The most effective way to reduce diseases in your poultry flock and increase their liveability is by implementing effective biosecurity measures that will control some of the most likely pathways through which diseases could enter your poultry farm. Some of the most important biosecurity measures that you could implement in your poultry farm include the following:-
- Ensure strict control of people and equipment into the poultry farm. Only authorized persons should enter the poultry farm and only after disinfecting their shoes and hands.
- You should limit the visitors to the poultry farm. Allow visits to only those essential for the farming operations such as laborers, inspectors and vets.
- All visits to the farm must be well documented in a logbook.
- Have a central location where visitors can shower before entering the farm using disinfected water.
- All workers as well as visitors to the farm should be provided with clean coats and clean boots when they are entering the poultry farm.
- Build clean disinfected footbaths where visitors and workers can dip in their feet before entering the poultry farm. These should be placed outside all the poultry houses.
- Avoid using outside equipment and crew for vaccination and other tasks such as beak trimming and weighing of your chickens where possible. If you have to, follow the steps above.
- Ensure quick and efficient disposal of dead chickens.
- Design the houses in such a way that they are not exposed to other chickens outside the farm, domestic animals and rodents amongst other potential disease vectors.
- Implement an all-in all-out principle and ensure the house and the equipment has been properly disinfected before the introduction of new flock. This will prevent the transmission of diseases from the old flock to the new flock of chicks.
- Isolate sick birds.
- If you have visited sick chickens, no other poultry house should be visited unless you have implemented the steps above.