There are many poultry diseases, but diarrhea in laying hens is one of the most common. By the quality of poultry droppings, you can determine the state of general health of the bird and, depending on the assessment received, take some measures: change the feed, choose a different bedding or take the bird to the veterinarian.
Diarrhea in laying hens
The main danger of this state of laying hens is that loose stools provoke dehydration, which means it weakens the body. If the causes of this disease are not established and diarrhea as a symptom is not eliminated, this can lead to death.
Symptoms and signs of diarrhea in chickens
Domestic birds have 2 main types of excretions: nocturnal and common droppings. In order not to confuse them with the onset of the disease, you need to competently be able to distinguish between these types. Consider both of them.
Intestinal (ordinary, daytime) droppings are excreted during the daytime.
It is brown or black, and its shape resembles neat granules. This type of litter is solid enough to hold in your hand. A closer look reveals a white color. These are inclusions of uric acid salts, which are anatomically excreted in birds along with waste.
The second type is chacal (also called night) droppings.
It is released once a day as a derivative of the blind processes. It is also brown or even black. Changes in color to yellow, orange or white and gases in the feces indicate a violation of the digestive process.
In order to take timely measures to restore normal stool in layers, it is necessary to correctly recognize the symptoms of impending diarrhea. Its main features:
- Watery liquid droppings, often contaminated with mucus or blood, found on a net, sump, or in a dropping area.
- Plumage contamination in the cloacal area.
- Sticky black droppings on eggshells.
- The bird is lethargic, eats and drinks poorly, is underweight and has an unhealthy general appearance.
- Changing the color of droppings from green to light yellow.
Often, diarrhea (liquid feces) in birds is simply the result of eating spoiled food. In this case, the ailment will pass by itself as soon as the body is cleansed.
In case of mild food poisoning, it is enough to give boiled or purified water to the layers. But during this period, you need to carefully monitor the birds, if during the day the picture is the same, you should look for the cause of the disease.
Causes of Diarrhea in Layers
In order to choose the right course of treatment or preventive measures, you need to know why chickens are vilified. There are a lot of reasons, they can be the most unexpected. In order to understand what can cause diarrhea in a chicken, you need to familiarize yourself with the following reasons:
Hypothermia
In small chickens, when the ambient temperature drops, digestive processes can be disrupted - in such cases, the droppings become watery, but the color does not change. To normalize the digestive and excretory processes, you just need to restore the temperature regime favorable for the chickens.
Poultry transportation
Like any other animal, birds can be stressed during transportation. Already amid stress, diarrhea can develop as a result. As in the first case, such diarrhea goes away on its own and does not require any additional actions, except normalization of usual living conditions.
Feed
With the wrong process of changing the type of food or simply adding food of a different composition, the bird can also develop diarrhea as a side effect of stress. Such a reaction is unlikely to go away by itself if the bird continues to eat poor-quality food. In order to put in order the digestive system (and establish feces) in birds, you need to correctly carry out the procedure for changing the feed.
Eating disorders
With the wrong selection of the diet for chickens, for example, when feeding low-quality feed or when overeating fresh grass or green mass, diarrhea may also develop.
Lack of attention to water quality
When drinking bowls, their grooves are dirty, as well as when drinking poor-quality water, diarrhea in a chicken can begin as a result of a microbial infection. If a bird drinks bad water, it gets poisoned.
Intestinal infection
When pathogens appear in the intestines of feathered organisms, not only diarrhea develops, but also general malaise. Infections in the intestines can occur when you eat expired feed or as a result of drinking stale water.
In this case, a simple change of feed will not help. You will need veterinary treatment with antibiotics.
Virus in the body
This is not a consequence of the fermentation process or hypothermia: with viral infections, the entire body of the bird suffers, and most viral diseases are accompanied by diarrhea.
Poisoning
Such diarrhea in chickens is dangerous, because how to treat poisoning is difficult to understand. Often loose stools are caused by an excess of pesticides and inorganic additives in the feed.
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Danger of infection
With hypothermia, transportation or a sharp change in food, disturbances in the process of digesting food in chickens will go away by themselves, as soon as the factor that causes them is eliminated. But infections, diseases, parasites and an improperly selected diet are another matter.
You need to pay attention to each individual case, and not judge by a rather vague general opinion. Learn more about each of the "complex" factors leading to intestinal upset in chickens:
Incorrect feeding (differs in the mass destruction of birds)
Poor food, bird poisoning. Symptoms:
- Antonia goiter;
- loss of appetite;
- feces are green-brown, frothy and watery.
In such situations, the feed is simply replaced with a better one, and adsorbents (eliminate toxins) and antibacterial agents are introduced into the broilers' diet. It is necessary to drink the chickens with clay water or a solution of copper sulfate.
Excess green feed
Excessive consumption of raw grass threatens the body of the bird. With this poisoning, the chicken litter is liquid, with the presence of gas bubbles. Special treatment is not required, you just need to not give the chickens to eat so much grass and at first include only dry food in the diet.
Diet imbalance
An unbalanced menu in this case needs to be adjusted:
- with an excess of protein, the droppings are white;
- with an excessive amount of carbohydrates - liquid and with gas bubbles;
- with an increased concentration of fats - light or dark and always sticky.
The second reason is infection
- Gumboro - the color of the droppings changes to yellowish-white, the chickens die.
- Newcastle - liquid discharge with an admixture of mucus and frequent problems with the work of the chicken respiratory system.
- Colibacillosis (affects young chickens up to 60 days old, the symptoms are pronounced: there are problems with the work of the whole body and general malaise).
- Salmonellosis (droppings become slimy and sometimes completely white, lameness is often observed).
- Pasteurellosis (feces acquire a characteristic green color, viscous mucus is released from the cloacal opening, bloody droppings; problems with the respiratory system may occur).
- Clostridiosis (feces stink and are too dark in color; increased gas formation).
The appearance of parasites
- Cocksiosis (bloody, viscous droppings that often include orange streaks).
- Damage to intestinal helminths. If the reason lies in intestinal worms, the external signs are similar to other diseases and the true cause is found only in the process of opening the chicken. Treatment is carried out with preparations against helminths, for example, "Dekaris" or "Albenom".
How to treat diarrhea in chickens
The best treatment can only be found by a veterinarian, but in most cases, you can handle it at home. To cure diarrhea in chicken, you need to follow a certain algorithm, which includes three main steps.
First step. During this period, antibiotic treatment is carried out. Dissolve the antibacterial drug in water or mix with feed and give it within 3-5 days. Recommended remedies:
- Chloramphenicol (can be replaced by Floran) at a dosage of 2-5 ml per liter of water.
- Furazolidone at the rate of 4-8 g per 10 kg of feed.
In the second stage, the birds need to be given probiotics. They help restore normal microflora in the intestines of the chicken. Recommended drugs include:
- "Monosparin".
- "Lactobacterin."
- "Bifidumbacterin".
- "Colibacterin".
If not a single necessary preparation is available and there is nothing to do, you can use folk remedies and give feathered yogurt or fermented baked milk with lactobacilli in an amount of 1.5% of the main feed. You can also use drugs intended for people: they are more often available in any pharmacies.
The third stage is the last one and consists in curing the chicken diarrhea. During this period, the birds are given aqueous vitamin solutions (from 5 to 7 days) or special vitamin complexes (2 weeks). It is recommended to treat hens with such means:
- Vitaminol;
- Chiktonik;
- "Aminovital".
Vitamins at the last stage of treatment should be given to the birds in order to enable the chicken to recover from the fact that it has suffered from the disease. For the treatment of the disease, the third stage is not mandatory, and vitamin feeding is optional.
Veterinarians do not recommend home treatment with sugar solutions. They provoke the reproduction of pathogenic microflora, which can be the impetus for a new disease.
Conclusion
Summing up, it is worth saying that yellow, green, brown droppings with blood in hens are a sign of illness. Its cause can lie in a variety of factors, and, knowing these very causes of diarrhea in chickens, you can correctly determine how to treat a bird.
A healthy chicken has no abnormalities in the color or consistency of feces and eats and drinks normally.
If there are any deviations in the general physical condition of the laying hen or a change in the quality of her litter, it is better to contact a veterinary clinic. There the cause of the ailment will be more accurately established, which means that the treatment will be prescribed as correctly as possible.
To be able to make a diagnosis on your own, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with additional literature on diseases and parasites in broilers or layers in advance. Knowing all the basic aspects, any poultry breeder will quickly determine what is the reason, where to start and how to treat his wards.