tickens33
Chirping
TLDR- how to maintain some level of biosecurity with no running water and nowhere to change clothes?
Some context for my question: A couple of years ago, my partner inherited some property about a 40 minute drive away. It is raw, undeveloped land. We spent the last 2 summers clearing out some really nasty invasives that had taken over the property, making trails and getting the soil healthy for cultivating crops. We are currently in the beginning stages of homesteading and farming the land.
This spring, we built a chicken coop out there. We just moved our home-brooded pullets in at the beginning of this week. We've been checking on them every other day and have a game camera on them at all times-- they seem to be doing GREAT and love the space.
So my question is, does anyone have thoughts on maintaining biosecurity when there is no infrastructure?
I am worried about things like Marek's and avian flu for the birds, and the potential of contracting things like salmonella and listeria for us. Right now we are hand sanitizing before, during, and after the chicken checkup process, as well as wearing shoe covers when we enter the coop. Right now we've only been able to find cloth shoe covers, but planning to order some tyvek ones.
When we are camping out there (pretty much every weekend starting around this time of year) we have a hand washing station setup. But it's not really realistic to do a whole hand washing station when we are just driving out there before or after work during the week for a quick checkup. And, unless we are camping out there and have a tent setup, there is nowhere to realistically change clothes due to ticks everywhere.
Overall, I felt like we were pretty thorough in thinking out our plans for a "long-distance" flock. And so far, our plans have gone really well to start. The coop is predator-proof, and we have redundant feeders and waterers which hold enough that the chickens would be fine without any intervention from us for 2+ weeks. But something we didn't fully consider is how difficult it would be to keep things sanitary without a place to wash our hands.
As an aside, we also volunteer on an urban farm which has chickens, and those birds just run around on the city sidewalks with no biosecurity measures to speak of. Never any diseases in the many years that flock has been there, and they regularly kill and eat city rats. So, clearly, there are different schools of thought on what measures are necessary, LOL!
Some context for my question: A couple of years ago, my partner inherited some property about a 40 minute drive away. It is raw, undeveloped land. We spent the last 2 summers clearing out some really nasty invasives that had taken over the property, making trails and getting the soil healthy for cultivating crops. We are currently in the beginning stages of homesteading and farming the land.
This spring, we built a chicken coop out there. We just moved our home-brooded pullets in at the beginning of this week. We've been checking on them every other day and have a game camera on them at all times-- they seem to be doing GREAT and love the space.
So my question is, does anyone have thoughts on maintaining biosecurity when there is no infrastructure?
I am worried about things like Marek's and avian flu for the birds, and the potential of contracting things like salmonella and listeria for us. Right now we are hand sanitizing before, during, and after the chicken checkup process, as well as wearing shoe covers when we enter the coop. Right now we've only been able to find cloth shoe covers, but planning to order some tyvek ones.
When we are camping out there (pretty much every weekend starting around this time of year) we have a hand washing station setup. But it's not really realistic to do a whole hand washing station when we are just driving out there before or after work during the week for a quick checkup. And, unless we are camping out there and have a tent setup, there is nowhere to realistically change clothes due to ticks everywhere.
Overall, I felt like we were pretty thorough in thinking out our plans for a "long-distance" flock. And so far, our plans have gone really well to start. The coop is predator-proof, and we have redundant feeders and waterers which hold enough that the chickens would be fine without any intervention from us for 2+ weeks. But something we didn't fully consider is how difficult it would be to keep things sanitary without a place to wash our hands.
As an aside, we also volunteer on an urban farm which has chickens, and those birds just run around on the city sidewalks with no biosecurity measures to speak of. Never any diseases in the many years that flock has been there, and they regularly kill and eat city rats. So, clearly, there are different schools of thought on what measures are necessary, LOL!