In Part One of this article, I presented the findings of the study “Causes of mortality in backyard poultry in eight states in the United States”— a combined effort by researchers in nine academic institutions and research centers that was published in the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation in 2019. Over a three-year period, from 2015 through 2017, researchers collected and performed necropsies on 2,687 backyard birds (mostly chickens with a few other fowl thrown in) from eight states to determine cause of death of each one. We learned the major causes of death of backyard birds from this study. We also learned that the majority of deaths were due to preventable infectious diseases. What can we do to provide our backyard birds with longer and healthier lives? Here are my thoughts.

Whether human or chicken, we all have to die sooner or later. A physician friend once told me that the big frustration he found with his chosen profession was that regardless of the brilliance of his diagnosis, or the magnitude of his efforts to treat any given malady, eventually every single one of his patients would die of something.

In this 2019 study, many of the diseases that cause our backyard birds to die are infectious diseases. And most of these infectious diseases simply don’t occur in commercial flocks. Keeping their birds alive and healthy is important to commercial operators’ bottom line, thus it is economically vital for them to develop means and methods for their flock’s continued health and safety - such as the use of vaccines and biosecurity practices. Yet, this study has shown that these very infectious diseases are the main killer of backyard chickens.

In backyard flocks, infectious diseases often spread unchecked. We backyard flock keepers often assume that we’re providing a better life for our birds than what they would endure in a commercial flock, and in so many ways that assumption is absolutely spot on. Yet when it comes to infectious diseases, the main killer of our backyard birds, we have failed.

While each of our birds will eventually die of something, they all could potentially enjoy longer and healthier lives if each of us made a few changes to the way we manage our flocks, especially the way we control infectious diseases. How should we be controlling these marauding diseases? Practice biosecurity. Quarantine sick, new, and returning birds. Treat bacterial infections and diseases with prescribed antibiotics. Vaccinate!

Biosecurity

Biosecurity is the term for the practices flock-keepers put in place to keep their flocks free from infectious diseases. Commercial chicken operators rarely let outsiders onto the premises and those who absolutely need to enter the facility are often garbed in Tyvek suits and boots and nitrile gloves. They take biosecurity very seriously. Backyard chicken folks, unfortunately, often don’t. But they should. Want to increase biosecurity for your flock? Here are some things you should not do:

Don’t allow any unnecessary people near your chickens or in your coop. If you must allow a caregiver or someone else in your coop, and they’ve been in contact with another coop or flock, make sure that they’ve showered and changed clothes before visiting your coop. Then, be sure they disinfect footwear before and after leaving your coop area.
Don’t attend coop tours, don't enter poultry barns at the fair, don't go to swap meets or anywhere else where there are live chickens. If you must, shower, change clothes and disinfect your footwear before entering your coop area.
Don’t enter your chickens in exhibitions or shows where they can come into contact with large numbers of birds from other flocks. If you must, quarantine them for two weeks before returning them to your flock.
Don’t share equipment from other flocks. If you must, be sure to clean and disinfect it before it enters your coop and after it leaves.
Don’t introduce new adult chickens to your flock that come from other backyard flocks. If you must, quarantine the new birds for two weeks before introducing them to your flock.

Quarantine

In addition to the quarantining new birds and returning birds, quarantine sick birds. They should be kept as far away from your coop as you can practically situate them in comfortable, draft-free quarters.

Antibiotics

While antibiotics are a potentially valuable therapy against bacterial diseases and infections, actually getting a properly prescribed antibiotic is problematic. Because of past antibiotic misuse and overuse, it’s no longer legally possible to buy antibiotics at your local feed store. To get antibiotics now, you must take your bird to a vet, get a diagnosis and then a prescription. Regulating antibiotics is a positive development and relying on the expertise of a knowledgeable vet is important, but here’s the sad and unvarnished truth: Large swaths of the country simply don’t have vets willing to treat chickens. And many backyard flock owners are hesitant to seek out a vet because of the cost. Often, an accurate diagnosis will require lab tests. When you add the lab costs to the vet bill, the total price can quickly go well beyond what some backyard flock keepers are willing to pay. Thus, many sick backyard chickens with treatable illnesses remain undiagnosed and untreated—a situation that desperately needs a solution.

Vaccination and Medicated Feed

While vaccines, like antibiotics, require an outlay a cash, they are an effective way of preventing a variety of diseases, are available without a prescription, and can be administered by anyone with the right knowledge and experience. Many of the most devastating infectious diseases are vaccine preventable, including fowl cholera, infectious bronchitis, infectious laryngotracheitis, and fowl pox.

The most common parasitic disease found in this study was coccidiosis. You can easily control coccidia by feeding chicks medicated feed. The “medicine” in medicated feed is amprolium. It’s not an antibiotic. It works by limiting the ability of the coccidia to uptake thiamine, which is necessary for them to thrive and reproduce. It actually kills some of the coccidia and makes the rest of them really unhappy. Because some of them remain in the chicks’ system in a weakened state, the chicks are able to develop natural immunity without getting really sick. Unfortunately, if you’re trying to raise an organic flock, amprolium is not included on the federal list of synthetic substances allowed for use in organic livestock production—a mistake, in my estimation. But the good news for organic flock keepers and anyone else who doesn’t want to use amprolium is that there’s another way to control this parasite—there’s a coccidia vaccine. So, vaccinate! Backyard chickens don’t need to die from this disease!

Marek’s disease was the most common cause of death in every state that was part of this study, and with a total of 582 birds, it caused more deaths than any other agent. If every backyard flock keeper vaccinated every single one of their birds, there would be a massive decrease in the number of deaths caused by this disease in backyard flocks, just as there has been with commercial flocks. Unfortunately, many hatcheries don’t vaccinate. And many that do vaccinate wait until the chicks are one or two days old instead of vaccinating before they hatch—a much more effective strategy. Also, most hatcheries that do vaccinate offer Marek’s vaccination as a choice to the customer at an additional cost instead of just providing vaccine to all chicks. If hatcheries made Marek’s vaccination an “opt-out” option rather than “opt-in” and automatically included the cost of the vaccination in the cost of the chick, that practice alone would save the lives of countless backyard chickens

Then there are all those backyard flock keepers who are hatching their own chicks. Home vaccination for Marek’s is possible—I can attest to that fact, having done it myself. But I’ll also attest to the fact that home vaccinations provide a host of logistical difficulties. Here are a few of the difficulties I encountered:

The only vaccine available to backyard chicken keepers is the serotype 3 vaccine. It’s an effective vaccine, but because it’s the oldest type of vaccine, it’s becoming less effective due to mutated viral resistance.
If you don’t have a local supplier (you probably don’t) you need to buy it from an on-line supplier and it needs to be shipped cold, overnight express. If it gets warm in shipment, it will not work.
It is only available in 1000 dose vials. How many chicks do you plan on vaccinating?
Once you’ve opened the vaccine and mixed it, it’s good for an hour. So, there’s no possibility of using some and throwing the left-overs in the freezer for next year’s baby chicks.
The manufacturer’s instructions are to use it on chicks less than a day old. Some hatcheries actually vaccinate while the chick is still in the shell. If you wait until the chick is older to vaccinate, the vaccine won’t harm the chick, but it may be useless. Every second that ticks by after a chick hatches increases the window of opportunity for the chick to be exposed to Marek’s virus. If exposure occurs before vaccination, the vaccine will not work.
After giving your chicks the vaccine, you have to be meticulously careful that they aren’t exposed to other chickens or any source (chicken dander on your sleeve, for instance) of virus for at least two weeks, and preferably up to six weeks.

I’m providing this bulleted list of difficulties not to discourage you from vaccinating at home, but simply to provide a reality check. These logistical difficulties are not logistical impossibilities. You’ll know up front that if you have a handful of chicks to vaccinate, the cost of vaccinating each chick will be a few dollars rather than a few cents because most of the vaccine will go to waste. But you are potentially saving the life of each chick you vaccinate.

Education

During the Covid pandemic and the subsequent economic shutdown, there have been reports, including this one in the New York Times, of first-time chicken owners buying up every available chick at an amazingly brisk pace. Many people who had given occasional thought to having a few hens clucking around their backyard were suddenly furloughed or newly-unemployed. And all those good folks were intrigued by the possibility of a hobby they could pursue at home; one that would also provide breakfast. So, they went online and discovered they could order chicks through the mail with just a few keystrokes. Then, they quickly found out that they were responsible for taking care of living creatures that they knew nothing about.

The New York Times article reported on a woman who posted to an online chicken forum that she couldn’t understand why her new baby chicks were dying one-by-one. The experienced chicken folks on the forum quickly determined that they were dying from cold. The new chick owner was clueless that her babies needed a heat source. Knowledge would have saved their lives.

In this bird mortality study, “evidence of lack of water access” resulted in the death of 51 birds. And “starvation was identified in 43 birds.” The study asserts that “Of the noninfectious categories, nutritional and management issues were the most common causes of mortality. The majority of these mortality issues can be attributed to lack of poultry rearing and husbandry knowledge by backyard flock owners.” Providing adequate food and water seems basic, yet perhaps it is necessary for all first-time chick buyers to be provided with some basic information. An informational brochure with each batch of chicks that goes out the door, perhaps?

Then, there are the practices followed by more experienced flock-keepers that result in increased mortality in their flocks. Some of these practices are engrained and some flock keepers would likely argue against changing them—thus this becomes not just an issue of education, but requires changing ingrained cultural practices and the “folk wisdom” of some folks in the backyard poultry-keeping community. First, many flock-keepers need to institute better biosecurity practices. Second, birds should be vaccinated, especially against Marek’s disease.

The authors of this study commented on the “wide variety of localized and systemic disease conditions” found, and suggested “the detection of such a variety of infectious organisms highlights the need for backyard flocks to improve biosecurity practices to decrease organism transmission between flocks.” In this study and three prior reports on chicken mortality, Marek’s disease was the most common cause of death. Marek’s disease alone accounted for 22% (582/2687) of the deaths in this study. There’s a vaccine for that! While there are problems surrounding this vaccine, as I outlined in great detail above, had the birds in this study been vaccinated, most of these 582 birds would not have died with Marek’s disease.

Bird or human, we’ve all got to die sooner or later. But why should it be sooner if we can make it later? We backyard chicken folk care about our birds, so if there are some changes we can make that would not only give our birds a longer life, but a better life, we’ll do it. Right?