Chicken Health

Even the most experienced chicken owners cannot always prevent their flock from contracting health issues. The good news is that chickens are fairly resilient and can recover from most ailments, if treated in a timely manner. 

Some common health issues in chickens include:

• Respiratory issues: chickens can have seasonal allergies like humans, or contract infections from damp and dirty conditions. 

 

• Foot issues: Bumblefoot and scaly leg mites are common. Bumblefoot is a staph (staphylococcus bacterial) infection in the foot of a chicken that can be itentified by a black/brown “corn” or round spot on the foot pad. Scaly leg mites are microscopic mites that burrow between the scales on chicken legs and feet.  

 

• Reproductive tract issues: a weird egg now and then is normal, but if you are noticing lots of unusual eggs there may be an issue. Hens can become “eggbound” when an egg is stuck in their reproductiven tract.  

 

• Worms and parasites: internal worms and parasites may have infected your chickens if you notice lots of runny poop with white strings, or poop sticking to the feathers around the hen’s vent. Chickens can also contract poultry lice from wild birds. Although not trtansferrable to humans, left untreated, poultry lice can make a bird very sick. You may notice little cream colored bugs crawling around the chicken’s eye or vent, and white eggs clustered on feather shafts near those places as well.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of common ailments, however it gives you a good idea of some things you may need to handle as a chicken owner.

Preventing Poor Chicken Health

The best way to keep your chickens healthy is prevention. The three main ways to do this are to keep their coop and run clean, feed your chickens a proper diet, and implement biosecurity measures to get ahead of any illness your flock may encounter.

Environment 

Keep your chicken coop clean, dry, and secfure from pests and predators to prevent most ailments.

Water

Ensure clean water is always available to your flock. Drinkers should be cleaned with warm water and soap ever day-every other day to prevent algae and other contaminants from making your flock sick.

How to Perform a Health Check on a Chicken

Paying attention to your flock’s behaviors can help you keep them healthy. Health checks should be performed frequently to ensure your flock is staying ailment free!

Daily 

Do a quick visual check. When you let the flock out or feed them, look for any obvious signs of sickness–pale combs, down tails, lameness, weird poops, strange behaviors, or weird looking eggs. Also check combs for spots where your chicken may have been pecked (from builllying). This is all easy visual stuff that can be done every day.

Weekly-Monthly

Between longet time intervals, you will want to pysically inspect each chicken. Check their vents for signs of bugs, redness, and other abnormalities. Inspect at their legs and feet or upturned scales, redness, or bumblefoot corns. Feel your flock’s crops to see if they feel hard like a baseball or soft like a balloon (but remember, crops should be full at night and empty in the morning). Listen to their breathing for any wheezing or shallow breaths. Check around your flock’s necks for lice/eggs. Although more time consuming that a visual daily check, physically examining your flock every so often can help you catch major illnesses and keep them from spreading.

A special note about chicks:

Chicks must have more frequent inspections than adult hens, especially the first few weeks. Things you will want to watch for include:

• • • Extra extremities
      • This only counts right after hatch, but we know people who have purchased chicks with extra toes and even an extra butt! Obviously, the extra butt chick did not make it.
    • Curled toes
    • Splay leg
    • Pasty butt (pictured)
    • Energy level
      •  Chicks sleep a lot, but if you see a chick with heavily strained breathing, off on its own, sleeping a lot, it may be a sign of a more serious issue.
    • Healthy appetites
    • Abnormal or hastened breathing patterns
    • Lack of chirping

The very first thing you should do if you notice your chicken might be sick is to isolate that chicken from the rest of the flock. Some health problems may be very contageous, and it is best to separate the sick chicken to prevent others from contracting disease, or from picking on the sick chicken. We suggest either keeping a second, smaller, isolation coop, putting the chicken in a large dog crate, or in a bathroom inside your house.

Typically, you want chickens to be in a safe, dry, dark, warm place to recover from any illness. Hens should especially be put in a dark place to try and disrupt her egg cycle, as laying an egg may put more stress on her body.

Our next step is to give the sick or injured chicken a warm epsom salt bath. This seems to cure many common ailments, and relaxes the chicken. Simply draw a warm bath or heat up lukewarm water and put it in a container large enough for a chicken to stand in. We usually dissolve 1/4 cup of epsom salt to 3 gallons of water (approximately). Let the chicken sit in the bath for 15-30 minutes and dry them with a towel.

From there, you can Google sypmtoms and treatment. We suggest using the credible resources below to learn more about treating your chicken’s health problems.