Chickens Can Also Get "Air Conditioning Sickness" in Summer: A Detailed Guide to Prevention and Treatment Approaches

In summer, broiler chickens and laying hens have relatively good facilities, and most of them are equipped with cooling pads. However, there are misconceptions in the use of cooling pads, and another type of respiratory condition——respiratory problems caused by cooling pads——can also appear in summer. As a result, chickens can also get “air conditioning sickness.” So what are the prevention and treatment approaches and methods?

I. Air conditioning sickness in chickens

Based on my experience, colds in chickens during summer are all caused by using cooling pads too early, when the chickens' feathers are not yet fully grown and their ability to regulate temperature is poor.

Colds in chickens caused by improper use of cooling pads have their own particular characteristics. The impression they give to farming friends is this: the chickens seem to have a problem, but upon dissection the problem is not significant, giving a strange feeling, and feed intake also cannot increase.

II. Principles for using cooling pads

Regarding the use of cooling pads in chicken houses, many people have the same question: when exactly is the most appropriate time to turn on the cooling pads?

Everyone knows that the use of cooling pads needs to be based on experience. This experience should follow the nature of chickens; as the saying goes, young chicks fear cold, and grown chickens fear heat. When the chickens' feathers are not yet fully grown, do not use cooling pads. Young chicks are not prone to heatstroke. When the temperature is high, you can lower the temperature by increasing ventilation. When the chickens reach around 25 days, their feathers have gradually become full and they can withstand relatively large temperature differences from the outside environment, and then you can consider turning on the cooling pads.

The use of cooling pads puts the chickens in a low-temperature, high-humidity environment. At night when it is cool, the cooling pads are turned off, and the chickens are again in a high-temperature environment. The temperature difference fluctuates repeatedly and greatly, and the chickens repeatedly receive cold stress, causing their constitution to weaken. This is what makes us feel something is strange but we cannot say what the cause is. This situation is more similar to “air conditioning sickness” in humans.

Under the stimulation of repeated cold stress, chickens will show cold symptoms, but this cold differs in its manifestations from colds in chickens in other seasons, so it is also easily overlooked by us.

At this time, the chickens' cold is caused by low temperature and high humidity. This kind of cold causes damp-cold symptoms in the chickens' bodies. The weakened constitution caused by this damp-cold affects the chickens' lung function, resulting in weak coughing. The specific manifestation is that there is a respiratory sound in the chicken house, but it is not serious, one sound here and there. It does not feel like a cold that spreads so quickly that the whole chicken house is affected.

In chickens with damp-cold, after dissection, the entire internal organs and trachea look as if they have been washed with water. But they look very clean, with no other symptoms.

III. Treatment approach

For chickens with such a weakened constitution, where broiler feed intake cannot increase and laying hens' egg production is affected, there are only two aspects to the solution:

On one hand, control the use of cooling pads. If they can be avoided in the early stage, try not to use them. When using them, you need to explore experience based on your own chicken house conditions.

On the other hand, use medication for regulation. What I am talking about here is regulation, not treatment. This is because Chinese medicine focuses on regulation, while Western medicine focuses on treatment. For such cold symptoms, the effect of Western medicine is not obvious. You need to use a Chinese medicine for expelling internal dampness, Bichuang Jingfang Baidu San, for regulation. In this way, feed intake will rise rapidly.