Hello there, fellow poultry farmers! How’s business doing? We hope your business will always be profitable every day, more, and long lasting. Lastly, we have talked about the facts about poultry lice that you should know; however, the main question probably you guys been wondering about is ‘how do we know if our flock really got the lice in the first place?’ ‘they just scratching, we always scratching even though there are no lice, maybe they just want to scratch’ Yup, probably you are wondering such question; although we have talked about which chicken that might get infected by it; today we will put a deep analysis about how to identify that your chickens getting attacked by poultry lice and of course how to prevent and cure them properly. Please, put your attention and never let his happen to your profit source, check it out!
Why Lice Can Be Lethal?
Although, lice could be considered as a small problem and has lower chance of damaging your flock, still it has the potential to put your business into the ground. Thus, it is not wise for any poultry farmer to underestimate such annoying micro creature. Hence, we shall know what happen if we underestimate lice and let it bite and live on our flock’s body; check it out!
Bruises
Yup, scratching a lot will make a lot of bruises, especially if the itchiness never gone away and keep stuck in there because the lice live in there, biting and sucking the blood of your flock, and from such process it creates itchiness, thus your flock will always try to scratch it out, unfortunately it would resulting in nothing, but only bruises that could also attract another problem such as lameness and loss appetite.
Infection
Through the scratch, sometimes your flock scratched too hard and make the itchy area becomes to bleed; it is hard to spot bleeding below the thick of the chicken feather, hence usually we never notice it in the first place; because of that, the bleed will never be treated, thus another infection like tetanus or any nasty infection will come and try to infect your poor flock, eventually one day you might be surprised as one of your flock has died in agony.
Further complications
Whether from bruises or bleeding, there are another further complication that indeed will make the whole situation becomes dire; we have mentioned one which is infection, and another further complication would be lameness and lost appetite. Yup, imagine if your flock become lame and don’t want to eat anything at all, what will happen to your harvesting day and your profit?
Lameness and lost appetite caused by stress, as itchiness eventually will stress your flock out. They really need to get the lice away, but they just simply can’t do it. This situation indeed will make a very hard time for them, thus eventually they just simply become lame, sitting in just one and only spot, and does not want to eat anything at all. Yeah, the end of this road would only be the degradation of your farm’s product quality as the infected meat and eggs would have a very low quality, even you won’t risk to sell it, thus removing any profit you can gain. Now, imagine if the whole flock got infected by lice, what will happen?
The Identifying
Fortunate for you, in order to identify them we don’t need to put one by one check as you just need to identify which chicken that shows a very strange behaviour compared to other chicken in the flock. Yup, it would be easy but still tricky, especially if you have hundreds of chickens in your farm; you might want to get another help from your worker or helper to find them who got infected by lice to make this checking thorough. Well, there are indeed certain way to identify which chicken that has been infected by lice, and also fortunate for you, the symptoms are easy to notice, so please put your attention and check it out!
Can’t stop scratching
If you see one of your chicken just simply can’t stop scratching her body for at least 15 seconds; as they keep scratching every second, then you might find the one who has been infected by lice. Just remember, you must find who simply can’t stop scratching and they simply keep scratching literally every minute.
Bruises or Bleeding around their vents, breast, and wings
We have told you before that the lice could make your flock to not stop scratching and eventually, they will have bruises or bleed away? Yeah, those are indeed would have a very specific spot which they will occur, right? You know lice have a very favourite spot which are vent, breast, and wings; those 3 are its favourite spots, thus if you find any bleeding or bruises around those spots, we can conclude that there are lice infecting your poor poultry.
Another Treatment
In the last article we have talked about curing them with dust treatment, and today we would like to provide with another treatment that indeed also help you with the lice problem. The ingredients would be simple, you just need an ash of wood and peat moss which could be bought on nearby farmer store. Also, you might need a small pool like that small pool which kids love it, this small pool will act as a bath tube for them.
Once you have the ingredients and the pool ready, it is time to take your chicken to bath in it, yup your chicken might be reluctant but you need to force them for their own good. Do this regularly, at least twice a day until the lice are gone for good.
Well, that is all fellow poultry farmers! We hope the lice will never comes again, and if it do comes, we already know what shall we do about it. Good luck!