Backyard Poultry Flashcards
What are outdoor hybrid poultry breeds?
- Black rock
- Calder Ranger
- Blue belle
- Speckledy
- Amber star
What are pure breeds?
- Ancona
- Brahma
- Cochin
- Malay
- New Hampshire Red
- Old English Game Bantam
- Plymouth Rock
- Scots Grey
What are commercial laying hybrids?
- Isa brown
- Hissex brown
- Hy-line
What are commercial meat hybrids?
- Ross
- Cobb
- Hubbard
What history should be taken with a phone call?
- Location
- Housing - environment
- Management - feed, water, vermin
- Flock details - source, health
- Biosecurity measures
Why is housing important? what needs to be regulated?
- Protection - adverse weather + predators
- Temperature
- Ventilation
- Dustiness
- Ammonia / other gas development
What can improper handling lead to?
- Respiratory distress
- Skeletal injuries
- Stress
- Dead
What are normal TPR for poultry?
- Temp = 40-42 oC
- HR = 120-160 bpm
- RR = 20-130 brpm
When assessing a bird what should be checked?
- Temp
- Mouth
- Oropharynx
- External parasites
- Vent
- Abdomen
- Feathers
What are external parasites of birds?
- Lice
- Red mite
- Northern fowl mite
- Scaly leg mite
- De-plumbing mite
Where can you take blood samples of birds?
- Wing vein
- Right jugular vein
How can faecal samples be collected?
- Cloacal swab
- Dropping
What worm eggs could be seen?
- Gizzard worm
- Trichostrongyle
- Heterakis
- Gapeworm
- Capilaria
Protozoal = Eimeria spp
What can be used for imaging?
- Radiography
- Ultrasound
- Endoscopy
What should be seen in normal bird?
- Dry nostril
- Red comb
- Bright eyes
- Normal shaped beak
- Present + shiny feathers
- Clean vent
- Straight toes
What are skeletal conditions of birds?
- Fractures
- Kyphosis
- Scoliosis
- Spondylosis
- Bent breastbone
- Rickets
- Bent toes
What glands do birds have?
- Uropygieal / preen gland = produce lipid secretion for feather maintenance
- Within outer auditory canal
- Ventral glands of cloaca
What are the functions of feathers?
- Flight
- Insulation value = temp regulation + incubation/brooding
- Behaviour
- Moulting
What is a brood patch?
- Mostly caudal half of the ventral apterium (eg. Raptors, pigeon and passerines
- Hormon controlled
- Prior to laying, brood patch looses all/part feathers and highly vascularised
- Many thermo-receptors
- Subsequent cycle of moulting, feathers regrown
What are problems related to feathers?
- Feather pecking
- Moulting
- Wing clipping
- Nutrition
- De-plumbing mite
How do you perform wing clipping?
- Cut first 10 primary feathers on one wing - stop chickens from flying away - over fences
What are indicators of skin problems?
- Discoloured comb = pale, purple, black, yellow, white flakes, white spots
What else is seen with skin problems?
- Breast blisters
- Wounds
- Ear infections
- Ringworm
- Bumble foot
- Spurs
- Vent pecking
- Erysipelas
how can you treat external parasites?
- Flurolaner
- Louse powder = louse + mites (if contain permethrin)
- Scaly leg mite = surgical spirit
What are the internal parasites?
- Capillaria- intestines = ill thrift + fatal
- Heterakis - Caeca = ill thrift, vector (Histomonas)
- Ascarids - intestines = ill thrift, impaction
- Trichostrongyle - intestines = ill thrift, severe weight loss (Grouse)
- Tape worm - intestines = ill thrift + weight loss
- Gizzard worm - gizzard = fatal in young stock
How can you treat internal parasites?
- Flubendazole = licenced
What are digestive tract problems?
- Sour crop / crop mycosis
- Impacted / pendulous crop
- Impacted gizzard
- Bacterial infections - E.coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Clostridium
- Viral infections - Rota, Reo, Corona + Astrovirus
- Nutritional diarrhoea
- Nutritional disorders
What is seen with the liver in a campylobacter infection?
- Spotty liver
What can cause non-infectious respiratory problems?
- Tumours
- Behaviour
- Nutrition
- Management
- Environment
- Physical
- Chemical
What can cause infectious respiratory problems?
*Infectious Bronchitis
*Avian metapneumovirus
* Infectious laryngotracheitis
* Mycoplasmosis
* Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale
* Aspergillosis
*Gape worm
*Chlamydiosis – zoonotic
*Newcastle disease –notifiable/zoonotic
*Avian influenza – notifiable/zoonotic
*Pigeon paramyxovirus - notifiable
What are signs or respiratory problems?
- Nasal discharge
- Noisy breathing
- Head shaking
- Blocked nares
- Coughing,
- Sneezing
- Gasping
What is seen with chlamydiosis?
- Purulent ocular + nasal discharge
- Conjunctivitis
- Dull + depressed
- No response to macrolides
What is seen with Aspergillus fumigatus?
- Birds gasping for air - young (dyspnoea)
- Production drops
What happens in each part of the reproductive tract?
- Infundibulum = 0.5hr - capture ovum
- Magnum = 3hr - albumin added
- Isthmus = 1.25hr - shell membranes added
- Uterus = 20hr - egg shell added
What is the incubation of poultry species?
- Chicken = 21 days
- Turkeys = 28 days
- Ducks = 28 days
- Muscovy duck = 35 days
- Pheasant = 24-26 days
- Pigeon = 16-19 days
What is candling?
- 9-10d after incubation
- Determine fertility of eggs - use small bright torch at broad end of egg in dark room
How can you sex chicks?
- Using feathers
What are common breeder/layer problems?
- Oviduct infection - E.coli
- Egg peritonitis - common in good layers, ascites, peritonitis + dead
- IBV infection = mish-shapen/weak eggs, watery whites, rough shell, cystic oviduct
- M synoviae
- Egg bound = lack of calcium
- Vent gleet
- Pyometra
What viruses can be vertically transmitted?
- Reovirus - viral arthritis
- Retroviruses - lymphoid leucosis
- Adenoviruses - marple spleen disease in pheasants
- quail bronchitis
- turkey haemorrhagic enteritis
- egg drop syndrome
- Astroviruses
What bacterial pathogens can be vertically transmitted?
- Salmonella
- E coli
- Staphylococci
- Mycoplasma
What fungal pathogens can be vertically transmitted?
- Aspergillus spp
What are common urinary problems?
- Mainly nephritis + nephrosis
- Non infectious =
-water deprivation
-water / feed quality
-minerals, toxic substances + excessive salt - Infectious =
-IBV - bronchitis
-IBDV- bursal disease
-Marek’s
-Bacterial infections - Uroliths
What are non infectious problems of the nervous system?
- Poison - botulism, heavy metals, phenol + salt
- Nutritional - deficiency - Vit A, Vit E, thiamine
What are infectious problems of the nervous system?
- Newcastle disease virus
- Avian influenza virus
- Aspergillus spp
- Marek’s disease
What diseases can affect the immune system of poultry?
- Infectious bursal disease virus
- Chicken anaemia virus
- Marek’s virus
- Reticuloendotheliosis virus
- Reovirus
- Haemorrhagic enteritis virus
- Mycotoxicosis
What anaesthesia is used for poultry?
- Ketamine SC / IM
- Iso / sevofluorane
- Intubation
- Raise head to prevent regurgitation of crop contents
What analgesia is used for poultry?
- Buprenorphine
- Carprofen
- Ketoprofen
- Meloxicam
How would you euthanise a poultry?
- Pentobarbitone - IV wing, jugular
- IM breast muscle after masking down
- Intracardiac via long needle to thoracic inlet
- Neck dislocation <3Kg
Where would you take a blood sample in a waterfowl?
- Medial metatarsal vein
What are neonatal problems in waterfowl?
- Starving
- Yolk-sac infection
- Yolk-sac retention / rupture
- Chilling
- Leg + wing deformities
- Infections - E.coli, Aspergillus fumigatus
What is angel wing how is it treated?
- Excessive protein intake = urates deposited in soft joints
- Tx = Decrease protein
How is rickets treated in waterfowl?
- Supplement Vit D
What are repro problems of waterfowl?
- Egg peritonitis
- Egg binding
what are viral infections of waterfowl?
- Duck viral enteritis – Herpesvirus, live and inactivated vaccines
- Duck viral hepatitis – Picornavirus, inactivated vaccine for breeders
- Goose viral hepatitis (Derzy’s disease) – Parvovirus, inactivated vaccination breeders
- Haemorrhagic nephritis, enteritis of geese - Polyomavirus, inactivated vaccine
- Avian influenza – Orthomyxovirus, no vaccine in UK
What are bacterial / fungal infectious diseases of waterfowl?
- Mycoplasmosis
- Salmonellosis
- E coli
- Pasteurellosis:-
- P multocida
- P anatipestifer
- Chlamydiophilosis
- Yersiniosis
- Avian TB
- Aspergillosis
- Candidiasis
What is the most common signs of disease in waterfowl?
- Lameness
- Lethargy
- Weight loss
- Sudden death
What are non-infectious conditions of water fowl?
- Bumblefoot
- Oil contamination
- Amyloidosis
- Capture mycopathy
- Fishing line and look injuries
- Grass ball under tongue – dropped tongue
- Wet feather – mould spores
- Peritonitis
- Frostbite
What toxicities affect waterfowl?
- Botulism
- Heavy metals
- Mycotoxins
- Algal toxins
- Plants
What tumours affect waterfowl?
- Osteosarcoma
- Hepatic tumours
What are reasons for penile prolapses?
- Venereal diseases
- Trauma
- Significant cold weather
- Excessive sexual stimulation
