Preventing sickness

[CEO]

My chickens are coming to my coop and I wanna prevent them from getting sick. What are some ways to prevent sickness in chickens? I don’t want to have to deal with treating stuff.

 

[NatJ]

Things that help keep chickens healthy:

Safe coop, dry and relatively clean.

Water, clean and fresh and always available.

Food, constantly available (at least during daytime hours). A pelleted or crumbled feed often works better than one with whole grains. With whole grains, chickens will pick out their favorite parts and leave the rest, and then they will not get the right nutrients. With a crumble or pelleted food, chickens cannot pick and choose because all the ingredients were ground up & mixed together and then made into pellets.

Edit to add: space helps too. Crowded chickens are more likely to have trouble, while chickens with lots of space are often healthier and happier.


Depending on where you get the chickens, they may already have some kind of diseases or parasites, or they may be perfectly healthy. Baby chicks often hatch with no diseases, but the longer they have been alive and the more homes they have lived at, the more chances they have to pick up diseases and parasites.

 

[CEO]

Things that help keep chickens healthy:

Safe coop, dry and relatively clean.

Water, clean and fresh and always available.

Food, constantly available (at least during daytime hours). A pelleted or crumbled feed often works better than one with whole grains. With whole grains, chickens will pick out their favorite parts and leave the rest, and then they will not get the right nutrients. With a crumble or pelleted food, chickens cannot pick and choose because all the ingredients were ground up & mixed together and then made into pellets.

Edit to add: space helps too. Crowded chickens are more likely to have trouble, while chickens with lots of space are often healthier and happier.


Depending on where you get the chickens, they may already have some kind of diseases or parasites, or they may be perfectly healthy. Baby chicks often hatch with no diseases, but the longer they have been alive and the more homes they have lived at, the more chances they have to pick up diseases and parasites.

Thanks, trying to keep the run dry is my problem now

 

[Boise-girls]

Do a search for "biosecurity" in the article section of BYC and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know! Lots of good stuff!

 

[3KillerBs]

The best way to keep your chickens healthy is the same as it is for other animals and, indeed, for humans too:

1. A nutritious diet without too many treats. This is most easily accomplished by giving them a quality commercial feed, either pellets or crumble, that is appropriate to their age, stage of development, and laying status. Many of us here at BYC prefer to use "all-flock" feed with 18-20% protein and offer oystershell on the side for laying hens to eat free-choice.
2. Plenty of room to live in. Crowding creates stress, which can weaken the immune system, and leads to behavioral problems. The Usual Guidelines are to have at least 4 square feet in the coop and 10 square feet in the run for each adult, standard-size hen. These are, however, guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Here's a good article about that.
3. LOTS of fresh air. The usual guideline is to have a minimum of 1 square foot of ventilation for each adult, standard-sized hen -- best located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on their roost because heat and ammonia both rise. Climate matters -- my Outdoor Brooder has more than double the amount of ventilation suggested but in central NC in the spring I still had to put a shade pavilion over it to keep it from turning into an oven. BUT ventilation remains critical in cold climate winters because moisture build-up strongly contributes to frostbite.
4. Protection from weather. As a general rule, a dry chicken is a healthy chicken. That doesn't mean that they can't go out in the rain -- mine often choose to do so -- but it does mean that their coop should be dry and that they should be able to get out of the wind, especially when they roost. Heat is more dangerous to a chicken than cold. A dry chicken that's out of the wind can tolerate temperatures down to 0F or below.
5. Appropriate cleanliness. First, for the chickens themselves -- they will probably never need bathing, but they need to be able to give themselves dustbaths in order to remove stale preen oil from their feathers and smother ectoparasites before they can become established. Second, for their housing -- there are many ways to manage manure, all of which work in the correct circumstances. I'm a fan of Deep Bedding in my coop and Deep Litter in my run.

Good management doesn't rule out the possibility of disease, but, IMO, it gives your flock the best opportunity to maintain good health.

 

[Mrs. K]

Clean water daily
fresh food daily - but only enough for the day

• 24 hour food brings in rodents
• 24 hour food leads to spillage and waste

DRY, DRY, Dry - Not WARM...
Good ventilation, think wild birds on the prairie ventilation - damp chickens are sick and cold chickens

Wind breaks from predominant wind

Enough space - roosts, inside and out, hideouts, multiple feed stations hidden from birds eating at a different one.

These things keep birds healthy and functioning well as a flock.

Mrs K

ps. realistic understanding of roosters, what is normal, what can happen, how many to have... a lot of people have romantic visions of roosters that are not realistic.

 

[Ridgerunner]

My chickens are coming to my coop and I wanna prevent them from getting sick. What are some ways to prevent sickness in chickens?

An adequate balanced diet, clean water, and keep them as dry as you can. I'm not going to get into the weather stuff because that depends on where you live.

I try to strengthen their immune system instead of keeping them in a sterile environment. A couple of days after they go into the brooder I start feeding them dirt from the run a couple of times a week. That not only gets grit in their system but it gets them working on immunity from anything that is in the environment they will eventually be living in. That way moving them from the brooder to the coop or run where they come into contact with the ground isn't a huge shock to their system.

I don’t want to have to deal with treating stuff.

I don't treat mine unless I have something specific to treat for. I don't vaccinate mine for anything because none of mine have ever had anything that vaccination could help prevent. I regularly inspect mine so if I do need to treat for a disease or parasites I can get right on that before it becomes too serious.

 

[3KillerBs]

I don't treat mine unless I have something specific to treat for.

This.

I don't borrow trouble either.