledge/tools, etc.

Several days ago, I happened to see a good article on chicken disease diagnosis POULTRY DISEASE DIAGNOSIS BASED ON SYMPTOMS(Mississippi State University,http://www.poultry.msstate.edu/extension/pdf/diseases_poultry_diagnosis_symptoms.pdf), and It happens that I know some programing skills, so I wrote this software. So as you can see, this article is the main source of the idear of this software.

Based on the knowledge of this article, if we can divide the sign of disease or disorder into a set of standardized symptoms, and build a many to many map to the disease set, then given a subset of symptoms, we can get a diagnosis easily just by search the diseases which have a 'connection' with these symptoms.(I think this is also the way a diagnosis expert works.) This is the basic idea of this software. So, theoretically, the reliability of its diagnosis is only limited by its database(which you can customize as you like).

I hope it could be some help for chicken owners when diagnosing chicken diseases or disorders. If you have any questions, you can post them in this thread. Any advices/suggestions/ideas are greatly appreciated! .

(Download link: http://code.google.com/p/petchickendoctor/downloads/list)

NOTE:
Roughly speaking, as you can tell, the core of this diagnostic system is the 'symptom to disease' maps/connections. Currently, these maps/connections is basically based on the above article, it maybe not large enough to cover the enormous chicken diseases which are commonly seen. So if anyone has any new 'symptom to disease' maps/connections, he can post them in this thread. Finally, all these maps/connection can be merged into a much larger database to ensure the reliability of its diagnosis.

Enjoy it!
















Update history:
version:0.0.0.10: Source code(for Delphi 2009 or above) is available and some small changes were made to make its UI more user-friendly.

version:0.0.0.9: new feature added: Now every disease has a resources file. Users can edit resources of every disease.


version: 0.0.0.8: changes(important):
database item changes:
NO. item name item property category operation
1. Gizzard impaction disease Functional delete
2. Egg bounding disease Functional add
3. Internal laying disease Functional add
4. Vent or Bottom symptom categry - add
5. Big, red swelling under vent symptom Vent or Bottom add

database 'symptom - disease' maps added:
1. "Big, red swelling under vent"(Vent or Bottom) - Egg bounding(Functional);
2. "Big, red swelling under vent"(Vent or Bottom) - Internal laying(Functional);

bugs:
a lot of bugs fixed.


version:0.0.0.7, bug fixed: diagnosis result can't show properly.
version:0.0.0.6, bug fixed: diagnosis result can't show properly.
version:0.0.0.5, bug fixed: diagnosis result can't show properly.

Thanks so much for caring enough to do this.
my girls are singing for you!

jchny2000 said:

Thanks so much for caring enough to do this.
my girls are singing for you!

Click to expand...

Hi, you're welcom, and thank you for your reply.
Like every chicken lover all over the world, I just want to do something to help these lovely birds.
If it can help a little, then it would be great and such a relief and pleasure.

If you find any bugs, please let me know. thks

Thank you for your time.
I think that a good resource base is welcome and needed with the influx of interest in chickens both as pets and as backyard livestock.
You are right in saying this will help many stay alive.

I also hope it leads people to treat according to what is needed instead of just dunping a bunch af meds in the birds mouth.
No more super bugs please.

I down loaded it. What program is need to open. I have a long list on it.

Chambertin said:

Thank you for your time.
I think that a good resource base is welcome and needed with the influx of interest in chickens both as pets and as backyard livestock.
You are right in saying this will help many stay alive.

I also hope it leads people to treat according to what is needed instead of just dunping a bunch af meds in the birds mouth.
No more super bugs please.

Click to expand...

Yes, I hope so too. We need more people to do this work. This is a big project. We need more people, esp vet, to join us.
In order to save more lives, we need to build a diagnostic system and database as soon as we can.

birdygal said:

I down loaded it. What program is need to open. I have a long list on it.

Click to expand...

Hi, thanks for using. To get a diagnosis, you need to check at least one symptom.
There are several symptoms under each category.

I'll give the program a try when I get home later today, sounds like a potentially useful tool. I think the poster above was wondering how to open a .rar file....you are going to have to unzip it with a program like WinZip then you should be able to run the program after that I believe.

Thank you so much. This is very helpful information.

Lazarus718 said:

I'll give the program a try when I get home later today, sounds like a potentially useful tool. I think the poster above was wondering how to open a .rar file....you are going to have to unzip it with a program like WinZip then you should be able to run the program after that I believe.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info! Considering that WinZip is much more popular than WinRar, I think I should compress it with WinZip.Great suggestion!.