Every day, carefully observe whether the chickens’ appetite, water intake, mental state, droppings, and other indicators are normal, so you can promptly keep track of the flock’s health.
If daily management is neglected and illness in the flock is not detected promptly, treatment will inevitably be delayed, leading to higher medication costs and a high flock mortality rate.
1, Choose highly effective medications; do not use medications indiscriminately. Highly effective medications can shorten the course of treatment, reduce the amount of medication used, and lower mortality.
Misusing medications, on the other hand, causes pathogens to develop drug resistance, making prevention and treatment more difficult.
2, Complete the full course of treatment; do not stop halfway. Generally, each chicken disease has an incubation period and a course of illness, and medication should be administered for the full course of treatment.
Stopping medication as soon as the chickens appear better can only kill some pathogens or suppress their activity. Once the medication’s effect wears off, the pathogens may become active again, potentially causing the chickens to develop other diseases and then infecting the flock.
3, Use medications in combination when appropriate; avoid drug antagonism. Most chicken diseases do not occur in isolation, and concurrent or secondary infections are common.
Therefore, medications should be used in combination to address the various causes and improve treatment effectiveness.
For example, in treating coccidiosis in chickens, other antibacterial and antiviral drugs may also be administered; when treating gosling plague, appropriate amounts of antibacterial drugs such as rifampicin and florfenicol may be added.
When using medications in combination, antagonistic effects or side effects should be avoided.
4, treatment should target the symptoms and avoid neglecting the underlying cause. Some fulminant diseases have very short incubation periods (as little as a few hours); the chickens may die before the administered medication has been absorbed.
Most drugs have difficulty crossing the blood-brain barrier. In such cases, treatment should be even more symptom-focused while addressing both symptoms and the underlying cause.