The incidence of diseases in indigenous flocks depends upon the management practices, prevailing environment, nutritional status and health coverage followed by the farmers. The real problem starts at the beginning of brooding or rearing of poultry, where the issues of disease morbidity and mortality in chicks and sanitation and hygiene are the universal problems in rural area, and which get aggravated by unawareness towards the basic principles of poultry farming.
Appropriate and systematic management practices should be followed to reduce the disease incidences in poultry and subsequently the economic losses. Successful management of poultry diseases is the most important factor that determines the economic returns from this industry.
The health cover programmes should be implemented and well planned in advance and executed in time without allowing an alarming situation to arise for this purpose.
Useful tips for rural poultry farmers include the awareness about the following disease management practices:
1. Poultry House Management:
Proper environment is a necessity for healthy living of the flocks. The farmers should adopt indigenous and traditional farm management principles depending upon the resources available at their disposal, for the successful rearing of poultry. The poultry houses should have sufficient space to accommodate the birds with proper ventilation and clean water facilities.
This helps in reducing the environmental stress to the poultry. There should also be an efficient drainage system. Location of the poultry house must be appropriate with respect to other poultry production area, road facilities and direction of farm. Practice all in all out (one age group per farm) breeding management.
2. Source of Chicks:
Follow business with suppliers who practise good biosecurity standards. For starting a poultry farm, the rural farmers should take chicks or other poultry from reputed hatchery or disease free certified sources. Indigenous or improved indigenous poultry flocks with better immunocompetency and suitability of survival should be reared. It has been observed that the indigenous birds face maximum casualties during early stage of life.
Therefore, for layer poultry farming, it is advisable to rear the chicks in a nursery following complete vaccination programme, before releasing to the rural farmers as it is difficult to vaccinate all the rural birds under village conditions.
3. Nutrition:
Vitamins and mineral supplements are to be provided to the birds to avoid deficiency diseases and to make them immunologically competent. Availability of economic poultry feed resources should be known.
4. Hygiene and Disinfection:
The poultry houses, feed and water troughs, etc., should be cleaned regularly to check the disease spread. Prompt removal and proper disposal of dead birds and contaminated materials by incineration or burial methods should be followed so that they are not approached by the scavenging animals and birds. This can check the spread of diseases.
5. Diagnosis, Prophylaxis and Treatment:
The flocks should be tested regularly for important poultry diseases and should be exposed to regular vaccination programmes. With the present disease scenario in indigenous poultry flocks, the birds should be protected against economically important diseases like MD, ND, IBD, fowl pox, etc.
Routine treatment should be provided against bacterial infections and parasitic diseases. If needed, antibiotic susceptibility should be evaluated in case of bacterial diseases so as to avoid the development of drug-resistance bacteria and prevent the economical losses timely.
6. Biosecurity ― The First Line of Defense:
Biosecurity refers to the methods adopted to secure a disease free environment by preventing the exposure of the birds/flock to transmissible infectious diseases, parasites, and pests. It is a term that embodies all of the measures that should be taken to prevent viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, parasites, insects, rodents, and wild birds from entering or surviving and infecting or endangering the well-being of the poultry flock.
The rural environment is a vast reservoir of infectious agents, which have easy access to birds. A disease is the outcome of the interaction between the host (bird), environment and pathogens and this has to be interrupted to check the influx of the pathogen and the disease in a flock. In rural conditions, the birds are mostly maintained as semi-intensive or scavenging backyard flocks and kept in sheds during night.
Hence the birds are exposed to disease causing agents that may quickly spread among the entire flocks in the area. Moreover, the improved varieties of chicken from urban areas, which are highly sensitive to diseases, often remain as the carriers of different emerging diseases and have been found to be a potential source of transmitting different diseases in indigenous flocks. The biosecurity practices may help the researchers and local veterinarians to control, contain and eradicate certain diseases from the country, which may help improve trade of poultry products.
Key Principles of Biosecurity Isolation:
It is the confinement of birds within a controlled environment. A properly built fence keeps the poultry flocks in and all other free flying or wild birds out. Mechanical transmission of disease agents by carriers can thus be prevented. Care should be taken to avoid introduction of birds of unknown disease status into the flock and institute a suitable vector control programme.
Traffic Control:
Disease spread between poultry premises almost always follows the movement of contaminated material, people and equipments. Separate the personnel working in infected sheds and healthy sheds. Limit the entry of visitors and restrict their direct contact with the flock. Control the human traffic judiciously. Fences and barriers are very effective ways to direct on-farm traffic and the traffic on to the farm.
Sanitation:
It addresses the disinfection of materials and equipments entering or going out of the farm and the cleanliness of the farm and the personnel hygiene. A clean sanitized environment is a good insurance against disease outbreak and hence, a high standard of hygiene is required in the poultry farms, plan periodic clean out, clean up and disinfection of houses and equipment, thus limiting the spread of disease causing organisms. Add sanitizer in the drinking water provided to the flocks.