10 Tips For Protecting Your Flock From Disease In Winter
Diseases, ailments, and other issues can cause alarm for backyard chicken owners. Luckily there are many simple, practical, natural solutions you can use to help protect your backyard flock during the winter season and throughout the year. During the winter chickens can be even more vulnerable to a variety of ailments due to crowded conditions and long periods of confinement during severe winter weather. By practicing good biosecurity precautions, you can help protect your flock during the winter season and all year round. Biosecurity is a term that means the practices you put into place to proactively prevent diseases and ailments in your flock. Biosecurity is going to look different from flock to flock. Preventing diseases and ailments from ever appearing in your flock in the first place helps prevent costly treatment, hassle, and harm. These are tips that work for me maintaining a healthy, thriving, backyard flock.
Have dedicated livestock boots you wear nowhere else except when caring for your flock. Pests, diseases, and unwanted germs can easily be tracked from public places and especially from other places where chickens are kept. Have a pair of boots that you only wear when caring for your flock that you never wear in public or for any other use to prevent accidentally bringing unwanted elements home to your flock.
Don’t allow others to walk through your chicken area. This is among the harder guidelines to adhere and others may choose not to, but for years now I have not allowed visitors to walk through my chicken area as an additional precaution. I would rather risk their disappointment than risk the health of my flock. An additional option is disinfecting footwear that will be entering your chicken area. Soak the shoes or boots in a shallow dish of bleach water and spray the shoes or boots themselves with disinfectant spray or wipe with alcohol disinfecting wipes.
Change your clothes and wash your hands with soap and water after handling other chickens. If you visit a place that sells chickens and you handle them or you visit other chicken owners and interact with their flock, when you return home change clothes and wash your hands with soap and water. This is an extra step for safety to help prevent anything you may have encountered from others chickens from potentially being transferred to your flock. Wash your hands before and after handling fragile baby chicks.
If you feed wild birds on your property, do so far away from your chicken area. Feeding wild birds is something many people enjoy. For added safety place any feeders on your property as far away from your chicken area as possible to avoid your chickens potentially contacting any contaminated droppings. Never use any equipment you use with or for wild birds around your chickens, your flock should have all of their own dedicated equipment (meaning scoops, food storage bins, etc.). Care for your chickens before tending to your wild bird feeders, not after. Always wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water after handling any wild bird equipment or accessories. Disinfect your wild bird accessories on a regular basis by giving them a dip in bleach water in a bucket followed by a dish detergent wash prior to hanging them back up.
Regularly clean your chicken food and water dispensers. When it is practical to do so ensure your food and water dispensers are clean. This helps to prevent unwanted mildew and bacteria from forming in your chicken’s food and water.
Observe an isolation period when you adopt new flock members. Whether you are bringing home new chicks to grow your existing flock or you’re adopting adult chickens, observe an isolation period where the new flock members are kept physically separate from your current flock. At minimum, an isolation plan should be at least 14 days long, and a more cautious plan would be 30 days long. This helps ensure your new flock members are healthy before integrating them into your existing flock.
Boost your flock’s natural immunity with good nutrition. Well-fed healthy chickens have a natural immunity that helps protect them from diseases and ailments. Under fed, malnourished, stressed, dehydrated chickens are more likely to succumb to a variety of illnesses. Provide your flock with adequate chicken feed appropriate to their age, breed, and purpose to help naturally maintain their health. You can also add chicken safe herbs like lemon balm, mint, oregano, and rosemary to their diet in small quantities. These herbs are thought to have immune supporting qualities. Note that not ALL herbs are safe for chickens. Do adequate research before adding any components to your flock’s feeding regimen.
Clean your chicken facilities regularly. Sound, regular, and responsible maintenance of your chicken area prevents many chicken diseases and issues. Excess droppings and unsanitary conditions are the prime breeding ground for many chicken diseases and pests. Address excess droppings in your chicken area with either deep bedding method or spot clean and scoop method. Use a ground cover litter appropriate to your set up and region.
Store your chicken supplies, food, and accessories in a weather proof tote or metal trash can. Other creatures like mice and insects are naturally attracted to your chicken food as a nutrition source. Protect your chicken’s food and other supplies by using a weather proof, animal proof, and insect proof container like a sturdy tote, a metal trash can with a lid, or store food and supplies in a clean, secure location.
Allow your chickens access to free-ranging opportunities and if you can’t, bring the greens to them! When chickens are allowed to free-range in a pasture or in a small, safe fenced backyard this natural behavior allows them access to a host of health boosting elements like edible grasses and bugs, grit, and other things naturally present in the environment which help them stay healthy. If it’s not practical for your chickens to free-range, bring the greens to them by picking non-chemically treated grass and other chicken safe plants for them, or dig up a small piece of earth for them to scratch and explore. Other enrichment items include things like bales of straw or hay, healthy chicken safe kitchen scraps, or a pile of dry leaves. Providing grit and calcium supplement in a free choice container separate from their food is also essential especially for flocks with limited or no free-ranging opportunities. Grit makes it possible for your chickens to digest their food properly for maximum nutrition. Grit also helps prevent conditions like sour crop and impacted crop. Calcium helps your chickens make strong egg shells and it assists with feather regrowth.
Bonus tip. Provide your chickens with a dust bath. Dust bathing is the natural way chickens can maintain their skin and feather health. This natural grooming behavior is hard to satisfy in the winter when the dirt in their area may either by muddy or obstructed by ice and snow. You can provide your chickens with a dust bath by providing a safe container they can easily step into and out of. The container should be large enough for them to lay down and kick freely. I fill my chicken dust bath with coarse construction sand, clean fill dirt, wood ash from non-chemically treated wood, and food grade diatomaceous earth. Very important that it is the food grade diatomaceous earth, not the pesticide kind. If you don’t have access to these things on your property, they are all available for purchase at farm box stores and online.
I hope this has been a helpful starting point for your research about biosecurity and protecting your flock’s health during the winter season and all year long. Check out Chuck’s other social media for more backyard chicken and homesteading content.
Chuck and the Chicks 