Thread by @tonyOWEI

ONLINE POULTRY CLASS
LESSON FOR WEEK NINE
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A warm welcome to another edition of your favourite online class – The Online Poultry Class. This is the ninth week running and I hope you have learnt a lot in the previous eight lessons.

Last week, we learnt in detail how to source, raise and manage your day old chicks (doc). If you missed it, See it here:

https://twitter.com/tonyOWEI/status/1103371058978131968?s=19

However, this week, we will learn about vaccines and vaccination of poultry birds.

Vaccination is simply treatment with a vaccine to produce immunity against a disease.

WHY SHOULD WE VACCINATE?

Vaccination is commonly used in commercial poultry and increasingly in backyard birds to control disease. Vaccines mimic natural infection, allowing the birds to build up immunity to the disease without any of the harmful effects.

This way you can prevent your birds getting the disease. For commercial poultry production, vaccination has no alternative, for now.

High rate of mortalities of chicken due to diseases and sometimes epidemics, decreases productivity and ultimately leads to food shortage and eats into your profit.

Vaccination therefore is like taking an insurance policy.

WHAT DISEASES CAN I VACCINATE AGAINST?

There are a range of diseases which can be vaccinated. Some of the most common ones are:
- Mareks Disease (Mostly given at the hatcheries)
- Infectious Bronchitis (IB)
- Newcastle Disease
- Egg Drop Syndrome
- Fowl pox

among others.

While administering your vaccines, wrong application or wrong timing can cause it to fail. Below are few things to note.

1. Storage: Buy your vaccine from reliable and reputable retailers or veterinary shops which has refrigeration facilities to store. Live vaccines are normally stored at a temperature of between +2 to +8 Celsius and as such you cannot store them in a freezer.

2. Transport: This is key and the same temperature must be maintained from the point of purchase to the farm. Use containers with ice cubes to maintain the temperature. The longer the distance to the farm the more ice cubes you need.

3. Ensure your birds are healthy: Do not vaccinate birds when they are sick. The immune system of a sick bird is weak, and cannot satisfactorily withstand a vaccine, let alone develop immunity against the disease you are vaccinating it against.

If you do, it can even hasten the diseases it is intended to prevent. Sick birds should be therefore be allowed to recover before vaccination.

4. Check for the expiry date before purchase.

5. Timing: Vaccinate at the cooler hours of the day. Do not vaccinate under high temperature as it affect vaccine potency. Heat sources in the brooder house may be temporary turned off except when the weather is too cold.

6. Don’t stress your flock during vaccination: Stress is a well-documented and proven immuno-suppressant. Use vitamins before and after vaccination.

7. Open inside the water: Vaccines administered via drinking water (not injected) should be opened inside or under the water to be administered. This is because vaccines are normally vacuum sealed. When opened in the air they may draw contaminated air into the container.

8. Quality feed: Birds fed with well-balanced diet will respond better to vaccination.

9. Water mixture: If you want to administer correct dose, you must know the actual water your flocks consume. Use about 25-30% of their daily consumption. Ensure drinkers go to round.

10. Before vaccination, stop every other medications 48 hours prior.

11. Add skimmed milk and not full cream milk during vaccination to your water if it has chlorine content and wait out 10 minutes before adding the vaccine under the water.

We draw the curtain here today.

Thank you for your time today.

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