Diarrhea in poultry birds and their treatment

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Diarrhea in poultry is one of the commonly noticed sickness or disease in any poultry farm globally. They are also common to backyard birds rearing for one purpose or the other.

Sometime this pose a little challenge to the farmer or poultry keeper, due to certain condition noticed in the dropping of their birds in the morning.

Mainly you identify any sickness in poultry birds through their droppings, some loose droppings are normal for chickens. Several times a day, a chicken passes sticky, smelly brown cecal droppings that you may mistake for diarrhea in poultry.

Droppings that look like cecal droppings should make up no more than one-third of the droppings you see in the coop under the perches in the morning.

Therefore you must be sure the condition and color of droppings in the farm to know how to address the issue of Diarrhea in poultry, in a simple way this are the common color of droppings of birds suffering from diarrhea:

You can see your chicken has diarrhea when you notice watery, loose droppings that are a white, yellow or greenish color.

Causes of diarrhea in poultry farm

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To any form of problem there must be a possible cause or causes, until you know the causes, you will not be able to control if you provide a good solution in the first instance.

Knowing the cause will help in dealing with such situation, therefore possible causes of diarrhea  in poultry are

Coccidiosis

Worm

Viruses like rotavirus and adenovirus

Kidney damage

Feed contain too much protein

Bacterial diarrhea

Illness

Now that you know the possible cause of diarrhea in poultry, you are heading to solution. The details on these causes will be publishing in our coming article.

Mode of transmission of diarrhea in poultry

You will be wonder how diarrhea in poultry is moving from one bird to the other in the poultry farm, yes they do. They main mode of transmission in the farm in through any of these means:

Through drinking water

Through dirty feeder

Through flies

Treatments

Now that you are familiar with the possible causes of diarrhea in poultry and how they move around in the farm, that how they transmit.

Dealing with this issue will be easy and possible. These are the possible and the best ways to deal with this situation.

Isolate the effected bird from among the flock

when you notice any condition that is contrary to the normal condition in your flock, the first thing to do is to isolate the affected one, this is also applicable to any bird affected by diarrhea in poultry. 

Birds with dirty vents may need to be housed individually in separate cages, because other birds like to peck at the raw area. If most of the flock is affected, leave the flock where it is and treat the whole flock.

Environment

To avoid the occurrence of any unwanted condition in your flock, try to maintain proper hygiene. Clean their cage, drinkers and feeders regularly will not allow diarrhea in poultry. Clean drinker and provide fresh, clean water.

Examine the diet, did you feed something new? Check for moldy or spoiled feed. If you have any suspicions about the feed, change it, preferably to a fresh batch of a well-known brand of commercial layer feed.

Medication on how to control diarrhea in poultry

Most feed stores sell probiotics that you can add to feed or water. The organisms in yogurt and probiotics compete with the bad bugs, and sometimes the good bugs win. Moreover, you may inform your veterinary doctor for proper attention.

Biostop is a product made from a plant extract containing tannins which helps bind up the droppings. Biostop should be given to chickens with mild cases of runny and loose droppings.

Biostop is very safe and can be given to the entire flock. It is very useful to use at the end of a course of antibiotics. Give in the bird’s drinking water daily for five days will surely control diarrhea in poultry.