Hello there, fellow poultry farmer! How’s business doing? We hope the business will always be profitable every day, more, and forever lasting. Recently, we have discussed about the obstacles and challenges in the poultry business; indeed, that information would be useful for all of you, especially a newcomer to the business. However, although you have managed to put a great preventive act in order to prevent any troubling situation in your farm, sometimes bad luck just simply come and hit your farm; imagine one day you are checking on the flock and you see some of your flock are not doing great, they just simply get stuck in one spot does not want to move and prefer to stay in one spot, even if they move; their movement would be lame, thus you know something is wrong on those chickens. Lameness could be an indication that your chickens have suffered some bruises around the legs, is it dangerous? Yes, it is indeed dangerous especially for your business as even though you can still harvest them, the meat quality would be decreased thus there’s a chance that customers would lose their trust to you. So, today animallova would give you the tips on How to Recognize Bruises Symptoms on Chicken’s Legs, please put your attention and read carefully.
The Causes of Bruises
Before we are discussing about the How to Recognize Bruises Symptoms on Chicken’s Legs, we are going to discuss what caused them in the first place; this information would be useful later on as you might prevent bruises from happening in your flock in the first place, however there’s still a chance for them to get one so please continue reading this article. The causes of bruises would vary, however most of them are similar what cause bruises to another living organism; which are:
Overcrowded Yard
This usually occurs in a broiler farmhouse. Most of the broiler farmhouse would indeed have a crowded flock of broilers. This situation could put your flock exposed to the risk of getting bruises, especially on the legs. Writer, had 4 broilers back then as an experiment, the small one always trying to stand on the back of the big ones, thus resulting bruises around her leg, and unfortunately the one she’s been standing to died because of the bruises; small reason but with a devastating impact. Now, imagine witch such crowded flock, how many chickens that would get step on by others? This indeed will make their legs get bruises even break them. It is suggested for you to manage your flock population; do not let it to be overcrowded and left some space so some of the chickens could wandering around the farm.
Careless Delivery
Yeah, this one still why your chicken got bruises factor, especially in broilers. When it is the time to harvest broilers, we need to deliver them to our customers, yes? However, sometimes during the delivery process there are a few obstacles that caused our flock to get bruises around their legs such as careless driving, careless dropping, careless shipping, and so on; please, when harvesting your broilers, do it carefully and deliver it with respect.
Fall or hit
Chicken love to wander around and jump from low ground to high ground vice versa. Sometimes, during their ‘wandering time’ they got bruises in their legs because they just simply jumped from a very high ground or simply some kids around the neighbour scared your flock thus making them do something or get something that caused them to get bruises.
Why We must Treat Bruises?
If you want to keep your customers to trust you, you need to assure that you always provide the best quality and the fairest price for them. If you just simply demand them to keep paying the price and got something below the expectation such as a degradation in the meat quality, surely your customers might lose their trust and respect to you. For your information, bruises on chicken could cause their meat quality to be degraded, as bruises will cause them pain and make them stress, both of this emotional situation will indeed cause them to lost appetite, become lame, thus their meat quality could still be sold but has lower quality than expected. So, it is important for you to keep the quality of your farm product in shape.
How to Recognize Them?
In order to recognize them, you must be thorough as the procedures in recognizing them would be quite challenging, especially if you don’t have the eagle eye to spot them. So, please be focus and put your attention while doing this.
Routine Check
Firs of all, you need to put some schedule about a routine check in order to check whether your flock is in a good shape or in a bad shape. Just remember to check them once a week in order to assure effectiveness in your farm.
Spotting On
You don’t need to check one by one which chicken that is suffering from bruises. You just need to look at those who wouldn’t eat anything, stay in one exact same spot for hours, and when they move, their movement looks funny. If you find all of that, you need to approach that chicken and inspect them.
Inspecting
While inspecting you can see directly to their legs. You need to see if there’s any swelling, bruising, or other dots that might act as sign of fowl pox infection? If you found the structures of the legs is not as it should be then you can conclude that your chicken has been suffered with bruises on her leg, however if you spot white dots, she might get infected with fowl pox.
Well that is all fellow poultry farmer, all of the procedures on How to Recognize Bruises Symptoms on Chicken. Usually, when you found any bruise we just simply put them with chicken therapy; using Epsom salts water. Good luck!