Right. Okay. So thank you, everyone, again for joining us today. Today, we'll be talking about backyard poultry, small flock poultry overview and top diseases. One of the really special things about Zuku Review is that it really prepares you to be a veterinarian after you graduate and not just for your exams that you're using to prepare for today. So some of these things you'll see will be directly related to your NAVLE® or your BCSE prep and the others will just be things that you might want to know with your own practice. So as Steve mentioned, it is super common to be asked to come look in a couple of chickens on your way out the door from a house call in a mixed animal call, or have someone even bring in a pet chicken to the ER or your small animal clinic. If you're not already seeing those in practice, It's a great way to increase your practices' revenue and a good value proposition for you as a new associate too. So if you can get comfortable with chickens there's a lot of great things you can do. One thing we'll preface this by saying is this is going to be geared towards the North American audience. So, you know, things like husbandry and diseases and bird acquisition for these types of flocks is going to vary a lot all across the world. I practice in North America. I was trained in North America. So this is going to be directed towards that North American zone. But a lot of it will be applicable for you abroad as well. 

So overview of what we'll be talking about today. We'll go through sort of top to bottom. We'll start with some bird acquisition and husbandry dos and don'ts, how to examine a flock if you've never come into it before so you're not overwhelmed at the thought. Some small flock pharmacology basics, dos and don'ts. We'll talk about some top nutrition topics because that's a big thing in small flocks, some egg production disorders, because most of the birds you'll see in these situations will actually be egg laying hens. A little bit of parasitology and then we'll review with some diseases of concern. That'll be less in-depth, but you can always go back to those recorded Sunday seminars we gave earlier this year about viral, bacterial and parasitology in poultry. 

So let's jump in with bird acquisition and husbandry for small flocks. Okay. So the number one goal here, when you talk about bird acquisition and husbandry and you're going to your clients and you're hoping they have great outcomes, is that you want to preserve health and welfare. And that's our whole job as veterinarians. So it's gold standard to do this is through great disease prevention. This means gold standard is all in, all out. And when I say that, I mean when you bring in a new flock, everyone joins a new flock. And there is it's sort of a no new friends policy. By the time you need to add any more chickens, there should be nobody left around. So that might be, you know, a couple of three or four years after you started, just by the end or if you're, you know, selling your birds off for food production, that might be every so often. But the goal is you want to deplete your current flock before adding new birds. This prevents you adding new diseases that weren't already present in your flock in the middle of your growth cycle and causing issues in the middle. We know that that's not always applicable, especially in these cases where these are backyard flocks, they're pet flocks. The you know, you have one chicken taken by a fox and they know it needs a friend and they want to get a new one. This means you might have to make some exceptions. So you should always talk about the risk of introducing disease with your clients when they add new birds. But you can also tell them that the silver standard here is just add a new chick. The reason you want to add chicks instead of adult birds is that the chicks are less likely to bring in disease because they've been around less long. They don't have as much time to pick things up. The idea, though, of backfilling so continuously buying new birds, specifically older birds, you're just you know, you're out and about. Around where I live in Pennsylvania, there's lots of livestock auctions. So if you're having plans that are dropping into those and seeing an interesting bird and buying one every other week and bringing them in, integrating them to their flock, this is a huge biosecurity flaw. It's an issue in commercial poultry to the point where it will cause you to lose points on biosecurity and animal welfare audits for this reason. You don't want to be doing that. There's a lot of things those birds can bring in. They can cause animal health and welfare issues in your existing flock. Something that I always like to remind clients if they are interested in going out and looking at livestock auction birds, is are those birds that you're buying for a just a song at these auctions, are they actually good, healthy laying birds? Or do they have some type of hidden disease that we don't know about until it recrudecses once it's on your property? Would people really be selling off all these wonderful prime laying birds for so cheap prices? So the thought's always there. Take as much caution as you can when you add new birds to your small flocks and do encourage people to get great chicks instead because they're less likely to introduce disease. 

When you're buying chicks, there's also the best ways to buy chicks and the okay ways to buy chicks. The best ways to buy chicks are to buy chicks from national poultry improvement plans certified flocks and hatcheries. So this is something that you should know if you're going to be looking at poultry in the United States. It's also something that has a lot of analogous regulatory agencies across the world. So in the U.S., the National Poultry Improvement Program is a program administered by the USDA, it was started in 1930s, and it's a voluntary state, federal cooperative testing and certification program that was initially focused on eliminating bacillary white diarrhea and pullorum disease. So these are types of poultry specific Salmonella serovars that were causing massive poultry die offs in 1930s. It was really successful at that. You know, we're testing birds before we're distributing chicks and really helped us limit the spread of disease. So now this program has actually expanded and we're focusing it now on containing and limiting various vertical diseases in the poultry industry. So this might be other salmonella serovars, including ones that we're worried about for maybe human health concerns, as well as things like mycoplasma, which we know can be transmitted vertically and is a major bacterial disease of backyard and small flocks. The NPIP, though, is also super important because it helps us maintain international poultry trade because it limits disease in commercial poultry. So other trading agencies, other trading nations are more confident in the things that we export under NPIP because they have more confidence that those aren't going to transmit poultry disease to them. So how does this apply to small backyard flocks? You too can buy chicks for your backyard flock from an NPIP monitored or certified flock. What you're going to look for ideally, is to avoid salmonella introductions, especially if you're going to have your clients be eating eggs or meat from their backyard flocks. It's also a great idea if you can find it, to get a mycoplasma monitored chick program chick, because that's going to eliminate some of the risk of bringing mycoplasma from those new birds into your existing flock. So if your local hatchery participates definitely go for those birds. You can click on this link that I've provided and check if the hatchery participates. You can also call them and check. The USDA website for NPIP is actually poultryimprovement.org. There's a lot of really good information there. If you're going into poultry in any, any extent, especially in the commercial side, I highly recommend you read those regulations. But takeaway point, if you're buying chicks, try to buy them from an NPIP Salmonella monitored or certified free flock. 

But no matter where you get your chicks, you're still have a risk of disease transmission, both from the chicks and to the chicks, which means it's very important that whenever you introduce any new bird to your flock, that you quarantine these birds. I recommend a 14 day minimum quarantine. And when I mean minimum, you can extend it further if you're worried. 21 days would be even better, but it's kind of hard sometimes for our clients, especially in a backyard setting, to set up two separate coop structures. You're going to be watching for clinical signs during this time. Anything that you might be concerned about, whether that be changes in fecal content, loose feces, bloody feces, you're going to be listening for respiratory signs. Are they snicking? Are they sneezing? Puffy eyes, any type of nasal discharge, anything that would make you concerned about disease, because then you have the chance to pursue diagnostics and understand what's happening before you actually introduce that disease into the rest of your flock. What quarantine means in this case is fully separate. So separate your feed and water. There's no shared feed or trough. There's no shared water source. You're going to visit them the last in the day. So if you're going up to ten your birds, you're going to go to your existing birds and then go to your new birds because you don't want any new diseases coming in to your existing flock and you're going to wash your clothes after you do that and wear designated footwear, if available. Can sound kind of kooky sometimes for these back yard clients who really view these birds as pets, but it's really important for disease prevention. They should not have any contact with the resident flock during quarantine, even through fencing. You're going to want a good space between these areas. So you can set up, you know, a pen for the new birds. You can have them quarantined maybe in a warm, well-ventilated garage even, but they shouldn't be able to share beak to beak zones. Another good point to note is that vaccinations will vary by hatchery because a lot of these vaccines in poultry are actually administered after they have hatched. However, most backyard chicks in the U.S. are unvaccinated when they come to you. This isn't necessarily a problem in the United States. So we actually have a fairly low disease challenge. The types of vaccines that we're giving on a commercial basis sometimes aren't fully applicable to the disease challenge in a small backyard flock because the pressure's lower, because we have less population in that area, we're having a less repeated historical population of birds in that section. That being said, if you can have a Marek's disease vaccination, I recommend it whenever possible. Marek's disease is something we covered in our Viral Diseases of Importance to Poultry Sunday Seminar. It is an oncogenic viral disease that's really common in backyard flocks. It's pretty much ubiquitous. So doesn't matter where you are. If you're in North America and you place a bird there, they have a high risk of getting Marek's disease. Sometimes that can be a problem. Sometimes it remains subclinical for the life of the bird. It's hard to predict. So if you can get vaccinated, that's great. Go ahead and call that hatchery when you're checking on NPIP status, ask them, do you vaccinate for Marek's disease? And if they say yes, the next best thing to ask is what type of vaccine do you administer? And the question there is going to be, is it a cell associated vaccine? So is it frozen? Does it come in a liquid nitrogen doer like the one that's shown on the screen? The reason you going to ask this is because the cell associated vaccines that are stored frozen here are actually administering chicken cells that have the virus inside the cell to the bird. So when those cells go into your new chicks, they're not going to be attacked by maternal antibodies because they're kind of in the costume of a different chicken cell. And they get away with it and they get into your bird and they actually cause that lovely vaccine infection that we want. Versus if you have a cell free vaccine, you're going to inject that virus right into the bird. The maternal antibodies in a day old chick are going to recognize it because, again, Marek's disease is ubiquitous and they're going to attack the virus and you're probably going to have a very low vaccine take because of that. So a cell associated virus is better, but it's harder to find because storing and using liquid nitrogen is a training hazard sometimes for these hatches. They do, though, have to be vaccinated for Marek's for best effect before chick delivery, because we want the vaccine virus, which is attenuated and helpful for protection to be the first one into the bird system or it won't be effective. 

Okay. Now we're going to move on to how to manage those flocks once you've actually got them on your property. There is a lot to look at when you're looking at husbandry, especially of a like pseudo agricultural species here in a backyard. So what you're going to do is you're going to go in with an acronym that's going to help you organize your thoughts when you're actually assessing husbandry. And that's what we call FLAWS. So the FLAWS model is F stands for feed, L stands for light, A stands for air, W stands for water and S stands for space or sanitation. We're going to talk about water here to start with because we're going to talk about feed and light a little bit later in this presentation. Okay, So to jump down on water, water contamination can quickly and easily spread disease and toxins throughout a flock. This is well known. We see this in the commercial industry, too. It's one of the simplest things you can do to prevent bird to bird spread of a lot of diseases is just by not letting them, you know, snort and get nasal secretions into their water, not letting them drink dirty puddle water. You want to have a clean, fresh source of water for them. You're going to want to physically clean and sanitize those drinkers regularly. That sounds like easy to ask for, right? But sometimes when you go in, you see these small flocks. He noticed that they're drinking out of like a dirty bucket or like a dirty bowl. And it just doesn't look sanitary. It probably isn't. They actually do need to be physically cleaning and sanitizing those on a regular basis. And the best thing to do if you have the ability to do is implement a closed water system. This is different than an open water system because it prevents contamination bird to bird because it only dispenses water when the bird is drinking. So examples of a closed water system in a commercial setting are shown on the slide. So you can see this turkey here is approaching this water. He's going to lean down to drink out of this little pool of water, but as he does, his head is going to bunk onto this little column. And that's where can actually dispense water into the pool for him to drink. This considered closed, right? Because you're not having just an open bowl of water there all the time. So if you had just an open bucket or a bowl of water, any turkey could put their head in there. They could get turkey snot in there. They could transmit bacteria back and forth and other wild birds, rodents could drink out of that. It just becomes very messy. Another option for closed water systems are these little pin drinker lines. This is a similar concept just on a smaller scale. These are typically for chickens. So they're going to come and as a peck right here at this little pin it's going to dispense water as it moves and they can drink it out of this little cup. And that's not a volume that we worry about getting dirty and transmitting disease bird to bird. These are available too for, you know, attachments even on to like a cooler. So if you have like your typical backyard tailgate cooler, you can fill it with nice, fresh, clean water and put one of these on and have your birds trained to use it and always have a fresh, clean water source. So this is definitely attainable and I recommend it. 

Space is also really important. So, the physical space that the birds occupy. And you have to remember, you know, these birds are living their entire lives in this space. We want it to be enrichable, you want it to be clean, you want it to be comfortable. They need space to do their various activities. So that means they need shelter at all times of day, and especially during the night. If they're an egg laying type of bird, they need a place where they feel safe and comfortable to lay their eggs. So a more enclosed area like a nest box. They need spaces to eat and drink that are clean. And places to scratch and do other sort of bird activities, just as you would enrich the lives of cats and dogs in a home, you also need to enrich the lives of birds. So we're going to make sure that we make the space adequate for the bird size. So, you know, if you have little chickens like bantams out in your backyard, they probably need a lot less space and a big old turkey would. So you want to make sure that there's actually adequate roaming area. And you also want to make sure there's adequate area for you. And the reason I say this is because it's super important to keep the space clean. You need to be able to scrape out extra chicken poop. You need to be able to go in there and fix things that get broken, need to be able just inspect the space and if it's too low or you have to bend over or even crawl into your coop space, that's going to disincentivize a human from actually doing those necessary tasks. So I always encourage people to have a clean, comfortable space for both you and your birds. So something like this coop that's shown on the slide is sort of top notch for me. You can see that this is easily a human height. You could walk into this and get all of the activities done you need. Back here, you see, there is an enclosed nest box space for those birds to lay eggs. You can see perching areas, this is probably a feed dispenser. It's a great setup. Whenever possible, also, you're going to want to separate flock areas from wild bird contact. So this isn't always possible depending on how this flock is set up. So the way this slide is shown, you know, in this coop, these birds are protected from wild birds. They have not only a roof, but screening on the side, which means everything inside is kept inside and everything outside is kept out. That's ideal. And we know things like songbirds and finches can transmit mycoplasma into poultry species. And that's a disease issue. And we don't want them sharing our waters or feed. We definitely don't want them getting in and scratching around in that same area can cause a lot of problems. So if you can separate them, great. If you have a backyard situation where they're actually on pasture in a backyard and they're only coming in to coop at night, you know, you can control those critical control points as best you can. So that point, I would recommend putting a water and feeder in an enclosed space with a roof on it. Just make it less enticing to wild birds. Your chickens and turkeys will still be able to come in and out, but you just don't want those wild birds coming and taking advantage of those amenities and spreading disease. 

Okay. Moving on to sanitation. Also sounds obvious, but it is really it can be difficult to manage depending on how many birds you have in one space. Make sure that the litter, whatever substrate those birds are walking, living on is dry and replace or top dress the litter when it's soiled. So by top dress I mean put more over the top and add a layer of dry clean litter whenever you can, and that just keep it soft and easily accessible for the birds so they don't get any contact related issues with having just moist substrate under them all the time. The ideal thing to use here is kiln dried pine shavings. That's very specific. And the reason I specifically say pine shavings is because hardwoods, so things like oak, cherry, ash, maple hardwoods, shavings are more likely to have Aspergillus spores in them. So if you're placing day old baby chicks like the ones shown in this picture on the hardwood shavings, you might have more of an issue with fungal pneumonia later in life and you might actually lose chicks to that. So avoid it altogether. Make sure you get pine. Kiln dried shavings mean they're super, super dry. There's not an ounce of moisture in them, which means they're available to absorb any water spills, any moisture that's coming out of feces and anything else that's in that coop. And it really holds it well and manages it so that the birds aren't constantly walking around in muck and mud. You can buy these at least where I'm living, at almost any tractor supply store, they sold them in big bales, the same type of thing that you would maybe buy to use in a barn situation with horses. You can manage sand and you can manage straw. And I've seen folks do that. It does take a lot more work. And those both of those substrates are more likely to be wet over time, persistently wet. And you never want to have your birds standing on persistently wet conditions that can lead to things like Bumble Foot, which we'll talk about later. And it can also just be deeply uncomfortable for them. Again, if they're living in an enclosed space for their entire lives with us, we want to make sure that they're as comfortable as possible. So when you move out those flocks, too. So if you're moving locations or you've sold your birds to market, whatever you might be doing, remove litter, scoop it out physically, clean it out, scrape the bottom, get rid of it, Also dust things down. Dust can harbor a lot of bacteria, it's known to harbor salmonella, which is a major poultry issue. And then you're going to want to wet wash everything. And that means soap, water washing. And if you can spray a sanitizer on, that's even better after you've wet washed. So make sure between flocks it's clean and dry as much as you can do during the flock. Make sure it's clean and dry. And for you and especially as a vet coming in, you know, you might be seeing many flocks over the course of the week or over the course of a month. You never want to be implicated as a source of disease yourself. You want to make sure that you are clean and biosecure when you're coming into this facility because you are a trusted resource. So basic human biosecurity measures, especially for vets, is very important. So that means designated footwear or wear boot covers when you go to see birds on backyards or on farms, maybe get some jumpsuits or coveralls that you can wash or just the plastic kind you throw away after every visit. Even for people who are actually owning these birds, having just a pair of designated muck boots can be really important because they're not walking in everything that they might have walked through their front yard and stepped in, you know, pigeon poop or something like that, and walking it into their birds. So even just having some of those basic biosecurity measures can have a huge impact on bird health. 

And I keep saying that, but all of these FLAWS measures, so all of your husbandry measures do have that direct impact on bird health. One of these great ones is podadermatitis, which we call affectionately bumble foot in poultry. This is a disease that is directly related to poor management. Typically, bumble foot is an ascending infection of staphylococcus or some type of enteric bacteria that's present on the soil from a break in the footpad tissue or skin. You can see a picture of this that's very common. On the right here you can see these blackened areas of scabbing. You can see also the footpad is swollen on these ducks. And so they probably had breaks in the skin here, here and here leading to some type of infection. Waterfowl are particularly susceptible to this, but I see it in chickens a lot as well. You want to make sure that the space that these birds occupy is going to eliminate this risk, because again, these ascending infections, they're unpleasant, they're painful, but they can also cause joint damage so they can go all the way up your ligaments into your joint spaces, and they become very difficult to treat and they become huge welfare issues over time. So to prevent this, we're going to look back at our FLAWS model. We're going to look at our husbandry. We want to make sure there's no sharp objects or corners in the litter that they might be pressing their feet on and getting cuts, making sure that if you're if they're walking over mulch or anything like that, that there's no sharp pieces in there. You're going to want to keep litter conditions dry to prevent ammonia burns to the feet. So bacteria, their metabolism over time in litter, and we know there's a lot of bacteria because poultry poop in their litter is going to generate ammonia in the presence of heat and moisture. That is actually something that can cause cutaneous burns on the paws of these birds, which can be that direct entrance that the bacteria needs to get up into a footpad. So keep things dry, keeping soft top dress the litter when you can. Treating these systemically, so like oral antibiotics, injectable antibiotics is typically unsuccessful. The reason that is, is because these spaces, especially if it's a joint infection, can be kind of walled off from the immune system. And these are also species that form really tight granulomas. So they're not going to have a sort of liquid pus area in those feet. They're going to have little plugs of caseous material. And so they'll do their very best on their own immune system to wall off those bacteria, and it's going to cause more issues for that antibiotic to get in there. So improve your management. If you have a bird that looks like this, you can recommend daily Epsom salt soaks for those feet until that affected core is expelled. That might take a couple of weeks. So it is an intensive thing to treat these. Difficult cases may respond well to surgery, especially if it's been going on for a long time and you've had no success with other forms of management. I would recommend you speak to an exotic specialist or a surgeon about that though, before you go into it, consult your anatomy textbooks. There's a lot of ligaments and important structures in there that you're going to need to do a really good job about sanitation and bandage management if you pursue surgery.