How to Prevent Diseases in Chickens

Co-authored by Ryan Corrigan, LVT, VTS-EVN

Last Updated: July 16, 2021 Approved

There are a variety of diseases that chickens can catch. They can range from being minor annoyances to a bird to threatening its life. If you own a chicken, you will need to work to prevent disease in order to keep your chicken healthy. In order to do this, you will need to keep your chicken's home clean, know the diseases that your chicken may get, and give it preventative health care. With a little time and effort, you can keep your chicken disease free for years to come.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Keeping Your Chicken Coop Clean

1
Clean your chicken's coop. Every month, you should remove bedding and nesting straw or shavings and replace them with new, fresh material. Every six months, you should bleach and clean their feeders, waterers, and the entire coop. Cleaning the coop, feeders, and bedding material prevents mold, parasites, and ammonia from building up. It will prevent a variety of diseases, such as fungus in the chicken's feet and parasitic infections.^{[1]
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- Cleaning your chicken's coop regularly can also keep disease-carrying rodents and pests at bay.
2
Use hanging water and food containers. Hanging waterers and feeders can prevent disease in two ways. They keep poop and bedding out of the chicken's food and water, where they may ingest it and become ill. They also minimize the risk of pests and rodents entering your chicken's coop, as hanging food and water containers are harder for invaders to access.
- Even if you have hanging food containers, it is still important to clean up any food that the chickens spill. This spilled food can be enough to lure rodents or other pests into your chicken's coop.
- If you attach feeders to the side of the cage or another elevated area, make sure that your chickens can still easily access them to feed.
3
Refresh food and water every day. Keeping your chicken's home clean requires that you give it some attention every day. In the morning, check your chicken's food and water supply and make sure that they are clean and full. This assures that the chickens will drink enough water and eat enough food to keep them healthy.^{[2]
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- If the chicken's food and water dishes are clean, you can simply refill them if the levels of food and water are low. If they are dirty, you should clean them out before refilling them. Chickens will avoid dirty water, which can cause dehydration.
- Checking water every day is especially important during extreme temperatures. Your chicken's water can freeze in cold winter weather, potentially causing dehydration, and can evaporate or get used up quickly in hot summer months, also creating the potential for dehydration.
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Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Keeping Your Chickens Healthy

1
Feed your birds quality feed. Good feed should contain about 20% protein, amino acids for growth, corn for energy, additional vitamins, and sufficient but not excessive fats and carbohydrates. Giving your chickens a quality diet will help to keep them healthy and disease free.^{[3]
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- Give your chickens enough feed so that they can eat consistently throughout the day. The exact amount you put in your coop will vary depending on how many chickens you have and the size of your feeder. Many chicken feeders can hold several days worth of food.^{[4]
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- Giving your chickens the right nutrition will help their immune systems to be strong and able to fight off infection and disease.
- Most people use commercial feeds formulated for chickens. You can also make your own mix at home, but you need to make sure it contains the right macro and micro-nutrient ratios.
2
Keep chickens in a coop that is large enough. The proper space requirement for chickens is 2 to 4 square feet (0.19 to .37 square meters) per bird, depending on the size of your specific type of chicken. Although the requirement does seem quite roomy, you will be surprised at the impact it does have. This amount of space will help keep your birds healthy and happy. ^{[5]
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- If they are going to be solely confined in a coop, though, they will need 10 square feet (.93 square meters) per bird.
- Giving your chickens the right amount of space reduces their instinct to compete for more space, which stresses them out and can impact their health and ability to fight off disease.
3
Let chickens roam. Allowing chickens to free range around your yard can reduce their stress, which will help keep them more healthy overall. They will also eat grit in the form of weeds, grass, worms, and other delicious things they find in the yard. This will also help out their digestive system, making them healthier overall.
- However, there are dangers to letting chickens roam. Most importantly, they are more susceptible to predators if they are not kept in the safety of their coop. Consider fencing off an area of pasture or grassland for your chickens to roam in, and making sure there is some type of overhead coverage to ward off birds of prey.
- You should let your chickens out during daylight hours and then put them back in their coop before dark. This will keep them safe from predators.
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Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Giving Preventative Care

1
Quarantine new chickens. Try not to add new chickens to the flock right when you get them. If you buy or receive chickens from a person, they may carry a disease. To prevent this, it is best that you make sure that the chicken doesn't carry a disease before adding it to your flock.^{[6]
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- You should quarantine new chickens anywhere from 7 to 30 days. During this time, watch them for signs of illness, such as fluid coming from their eyes or scaling on their legs. You should also inspect their bodies for signs of infections, such as the presence of mites or lice.
2
Prevent visitors from spreading disease. If you have friends or family who also raise chickens, you should be cautious about letting them have contact with your flock. Contagious diseases can be spread from humans who contact chickens to your birds.^{[7]
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- Make sure that visitors have on clothes and shoes that are clean and that they have washed their hands before touching your birds.
3
Give your birds daily check-ups. Because chickens are flight animals, they will often hide their symptoms of illness until it is too late because they don't want to appear weak to potential predators. However, with daily checkups, even if your birds do get sick, you can still catch it before time runs out. Signs to look for include:
- Lethargic behavior
- Paralysis
- Difficulty breathing
- Suspicious or abnormal stools, including diarrhea, all white stool (should be brown with white top), blood in stool, or worms
- Sneezing
- Huge drop in pecking order
- Wounds
4
Have signs of illness checked out and treated. Consult with a veterinarian on the phone or take your bird to the vet if you see any signs of illness. Identifying and starting treatment for illness right away can help your chicken survive even life-threatening diseases.^{[8]
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- If your bird has signs of an illness that it has had before, you may want to begin the treatment that you have used in the past right away. For example, if your bird has visible wounds, clean and disinfect those right away.
- Isolate a chicken if you think they may be sick. This minimizes the chances of them passing a potential illness onto the rest of the flock.
5
Vaccinate your chickens. Vaccinations are necessary if your chickens have suffered from disease in the past. You should also vaccinate them if they have been in multiple flocks or there have been outbreaks of disease in your area. You can buy vaccinated chicks from a breeder or farm store but veterinarians can also supply vaccinations. Some diseases that chickens can be vaccinated for include:^{[9]
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- Marek's disease, which is a virus that can cause paralysis, lesions, and tumors.
- Newcastle disease, which can result in bloody diarrhea, dyspnea, and tremors.
- Infectious bronchitis, which is a highly contagious respiratory infection.
- Infectious laryngotracheitis, which causes a cough, gasping, and a drop in egg production.
- Fowl pox, which is marked by pus-filled wounds that may scab and cause irritation.
- Fowl cholera, which results in anorexia, cyanosis, watery diarrhea, and death.
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Warnings

If you have any sickness in the flock, be sure you quarantine those chickens and care for them last in your routine to prevent spreading any infection through contact.^{[10]
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Use your common sense with handling chickens. Wash your hands thoroughly after handling birds, after cleaning anything, after touching anything that has touched the birds, and especially after touching a sick bird and feces.

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