Chickens are amazingly healthy animals. Given good care they’re hardly fazed by winter’s chill or summer’s sweltering heat. In the five decades we’ve kept chickens our flocks have always been healthy.
In the past few years millions of commercial chickens were killed to slow the spread of avian influenza, or bird flu. It’s a deadly disease but hardly the only malady that can sicken or kill our faithful coop friends.
Knowing that diseases lurk we constantly work to protect our hens from illness. A key strategy is buying healthy chicks from Hoover’s Hatchery. Then we carefully manage moisture, space, sanitation, isolation, safety and nutrition.
Damp’s Danger
Chickens must drink water daily, but moisture can be their worst enemy. Soggy coop litter and a muddy run are perfect environments for bacteria and viruses to thrive and decimate a flock. Here’s how ways we reduce dampness in our coop:
- Keep the roof in good repair with windows positioned beneath overhangs to banish rain from the interior.
- Keep waterers level and in good repair so they don’t leak. They are set on solid bases to make it hard for chickens to topple them over.
If our coop’s litter gets wet, we immediately shovel out the soggy pine shavings and add them to our outdoor compost bin. A bag of spare dry shavings is always on hand to replace damp ones. When we detect the slightest ammonia odor in the coop we replace all the litter.
Our large run is on sandy soil that doesn’t puddle up or get muddy. Should that ever happened we’d keep the chickens inside until the soil dried.
Space
During the pandemic social distancing was the mantra to keep people healthy. The same goes for chickens. Crowding invites disease. Standard wisdom is to provide each heavy breed hen four square feet of coop space and three square feet for light breeds. That’s an absolute minimum. It’s tempting to crowd many birds into a coop but spaciousness also helps reduce such problematic chicken behavior as aggressive picking and egg eating. Give ‘em plenty of space.
Isolation
We practice biosecurity. Hoover’s Catalog lists smart practices that we follow. Small backyard flocks enjoy the benefit of isolation. If they don’t contact infected birds they won’t catch the disease. Here’s how we keep our flock isolated from outside diseases.
- Rarely introduce a new chicken to our flock.
- Limit our chicken’s interaction with wildlife. It’s hard to keep sparrows out of a run but we keep holes plugged up so they can’t get into the coop. We mercilessly suppress mice.
- Wild turkeys often roam our yard but a sturdy fence keeps our chickens inside their run and the turkeys out.
- We never blend our flock with domestic turkeys or waterfowl, which may carry diseases that can kill chickens.
Nutrition
Complete, quality commercial feed provides all the nutrition chickens need for healthy and productive lives, but it’s fun to spice up their daily routine with treats. They scramble for lettuce scraps, leftover rice, and plenty of other kitchen scraps. Moldy feed or treats go into the compost bin instead of the coop. Among the most nutritious chicken delights are the insects and worms she finds in the run.
Safety
Preventing disease is only part of the strategy of keeping a flock healthy. Safety is important. We reduce the odds of injuries by eliminating sharp objects and jagged ends of fences. Locking hens inside a stout coop at sundown virtually eliminates losing them to hungry raccoons.
Vets and First Aid
Special chicken first aid kits are sold online but most contain the same items we keep in our human first aid kit-bandages, tweezers, and gauze pads. They might be useful for minor injuries, but a visit to a vet is likely a smart move to treat a major illness or injury.
Most veterinarians are skilled in solving almost any health problem a dog or cat might have, but often they lack experience with birds. Although well cared for chickens rarely get sick or injured, having a relationship with a vet with bird care skills can be a chicken lifesaver. Ask around to find a bird skilled vet before the need arises.
When given good care chickens are amazingly healthy and resilient.