How to diagnose chicken diseases? Master these three elements

Chicken farmers inevitably encounter disease outbreaks in their flocks during the breeding process. For some experienced chicken farmers, diagnosing chicken diseases already involves relatively complete and scientific methods, but for those who have not been raising chickens for long and operate on a small scale, due to a lack of systematic breeding experience, they often find themselves at a loss when encountering chicken diseases and do not know how to make a diagnosis. In this article, we will not discuss specific diagnostic methods, but rather explain the three scientific elements of chicken disease diagnosis.

????1. Clinical diagnosis.

So-called clinical diagnosis means diagnosing through the external appearance of the flock, such as the flock's feed intake, respiratory state, mental state, fecal appearance, and so on. Because for many chicken diseases, farmers can only judge whether the chickens have a problem through clinical manifestations, so paying close attention to the flock is very important. Once an abnormality is found, one should immediately judge which disease it may be suffering from based on the symptoms, and then administer medication accordingly. However, considering that the external manifestations of many chicken diseases are very similar, especially in the early stages of onset, reduced appetite is almost a necessary symptom of every chicken disease, so diagnosis through the second element below is very necessary.

????2. Necropsy diagnosis.

For chicken diseases that cannot be confirmed through observation, diagnosis needs to be carried out through necropsy. After necropsy, observe the changes in the internal organs of the chicken to further confirm the flock's condition. For example, the common Escherichia coli disease in chickens has very obvious pericardial and perihepatic involvement; for example, the Ankara virus, which has only become common in recent years, has very obvious pericardial effusion; for example, infectious bursal disease has enlargement and bleeding of the chicken's bursa of Fabricius; for example, in chickens that die from pullorum disease, there will be necrotic spots on the surface of the liver. These cannot be seen externally and can only be confirmed through necropsy.

????3. Laboratory diagnosis.

Although for most chicken farmers, the above two methods can basically determine most chicken diseases, there are some chicken diseases for which no obvious internal organ lesions can be found even through necropsy, yet the flock still keeps dying. At this time, the only option is to send samples to a specialized laboratory for testing, isolating the bacteria or virus, in order to ultimately confirm what disease the flock has contracted. The specific laboratory testing sites are generally specialized agricultural research colleges and institutes, and you can ask the local agricultural department for information.