As caretakers of our birds, it is second nature to want to act fast when it comes to sick birds. Our first step to address the issue is through management. As an example if there is a flock of young pheasants that are showing signs that things aren’t quite right, our management team’s first response here would be to turn the heat up a few degrees, and top dress the bedding in the barn with new bedding. We also have established a number of best practices (bio-security) to ensure that if we do have ill birds, we don’t infect healthy birds. There’s the temptation to medicate, especially when the barn next door has caught something and their neighbors seem like they’re on the verge. But our first and second responses don’t include medicating and here’s why.
Even with careful biosecurity measures, birds still can get sick. One of the most common culprits is E. coli. Our breeding hens lay their eggs outside, and if eggs are laid during a rainy period, eggs can get contaminated. We do our best to keep the laying huts strawed, and we collect eggs up to six times a day and the collected eggs are washed in a “state of the art” egg washer, but a few eggs still can be contaminated. When eggs hatch, and if the chicks encounter most any type of stress, E. coli can emerge to challenge the health of the chicks.
First of all, we do not administer anti-biotics to our birds prophylactically (i.e. in advance to prevent disease). If we do have sick birds, the first thought would be to medicate. But we don’t medicate and the reasons we don’t is simple: usually changing the management of the birds most effectively will address the problem and also by over medicating, E. coli could just get stronger. For the same reason that you don’t blast your child’s system with antibiotics at the first sound of a sniffle, a pre-emptive strike only helps bacteria develop immunities to current drugs, meaning their efficacy is lessened over time. What’s bad for us is also bad for the poultry industry.
Refraining from medicating birds that don’t yet need it is part of basic bird protocol. Yes, pharmaceutical companies are turning out new medications to combat some of today’s most insidious diseases. But part of being good stewards as well as good businessmen is knowing when to treat and when to wait and see.