External poultry parasites and how to deal with them. Parasites in chickens: what are there, how to treat

Warm weather is ideal for mites and lice to spread. If just the thought of lice and tick bites makes you itch and shivers, then imagine how much the bird suffers from these pests, some of which can be fatal to animals. Some of the treatments are not approved for use in poultry farming. Specialized drugs can be purchased through specialty agricultural networks or veterinary pharmacies.

Gamasic blood-sucking (red chicken) tick (Dermanyssusgallinae) (1 mm long, becomes red when sucked)

Figure 1: Red mite - Dermanyssus gallinae (Northern bird mite is similar in appearance). The usual size is about 1 mm.

Treatment

Northern Bird Tick (Ornithonyssus sylvarum)

The northern bird mite is similar in size and color to the red mite, but all its life cycle conducts directly on the bird, causing anemia and death. Crested breeds are especially susceptible to infection, and if you use drugs of the pyrethrin group, carefully treat the ear canal area, a favorite location for this tick. Affected birds look dirty, feathers are dull with dark spots, the bird is depressed.

Treatment

There are no special preparations for the fight against northern bird ticks. Use drugs in the pyrethrin group. Reinfection can occur at any time, but some drugs in this group, such as eprinectin, protect the bird for about 4 weeks (incubation period is 7 days).

Chicken louse (Menopon gallinae)

Figure 2: Chicken louse - Menopon gallinae - about 2 mm in size.

Treatment

Dust preparations of the pyrethrins group.

Scabies mite (scabies of the feet) (Cnemidocoptes mutans)

Figure 3: scabies mite: top: normal view, bottom: the affected part of the leg with the scabies mite.

Feather (downy eater) tick (Cnemidocoptes gallinae)

The feather eater eats feathers and fluff around the head and neck in chickens, but plucking of feathers by the bird itself also causes baldness in this area. Conventional flea powder products are not effective against this type of flea. You can apply Fipronil by spraying it first onto the fabric and then treating the feathers. If fipronil is sprayed directly on a bird, it can cause hypothermia.

Mice chew feathers when birds spend the night, leaving a ragged surface of tails, wings and feathers all over their bodies.

Figure 4: Poultry Treatment

Helminths (worms)

Syngamosis birds

Nematodes live in the trachea of \u200b\u200ba bird, and when the helminth lays eggs, the bird begins to cough, the eggs are thrown out of the body and infect the surrounding bird. Symptoms: cough, shortness of breath.

Capillaria

These tiny worms (Figure 7), also known as hairworms, live in the intestines. They quickly depress the health of the bird and can cause mortality if measures are not taken in time.

Heteracidosis

This worm (Figure 7) lives in the cecum (the part of the large intestine where fermentation takes place). Causes serious bowel disease, leading to histomonosis (see below).

Figure 5: Intestines affected by ascaris

Also known as roundworms (Figures 5 and 7) live in the small intestine. AT a large number in the intestines lead to the death of the bird.

Trichostrongyla

They live in the intestines and are one of the reasons for weight loss.

Figure 6: Eggs of worms: a) gastric worm, b) trichostrongyla, c) heterocytes, d) roundworms, e) nematodes, f) capillaria

Tapeworms

They live in the intestines, are one of the causes of weight loss, lead to death.

Gastric worms

Figure 7: On a large dish: roundworms, top left: heterocytes, top right: capillaria

Diagnostics and treatment

Coccidia

Histomoniasis

Histomonosis is caused by protozoa (unicellular organisms), affecting the liver in turkeys, pheasants, quails, peacocks and guinea fowls, is manifested by diarrhea, feces are bright yellow color; the disease is also called "black head". The intermediate host of these protozoa is heterakis - an intestinal worm present in chickens, here it is necessary to follow old saying: Never keep turkeys and chickens together. If chickens are regularly treated, the incidence of blackheads is reduced. Treatment should be started immediately, as soon as yellow droppings are found, since with this disease the bird dies within a few days. Previously, treatment was carried out with the drug dimetridazole, but since it was banned in the EU, the health of turkeys and pheasants was compromised, since the only drug available (not the most effective substitute) is metronidazole. Specially developed Pigeon preparations can be used.

Hexamitosis

Trichomoniasis

Trichomonas, other protozoa, cause defeat oral cavity in chickens, turkeys and pheasants. Whitish or light yellow cheese-like deposits appear in the mouth, crop and esophagus of the bird. The arrival of a new batch of poultry at the enterprise must always be checked for the presence of this disease. Treatment with special drugs, for example, nystatin, should be carried out on the entire livestock, and not on an individual individual.

Impact on economic performance

Translated by Rudenko Tatiana

The poultry farmer should spread branches of plants such as tansy, wormwood, wild rosemary or rosemary in the chicken coop. Because they have a pungent odor, they scare off blood-sucking pests from chickens and help remove them. Thus, the protection of the chicken coop is ensured for a long time.

Furnace ash is also good helpers in the fight against lice. She sprinkles the entire chicken coop. Experienced poultry experts recommend placing a large ash container inside the poultry room. So, the bird will take baths on its own.

Another great folk remedy against ticks is the use of waste engine oil mixed with creolin. With this "medicine" the poultry farmer should treat the perches and legs of chickens. After processing, it is imperative to disinfect the entire territory of the chicken coop.

To get rid of fleas and ticks, poultry farmers use medicines that are intended for pets, such as cats or dogs. You can buy them at any pet store. The best thing would be to purchase drops that need to be rubbed into the skin of the bird. However, you must pay attention to the fact that you should not buy drugs containing chlorine in the base. It can accumulate in the muscle tissue of chickens, which is bad for the quality of their meat.

"Perol-A", "Bars", "Frontline" are well-proven drugs. Here you should also pay attention to the fact that you need to act in a strictly prescribed dosage. Otherwise, the bird may be harmed. Pyrethrum is also good - a powder against harmful insects. It is completely harmless to layers and humans.

This drug can be purchased from both a medical and veterinary pharmacy. If it is not available, Ekoflis or 7% Sevin powder will be great. It is necessary to spray “Eco-flea” on chickens that are infected with fleas or ticks. And with Feverfew or Sevin - sprinkle the feathers of layers. So, one bird should take no more than fifteen grams of powder.

Some poultry owners use proven old chemical methods, for example, treating a chicken coop with dust. Great care must be taken here as this substance is toxic. If you overdo it, chickens can die. It is also necessary to carefully work with chlorophos and karbofos.

At large enterprises and large farms, Butox is widely used. This product is sold as an aqueous solution that is applied to chicken feathers. Powder "Deltametrina" has a similar effect. In no case should these drugs be inhaled when processing a chicken coop.

Separate poultry farmers fumigate the room with sulfur to combat fleas and ticks. This method is considered highly effective, but there is no unequivocal opinion about whether to use sulfur or not. Therefore, amateur poultry farmers often pay attention to purchased checkers.

Processing chicken coops with checkers

Since washing and spraying a chicken coop is not the most effective method of combating fleas, a sulfur stick is often used to fumigate chicken coops. The mist, consisting of a-cypermethrin and sulfur, easily penetrates into hard to reach places chicken coop. This method destroys fungus, mold, fleas and other harmful organisms. This method is simple, you can start fumigation immediately after reading the instructions. Naturally, there should be no laying hens during processing in the room.

Also, food, drinkers, tools, etc. are removed. The poultry farmer must evenly place the checkers over the area of \u200b\u200bthe chicken coop and set them on fire. It takes 2-3 hours for fleas and other harmful insects to stop disturbing the farm. After the procedure, the room must be well ventilated, and then the birds can be launched.

Video "Smoke Bombs and Their Application"

In order to find out more about the action, the composition of a particular checker against fleas, ticks and other harmful insects, we suggest watching the following video.

Chicken lice and fleas not only cause itching and irritation, but also lead to exhaustion and sometimes even death in birds.

The worst thing is that they are carriers of infections. At such a moment, many owners are tormented by the question: "If fleas and lice are in chickens, how to fight?" You will find out the answers to this question in our article.
What are the dangers of lice and fleas?

Over time, they comb the upper layers of the epidermis and pluck out their own feathers.

Eggs laid during the removal of fleas and lice are not recommended for consumption, since the chemicals that were used, through the circulatory system, enter the yolk of the egg. If a person has a sensitivity to such drugs, an allergic reaction can be caused.

There are several ways to get rid of lice and fleas: they can be divided into chemical agents, physical stimuli and remedies based on the experience of poultry farmers. For the treatment to be successful, it is imperative to take into account the size of the chicken coop room and the number of chickens. It is necessary to follow the instructions exactly and follow the rules of personal safety during processing.
Chemicals

If there are a lot of affected chickens and they are kept in a large room, a good economical option will be the basis for the Butox solution (1 ml per 4 liters of water).

For a chicken coop, this is treatment with boiling water or steam, cleaning the room from the remaining food, dirt, droppings and other things.

Fight with folk methods
For the treatment of chickens from fleas and lice, vinegar is used, sometimes with the addition of kerosene, for wiping. Another mixture is benzene, ammonia and kerosene, which has a strong odor that repels lice and fleas. It can be processed both chickens and a room.

The smell of a broom made of wormwood herbs is also unpleasant for little bloodsuckers and can prevent them from returning.
The best preventive measure is to keep the coop clean. If you regularly clean the trash, change the litter and remove the droppings, the larvae and eggs of lice and fleas will have nowhere to settle and will constantly be carried out with the trash.
Photo gallery

In domestic chickens, ticks provoke the following diseases:

If the bird has become inactive, experiences severe itching, egg production has decreased, the young are gaining weight poorly, the plumage condition has worsened, or bald spots appear on the body, most likely that the chickens are infected with ticks.

Pay attention to the behavior of the feathered wards. If the chickens began to clean their feathers more often, pluck out feathers under their wings, in the area of \u200b\u200bthe cloaca, constantly take "sand" baths - this may also indicate an infection with feather, itch mites.

Other symptoms of ticks in chickens:

weakness, apathy;
wounds, scratches, sores on the body;
dry frequent cough, shortness of breath;
pallor of mucous membranes, comb, earrings;
lack of egg production in laying hens;
weight loss;
refusal to eat, increased thirst.

Upon closer inspection, you can see small red or black specks, small grains, blood droplets on feathers, the body of birds or on the walls of chicken coops, perches.

You can find a tick by placing material from a nest, perch, chicken coop on white list paper and examine it in bright light. It is best to collect material in the evening, at night.

Advice! If the chickens are reluctant to enter the hen house, equip new nesting places, experience severe itching - these are clear signs of bird infection with red ticks.

The red chicken mite feeds on blood by biting and damaging the skin. The bird experiences discomfort, itching, and anxiety. The condition of the feather cover is greatly deteriorating, the immunity is weakening, anemia develops, which can cause the death of the invaded feathered wards.

Contributes to infection high humidity in poultry houses, lack of sand baths for chickens, high density of birds in a confined space. It is worth noting that red chicken mites are dangerous to humans. They cause severe itching and allergies.

When day-old chicks are settled in poultry houses with ticks, a high mortality rate is noted. Chicks die from exhaustion, anemia within 5-7 days.

Chicken mites that infect nails, bird feathers

In addition to the red chicken tick, feather ticks and acariform chicken ticks pose a danger to domestic chickens, especially to small chickens and young individuals.

The feather mite in chickens lives on the feather shaft, in the hole, feeds on circulating blood, which over time leads to the gradual destruction of the feather, deterioration of the plumage condition. With a strong infection, chickens may be completely featherless. Unfortunately on this moment effective treatment from feather mites in chickens has not been developed.

Acariform mites in chickens provoke knemidocoptosis (foot scabies), to which males are more susceptible than chickens. The disease is also known as calcareous foot. Has a slow development, so the manifestations can not be noticed immediately.

If the bird is infected with foot scabies, the sick hen has difficulty walking and becomes inactive. Dense gray growths are visible on the paws. The skin of the legs becomes bumpy. Pathological exudate accumulates under the scales. Over time, if you do not start treatment, the scabies mite becomes the cause of the deformation of the limbs.

Treatment

Advice! If the tick lives on the legs of chickens, use Trichlormetaphos solution or a mixture of birch tar with kerosene in a 1: 1 ratio.

Effective methods for cleaning a chicken coop

The main method of control, which will allow hanging ticks from a bird, is a complex disinfection, deacarization of the poultry house, cages, rooms in which the bird is kept. Treat with insect-acaricidal solutions, special chemical means walls, floor, perches, ceiling, and inventory. Wash the feeders and drinkers thoroughly. Replace bedding.

For deacarization, you can use:

cyodrine 0.5%;
dicresol 0.25%;
karbofos;
chlorophos 1–2%;
trichlorometaphos 0.5-1%;
DDWF 0.25-0.5%;
neocidol 0.25-0.5%.

Important! If the bird is affected by a red, Persian tick, the poultry houses are treated two or three times with an interval of 3-6 days.

Examine the chickens carefully. If there are wounds or scratches on the body, treat the affected areas with antiseptic solutions. Lesions can be lubricated vegetable oil, wound healing ointments, liniment.

With a strong infection, ticks will have to be removed in several approaches. Treatments are carried out at intervals of 5-10 days, depending on the agent used.

Read the instructions for the preparation carefully before use. When choosing an insecticide-acaricidal agent, be sure to consult with your veterinarian. Some drugs are strictly forbidden to be used for treatments, since their active substances accumulate in eggs and meat.

To avoid infection of chickens with ticks, it is very important to systematically treat the poultry houses and cages at least once every 30-40 days. You can use disinfectants, waste engine oil, solarium. Cells are disinfected once a month.

Change the litter in a timely manner, keep the feeders, drinkers, perches clean. Disinfect inventory. Remove the cobweb as it may contain ticks that will later move to the bird.

The walking area must be dry. Build a canopy to protect against precipitation. Place bowls of sand and ash for the bird.

Infected chickens lose appetite and egg production, stop gaining and lose weight, their health worsens, and so on. These factors lead to a reduction in productivity and the number of livestock, and hence to losses on the farm.

Pooferoids

Insects cause a disease called mallophagosis. Pooferoids are often mistakenly called chicken lice, but they are not, since they feed not on the blood of a donor bird, but on plumage, dead particles of the epidermis.

Infection routes

The chicken coop becomes infected very quickly, literally within a day.

The main symptom is the presence of characteristic holes in the root part of the feathers, but in order to detect them, one must first suspect a disease.

As a rule, the behavior of the bird gives reason to do this:

chickens become restless, often strive to penetrate the feather cover with their beak;
at a later date, alopecia occurs: the chicken simply becomes bald;
the livestock is losing weight, the young are catastrophically short of it;
egg production decreases.

To get rid of it, the bird is treated with veterinary drugs:

Dose the agent in accordance with the attached instructions.

Important! The drops do not in any way affect the larvae of the downy eater, therefore, the treatment must be repeated after 7-10 days in order to get rid of the young insects that have hatched during this time.

Video: how to get rid of downy eaters in chickens

Room processing

It is not enough to limit the treatment of livestock to combat malofagosis; it is imperative to process a room teeming with larvae. Disinfection is carried out using "Karbofos". There are positive reviews about the "Mashenka" crayon.

Folk remedies

Modern poultry farmers also use the wisdom of generations, methods that were used by their ancestors without a developed chemical industry.

Serious diseases carried by this bloodsucker:

borreliosis;
plague;
cholera;
psittacosis and others.

In length, they can reach 0.7 millimeters, the body has a flattened, red color, which is replaced by purple after the tick has drunk blood. On a white sheet of paper, they look like dark gray dots.

Did you know? In the animal kingdom, the tick is one of the most prolific creatures. The female of one of the species of this insect is capable of laying up to 20 thousand eggs in her short life!