Attention, chicken farmers: never treat sick chickens blindly

In clinical diagnosis and treatment practice, it has been found that many chicken farmers believe they have years of experience in raising chickens, and when chickens become ill they generally buy medicine and treat them on their own, but the results are mostly unsatisfactory. The main problems are as follows:

1. Half-understanding of chicken diseases and inaccurate diagnosis

Some chicken farmers have only a smattering of knowledge about diseases. For example, when they see pericarditis and perihepatitis, they say it is colibacillosis; when they see hemorrhage of the proventricular papillae, they say it is Newcastle disease; when they cut open the intestine and it everts, they say it is coccidiosis……. Little do they know that in recent years, with the gradual deterioration of the environment and the continuous mutation and evolution of pathogens, the symptoms or pathological changes of many diseases have changed greatly. In particular, diseases caused by a single infection are now rarely seen. Farmers still view new situations with old eyes and do not know that many diseases are mixed infections or secondary infections.

In actual production, the types of mixed infection include viral mixed infections, such as Newcastle disease and infectious bronchitis; viral and bacterial mixed infections, such as Newcastle disease and colibacillosis; bacterial mixed infections, such as chicken colibacillosis and Salmonella; and mixed infections of bacterial diseases and parasitic diseases, such as chicken colibacillosis and coccidiosis. Because of mixed infections with multiple pathogens, if the primary and secondary causes cannot be distinguished during diagnosis, or if only one cause is known and the other is not, this brings great difficulty to the diagnosis of the disease. And once the diagnosis is wrong, the treatment effect can well be imagined.

2. Treatment is not timely, missing the best opportunity

After a flock becomes ill, most farmers cannot give treatment that both addresses the symptoms and gets at the root cause at the first time of onset. For example, when the chickens are slightly listless, their droppings are somewhat abnormal, and they eat slowly, they still do not know that the flock has already become ill, let alone administer medicine. Only when dead chickens appear, deaths continue to increase, and the flock's appetite is greatly reduced do they realize that the flock has been infected. So they hastily use medicine, but by then it is too late, and the therapeutic effect is naturally poor.

The cost of raising chickens is a comprehensive concept, not just medicine costs. A small number of farmers, after discovering that their chickens are sick, stubbornly cling to saving money, haggling over every penny when buying medicine in order to save a few yuan on drugs, believing that the lower the drug price, the more cost-effective it is. In fact, ineffective or poorly effective drugs are the most expensive. Although effective drugs are somewhat more expensive, they are actually more cost-effective than ineffective or poorly effective drugs. If quality is sacrificed for cheapness, treatment will certainly be delayed, and satisfactory results cannot be achieved.

3. Blindly mixing drugs and abusing antibiotics

When a flock begins to die, farmers often misuse drugs without identifying the cause. Not only do they fail to cure the disease, but because timely and accurate treatment is not obtained, the condition worsens and deaths increase. For example, whenever chickens cough, they use drugs such as tylosin; whenever chickens have diarrhea, they use drugs such as enrofloxacin. In fact, coughing in chickens may be caused not only by mycoplasma disease, but also by laryngotracheitis, bronchitis, Newcastle disease, avian influenza, and so on; diarrhea in chickens may be caused not only by Salmonella infection, but also by colibacillosis and various viral infections.

The abuse of antibiotics in veterinary clinical practice is also common; no matter which disease is being treated, antibiotics are never absent. In fact, many diseases do not require antibiotics at all, such as indigestion, heatstroke, and poisoning. Using antibiotics instead increases the drug resistance of pathogens and causes intestinal flora imbalance. If drugs are used indiscriminately without distinguishing right from wrong, there can be no good therapeutic effect.

4. Stopping medication too early, causing recurrence of the disease

To save on medication costs, some farmers use medicine for only one or two days, and as soon as the flock's condition improves somewhat, they immediately stop using the medicine. As a result, after a few days the condition worsens again, and deaths instead increase. This is because the therapeutic effect is not consolidated, leading to recurrence of the disease, or even turning it into a chronic disease, making it even harder to cure, because repeated medication often produces drug resistance. Therefore, in treatment, one should follow the rule that every disease has a certain course of treatment, and after symptoms disappear continue using the medicine 1 to 2 more times to consolidate the therapeutic effect and achieve the goal of curing the disease.

5. Not understanding drug effects and treatment courses, and excessively increasing the dosage

There is a process from the start of medication to cure for chicken diseases, namely the course of treatment. A course of treatment generally lasts 3 to 5 days. A small number of farmers attempt to cure the disease by increasing the dosage and giving one feeding or one injection, hoping the disease will be gone at once, but this is unrealistic. The result of doing so is not only failure to cure the chicken disease in one go, but also artificially increasing toxic side effects on the flock because the dosage is too large, and even causing drug poisoning.

Some chicken farmers also misjudge the therapeutic effect. This is mainly shown in two aspects: first, they do not understand that the action of a drug requires a process. After using the medicine, if they find that chickens are still dying or that deaths briefly increase after medication, they one-sidedly conclude that the drug used is ineffective; second, when the original medication is taking effect but there has not yet been a fundamental improvement, because they are eager for a cure they blindly switch to other drugs. As a result, it seems to work as soon as it is used, and they mistakenly believe that only the switched drug is effective, thus leading to misjudgment of the therapeutic effect.

6. Vaccinating on hearing of disease, using medicine on seeing disease

When some farmers hear that a certain infectious disease has recently occurred locally, without conducting investigation and study, they immediately vaccinate their chickens. This is very likely to contaminate clean farms and bring pathogens into the farm, such as avian influenza and infectious laryngotracheitis. If there is no disease on the farm, it is enough to pay attention to disinfection, strengthen management, and pay attention to isolation and observation when introducing stock; unnecessary epidemic prevention is not needed.

There are also some farmers who, after chickens become ill, only treat the pathogenic factors and neglect improving the sick chickens' defense capacity or resistance to damage. In clinical practice, comprehensive treatment should be adopted: not only eliminate the pathogenic factors, but also strengthen care for the sick chickens and improve their resistance, so as to achieve a good therapeutic effect.