Content
Many people in the countryside raise chickens. This is a profitable activity, but at the same time, it can be a lot of hassle. You need to know the nuances of growing, care, feeding and maintenance. In addition, chickens, like any animals, are susceptible to various diseases. Therefore, chicken owners need to know the symptoms of leg diseases and how to provide help and treatment to chickens.
Among the problems often encountered when raising poultry - illness feet of chickens. Sick chickens stop laying. If you do not take measures to treat the poultry, you can lose part of the livestock. In the article we will try to talk about the most common diseases of the legs, the features of prevention and treatment.
Causes of leg disease
Often, chickens, including broilers, sit on their feet, their motor activity is limited. Why does the musculoskeletal system fail in poultry, what is the cause of the disease? It is impossible to answer this question unequivocally, since there are a lot of reasons.
Etiological factors:
- Content errors. Chickens need to move a lot. If the room is small, the bird does not have the opportunity to “warm up”; growths or, as poultry farmers say, a calcareous leg may appear on the legs.
- Incorrectly compiled diet, when the feed lacks vitamins B, A, E, D. In this case, paws in chickens may hurt due to vitamin deficiency - rickets.
- The onset of gout.
- Chicken lameness.
- Joint problems - arthritis, arthrosis, tendovaginitis.
- Curvature and kinky fingers.
- Knemidocoptosis.
We will now talk about some diseases of the feet of chickens.
Bird gout
Gout is also called urolithiasis diathesis. In chickens and cockerels, for some reason, and primarily due to improper feeding, uric acid salts are deposited in the joints and muscles of the legs.
Symptoms
- With gout, the chicken becomes lethargic, weak, because it practically stops eating. As a result, the body is depleted.
- The legs swell, growths first appear on the joints, then the joints become deformed and become inactive.
- Gout, in addition to the joints of the legs, affects the kidneys, liver and intestines.
Prophylaxis
If the chickens fall to their feet, urgent measures must be taken:
- give vitamin A in the feed;
- reduce the amount of protein;
- to increase the time and area of broiler walking.
Treatment
You can treat chickens with gout on your own:
- Drink soda for at least 14 days. For each chicken, 10 grams.
- To remove salts, chickens should receive atofan in an amount of half a gram per head for two days.
Knemidocoptosis
Often, the disease of the paws in chickens is associated with knemidocoptosis. People call this chicken disease scabies or calcareous feet. You can heal a chicken at an early stage.
A bird with knemidocoptosis should be isolated immediately, since the infection can be transmitted to other chickens. The premises are disinfected, the litter is removed. Feeding troughs, nests for laying eggs, equipment that were used to clean the chicken coop are subjected to treatment for knemidocoptosis.
Scabies is the most common cause of knemidocoptosis in chickens. Mite, settling on the body of a bird, is able to gnaw passages on the legs imperceptible to the human eye for laying eggs. After a short time, larvae will hatch from them.
With knemidocoptosis, the skin constantly and unbearably itches, the chickens either fall to their feet or run around the chicken coop without stopping. It is necessary to determine the disease as early as possible, otherwise it will go into a chronic state.
Symptoms of the disease
- With knemidocoptosis, the legs of the chicken become covered with ugly growths, which eventually turn into long non-healing wounds.
- A white bloom appears on the scales, over time, the scales begin to fall off. From a distance, it seems that the chickens have climbed their paws into the lime.
- Chickens with knemidocoptosis feel uncomfortable and anxious. Chickens are especially difficult to tolerate the disease at night, when ticks are most active.
How to treat
At the initial stage, leg disease (knemidocoptosis) in chickens is treated. You don't need any expensive drugs.
To destroy the chicken mite, laundry soap is simply diluted in hot water (until completely dissolved). In the resulting cooled solution, the limbs of a chicken or rooster, affected by knemidocoptosis, are placed and kept for about half an hour. If there is one percent creolin, then after the bath, the legs of the chickens are treated with such a solution. But today such a drug is difficult to obtain, so you can buy birch tar at the pharmacy for the treatment of knemidocoptosis.
We treat diseases of the feet of chickens with our own hands:
Chicken lameness
Sometimes, having released the chickens for a walk, the owners notice that they are limping. Laying hens most often suffer from this disease. Chickens can limp on one or both legs due to mechanical damage:
- cuts on fingers or feet with glass or sharp stones;
- sprains;
- dislocations;
- bruises;
- clamping nerves;
- muscle damage;
- dietary deficiency.
As for broilers, their lameness occurs due to intensive growth and weight gain. Adult chickens begin to crouch on their feet if they have kidney problems.
Symptoms
- A disease such as lameness can begin suddenly or imperceptibly, and sometimes a chicken lame only on one leg.
- Swelling appears on the joints of the legs, it is enlarged, unnaturally screwed up.
- The legs tremble with chicken lameness.
- Even short runs are difficult, often ending in a fall.
- It is difficult for a bird with chicken lameness not only to stand, but also to rise to its feet.
How to treat
Seeing a lame chicken, novice breeders think about a method of treatment. What to do? First, all chickens should be examined, especially if they fall to their feet. Secondly, it is impossible to leave a lame chicken in the same pen with healthy birds - they will peck. Such is the nature of animals: they cannot see the sick next to them.
Sometimes it is not the cuts that cause the broilers to lame, but the usual thread that is wrapped around the legs. It must be carefully removed.
Lame chickens are separated and well fed to relieve stress. If there are cuts on the legs, then hydrogen peroxide, brilliant green and iodine can be used for treatment.
If the chicken sits on its feet, and no mechanical damage is found, then the problem of leg lameness may be an infection. Only a specialist can diagnose and prescribe treatment.
Arthritis, tendovaginitis
Chickens fall on their feet with arthritis, when the joint capsule and the tissues adjacent to them become inflamed. This leg disease is common in broiler chickens.
There is another leg disease - tendovaginitis, associated with inflammation of the tendons. Most often old chickens suffer from it. They sit on their feet, cannot stand for a long time. The cause of tendovaginitis can be not only mechanical damage, but also pathogens of chickens (viruses or bacteria). Most often, leg diseases occur in dirty chicken coops, as well as when chickens are overcrowded.
Symptoms
- chickens with arthritis or tendovaginitis have lameness;
- the joints increase, the temperature rises in them;
- because of the swelling on the legs, the chickens do not leave one place all day.
Treatment features
Diseases of chickens, arthritis and tendovaginitis are treated with antibiotics and antiviral drugs:
- Sulfadimethoxin;
- Polymyxin M sulfate;
- Ampicillin;
- Benzylpenicillin.
During the treatment of leg disease (arthritis and tendovaginitis), the drugs must be injected into chickens for at least 5 days intramuscularly or added to the feed.
Crooked fingers
Another leg disease of chickens that does not respond well to treatment is crooked fingers, which occurs in chickens in the first days of life. Birds affected by daytime illness walk on the lateral side of the foot, as if sneaking up on tiptoe. The cause of crooked fingers is most often associated with improper care, keeping in a cold place, on a metal mesh. Birds, as a rule, survive, but lameness will never get rid of, treatment is impossible.
Curly fingers
What other diseases of the feet are found in chickens and how can they be treated? Chickens can develop curly toes if riboflavin is lacking in the feed. In addition to the acquired paralysis of the limbs, the chickens grow poorly and practically do not develop, falling to their feet. Keeping chickens with their fingertips bent down, as in the photo below, is impractical.
With regard to the treatment of curly fingers, it is successful at the initial stage. Chickens are fed multivitamins with riboflavin.
Instead of a conclusion
It should be understood that no bird owner is insured against leg diseases in chickens and their treatment. But the suffering of chickens can be minimized by following the rules of raising poultry.
This applies not only to feeding chickens with balanced feed, appropriate for breeds and age, but also keeping birds in clean, bright and spacious rooms. In addition, only careful attention to chickens and roosters, immediate isolation of diseased birds will allow raising healthy chickens for meat and eggs.
one chicken has reddening of the pads and toes on one leg ... it seems warmer ... the other leg is ordinary ... what to do?
I did not find the answer in the article, my chicken's fingers are as if half cut off, I don't know what to do, the chicken does not walk well
Hello! The lack of fingers can be either traumatic or genetic (such as hatched from an egg). And clarification of this question is very important for understanding what to do next with the chicken.
Sometimes, in full-fledged chickens, the first phalanges of the fingers die off if they are kept on a dirty litter and large lumps of droppings stick to the fingers. Chickens are especially vulnerable with their thin fingers and delicate bones. If the loss of fingers was traumatic, the chicken can be kept for divorce, but may need to be fed separately. It is difficult for her to compete with other birds.
Congenital missing part of the toes can be the result of inbreeding or other genetic disorder. In this case, the chicken should be sent to the soup, and then every 2-3 years the rooster should be changed to a “stranger's” one. One that is not related to chickens. If you feel sorry for the chicken, you can leave it in order to get table eggs. But there should be no offspring from this bird.