Let's go and jump into a flock examination. And like Steve said, this can be something that's more of a Real-World questions you might get. Or, you know, if you're called to a backyard flock, what should I look at? There's a lot to look at. So let's see how we can organize this for you. One key concept that I always want you to keep in mind is if you're seeing a flock of birds, you're always going to want to examine and treat that flock as a unit. This is a population health aspect that goes into treating poultry. The reason that is, is because they're living so tightly close together. Most of the diseases that we see, unless they are, you know, a single disease and management related disease, trauma to one specific bird, etc., are going to be transmitted pretty quickly throughout that small flock setting. So you're going to want to treat and you're going to examine the whole flock because there's something you might miss and you definitely don't want to miss out on improving the health and welfare of everyone in that flock. So first things first, you're a vet, you've been trained to do your exams. You're going to want to do the same thing. So address your usual exam areas first. You're going to look at clinical signs. You're going to look at the history of these birds. You're going to look at their husbandry with your FLAWS model. You're going to examine their body systems, etc. So if you've been trained to do it at school, you should still be doing it in poultry, even though it's a feathered friend and a lot of these things are very similar, the anatomy is just a little bit different. You're going to want to evaluate the coop and flock area if you can. This can be harder, you know, especially if it's a single bird that's brought to you at a clinic. But you can ask pointed questions based on what you see in the exam room at that point, too. And you're, again, going to want to suss that full flock if you have access to them. And again, if you're in a small flock, or small animal clinic and you're in an exam room, you can ask, you know, is this happening to your other birds? How many other birds do you have? How are they housed, etc.? That's all an important part of your history. Then you're going to assess the things that are maybe more bird related that you might not have thought on if you haven't seen poultry before. So you're going to want to look at those feathers. Feathers are really important for thermoregulation of the bird and keeping them protected and clean from their environment as well. So look at the coverage. Do they look like they're fully feathered? Is that normal for them? What kind of quality of those feathers? So do these feathers look like really brittle or are they broken or are they dirty? Is anything wrong with the feather? Footpad and shank. So when I say shank, I mean these little yellow, scaly areas of the legs down here. You're going to look at the quality of this areas. So ideally you're going to want to see a nice, slippery, thin shank. You don't want any sort of thickness or lumps, bumps, odd discoloration associated with that. You want to have the footpad the clean, nothing adherent, definitely no breaks in the skin. Cleanliness of footpads is really important, especially in a clinic setting, because if you have a bird that has made it all the way to the clinic and they still have dirty foot pads, it speaks to probably the space that they came out of. They might be in a muddy coop, etc. That's something you can improve their health and welfare and just by informing their pet parent then of what to do. You're going to assess body condition, which I'm going to show you how to do in just a second. And then you're also going to look at indicators of reproductive status, especially in egg laying birds. And this is important because you want to make sure that if they are laying eggs, that you're making sure that they're laying eggs appropriately. You're going to want to see if they've ever come into lay. So, you know, did they have a nutritional challenge that prevented them from sexually maturing? Something like that. You look at the comb and wattles for that, especially in males, you're going to want to see a bright red comb, full wattles that are thin. You're going to see them colored appropriately for their breed. You can always Google a picture of those chicken breeds that you're not sure about just in case. And then you can also palpate the pelvic opening of egg laying birds. So in these birds, the pubic symphysis doesn't fully fuze, and that's what allows them to lay an egg because it's open a little bit. So the general rule of thumb is if it's a non bantam birds, so it's a normal size hen and not a mini hen, you're going to to be able to place three fingers between the opening there. And you can do that just by gently pressing on that area of the anatomy through the body wall. And if you feel the bone on either side of those three fingers, it means she's laying eggs because the pelvis is actually moved to accommodate that. So that's a pretty good indication she came into lay. 

When you're catching and restraining these birds, it's, there's some important aspects of this. It's not always obvious. People sometimes are a little overwhelmed by like, how do I grab a chicken? Do not compress a bird's body. So you probably learned this in your exotics classes. But you know, the way birds respire is that they actually move their body wall to pump air in and out of their air sacs and through their lungs. This means that if you hold the bird really tightly, you can actually prevent it from breathing, which can lead to suffocation over time. I would say that most people will not be doing this, but don't clutch chickens. Hold them gently. Make sure that their wings are restrained if you're needing them not to flap, but don't really squeeze. The way we catch and we restrain birds is going to change a little bit based on the species. And that's because anatomy changes between these and there's different needs to accommodate. So for chickens, we are going to try to catch them with a grip on both shanks. So that means you're going to grab around their little scaly ankles and the way to catch them. Birds in general respond poorly to you coming up over them because they're going to interpret that as sort of like an aerial hawk or some type of predator. So if you need to grab a chicken, go in from below and grab those ankles, and then you can actually take your other hand to restrain the bird. If you need to, you can actually pick them up, chickens, by those ankles, those scaly shanks right around the hock area and pick them up and use them to get a better hold, and that's totally fine. When you're holding them, especially for a prolonged period of time, you're going to want to support the breast for them. That's going to keep them calm. It's also just more comfortable in general. This is a nice photo on the slide of an older woman holding a pet chicken. You can see he's pretty relaxed, but she's holding him appropriately. She's restraining both of his wings so he can't flap and get away from her. But she's doing it gently so he can still breathe. If you're holding a bird that might be trying to really wiggle away from you and doesn't know you as well as this chicken knows its person, you can also put the chicken under one armed hold both of the wings down, and then use your other hand to hold the shanks underneath that. Turkeys, it's going to be a little different because turkeys are much larger birds. To catch turkeys, you're going to want to corral them. You're not just going to want to grab for them. It's not going to work. So go ahead and move them gently into a smaller place. You can use that like a cardboard box or any sort of big thing you have just to corral them gently into an area. To control them, you're going to reach down and grab their shanks and then use a wing to sort of lift them up so you can cradle them under the breast. Importantly, though, don't just grab them up by their shanks and hold them up by their shanks. They're pretty heavy. And you can cause orthopedic damage that might. In waterfowl, this is the spookier one. It's very different here. Don't catch them by their shanks. They have weak little ankles. We don't want to do any joint damage to the waterfowl. We already know that they're prone to bumble foot too, so we don't need to add any trauma to them. You're going to want to use a net. And when I say a net, I mean like a big old butterfly net, like a fish catching net, some type of net where you can just go whomp over the top, then you can go ahead and restrain them. You can actually in these birds, because they've evolved to have migratory behaviors, they have very strong musculature in their neck and their backs. You can grab them up behind their wings like right close to their body and use those to hold them. Even stranger, you can actually grab these birds by their neck and use them to move them over fences or pass them along. Don't squeeze, but again, you can grab them by their necks and they'll be well supported and that's totally fine. At the end of this presentation, there's going to be a resources slide and there's a really good presentation there by Purdue University about how to actually catch all of these different types of birds and I recommend you use it so you can look like a pro in front of your clients. 

You're going to go in and you're collecting blood from these birds. There's some things to be aware of, too. So venipuncture in general, when you are doing venipuncture on birds, avian blood clots quickly and veins are prone to bruising. It doesn't mean that you're a bad vet that you didn't get just a clean poke, there's often going to be a little bit of a hematoma left over. That's okay. The best venipuncture site is going to be your brachial wing vein. That's what I was taught this vein is called. But we also see in our anatomy textbooks that it's circled right here called the basilic vein in some of those areas. The way you're going to find this is by actually restraining the bird and spreading the wing, and as you look at this area of the anatomy, so right here, their upper arm, you could say almost, you're going to see a nice, beautiful vein. Chicken skin is very thin. So you can be able to see it lovely under the skin there and aim for it. And it's going to be pretty visually easy to find. It does take practice, though, because their skin is different. Additional options include your metatarsal vein. So, that's going to be running down the quote unquote ankle. And then jugular veins as well. Jugular veins are often very useful, especially for the bigger birds. One thing I would like to point out is do not use cardiac venifunction in live birds. This is something that is kind of an old fashioned thing to see. Folks would actually put a needle through the body wall directly into the heart to pull blood. Do not do this. This is very poor animal welfare practice in general, but it also leads to quite high mortality outcomes in general, because if you make even a little bit of a miss, you're going to cause a wound that will not heal and you can actually cause exanguination. So pro tips though, when you are collecting blood. If you were in a chicken house or coop or there's birds around you that are loose, do not set down any shiny object, including a syringe or any tiny, colorful piece of plastic because the birds will come up and steal them. And every professional commercial poultry vet has a story about having to chase down a chicken, holding a syringe in a house. Don't let it be you in front of clients. If you are going solo and you're taking blood alone in birds kudos to you. You're really getting up your skills. This is totally doable. I do this frequently for work. You're going to restrain the legs under your upper arm, under your armpit, and then you're just going to hold the bird, spread the wing and poke the vein, as you would. It's very easy. Next time you're holding a chicken, you can just practice that type of holding and get more confidence in it. 

Okay. We just talked about this a little bit with Steve, but when you are choosing diagnostics, consider if those diagnostics are going to be useful to you. So for bloodwork, you know, a lot of people pull bloodwork and that's something that we do frequently because we have a lot of great base lines in small animals, large animals, but for avian species ensure you have a goal for what you're going to looking at. If you're looking at serology, what diseases are you monitoring for? You know, serology is looking back in time, it's not a PCR. It doesn't tell us about necessarily current infections. So what hope are you going to get out of it? If you're pulling for a clin path on birds, do you have a baseline for your interpretation? There are books available that have poultry baselines for clin path, but I would say that those do vary a lot based on breed and the location that you're in physically. So it's helpful if you're going to be doing this frequently, almost to generate your own database to compare as well. If you're doing Radiographs, are you comfortable in interpreting radiographs for birds? I see a lot of what I call birdagrams put on to vet groups where it's just like a whole chicken under a radiograph. Sometimes I wonder whether that was like a you know, we have to find something, we have to find it now moment. If you need help interpreting these radiographs or whether you think that it would be helpful to take one initially, it's a great idea just to call your local exotics specialist, call your local university, see what they think before you just go and do it. And as you gain experience, you'll be able to make those calls yourself easily. And you know, when in doubt in general, you can call your local exotics hospital if that's something that you're seeing in a clinic and you're having, like, how do I manage this wound kind of conversations? If you're having more of a there's a disease outbreak or I'm suspicious of an infectious disease here, then maybe pivot and call your local poultry diagnostic laboratory or a local agricultural extension. If you have a patient that passes, that does happen. And I would recommend that you always necropsy when given the chance. So it's important to tell clients about the importance and what we hope to learn to improve the health and welfare of the rest of their flock through necropsy. There are visual guides online if you're not comfortable or haven't had much practice yet, you can learn so much. You can learn a lot about how the bird lived and things to prevent other issues in the flock. I really recommend doing so. And then finally, always call and rely on your poultry diagnostic labs for support. There are so many out there. They're all across the U.S. and Canada. They're excited and enthusiastic to help you. There's a lot of agricultural extension agents that can even come with you sometimes to do on site visits and aid a lot of expertise. So extension agencies, your veterinary schools, they'll provide guidance for how to do your flock examinations, how to collect samples, what you should be looking for. And they will often offer a lot of different diagnostics, molecular and micro serology and also necropsies. So if you just want to pass along the necropsy so that they can take tissues and do histopath, maybe, that's always available. So don't hesitate to lean on your resources. We are here to help.