First, we need to understand why, under modern farming models, quite a few people feel that poultry diseases are becoming increasingly complex. Why are they becoming more complex? Diseases existed before, too, so why are they more complex now than they were before?
Why are they different? First, we need to talk about how changes in farming models can affect the prevalence of diseases. The types of prevalent diseases, including the virulence of some diseases, can all change.
If you feel that a disease is complex, it may be because you have not yet found a way to deal with some diseases. Under this new model, diseases have developed new characteristics, and there is no effective way to address them. This means that problems in production have not been solved. This mismatch between supply and demand is what leads to what is called disease complexity.
Why is everyone paying so much attention to this now? One very important issue is scale. In the past, we raised fewer chickens and could treat them in small groups or even individually. Now, poultry farming is carried out on a large scale.
So, how should we respond? How do we prevent and control disease when it occurs in large-scale poultry farming? This is a systemic issue. First, this disease prevention system must be incorporated into the production system. I often say that poultry production, including egg-laying hen production, has changed from a simple operation into a modern production system.
One issue that comes with a production system is that all the uncertainties or difficulties you encounter are part of its complexity. The solutions must therefore be systemic. You cannot use the kinds of symptomatic treatments or preventive measures we used before to address diseases occurring within this system.
So, for large-scale flocks, our most fundamental starting point for prevention should be to move beyond treatment and what we considered prevention for a while. Although people still focus on prevention, the higher-level approach should be health management.
If prevention is pursued solely for the sake of prevention, it often involves risks. If your starting point is health management, with strict requirements to ensure that the flock has no health problems, that is different from the concept of prevention. However you put it, prevention is still centered on disease, while health management is centered on the health of the chickens. One is about disease, which may make us feel somewhat gloomy; the other is about health, a positive topic. This approach and way of thinking about husbandry and management represents a completely innovative change.
Therefore, health management should become the most fundamental guiding principle for addressing the complex challenges of modern diseases. Diseases are complex today. As I just said, this is a systematic approach, so health management must be systematic, and its methods must be systematic as well. We cannot keep saying that we hope one measure will solve all health management problems.
For example, we often hear that eggshell quality is a problem late in the laying period. People first think about how to replenish the calcium and phosphorus that are lacking, and how to use some vitamins. But the problem is that simply improving nutrition may have some corrective effect, yet it cannot solve the issue at its root, because the causes have already become very complex. They involve nutrition, health, management, and even the chickens’ age and breed. So how can we assess this through systematic health management that takes these combined factors into account?
You may not necessarily consider it a nutritional issue; you might also consider using some other things. Therefore, only comprehensive measures can address the fundamental aspects of today’s complex diseases. For different cases, this comprehensive tracing of disease origins can identify the various factors that may be responsible. The problem can then be addressed progressively through greater intensification, integration, unification, systematization, and even balancing.