Enhancing Poultry Health Through Nutrition: Expert Strategies to Prevent Common Diseases

0:01 Good morning Polkney fans and we have another great show for you today. Joining me is Jeff Maddox. Everybody seemed to really enjoy your last program with us, Jeff. We're eagerly waiting to have you back on and we're very blessed to have you willing to join us. So welcome to the show, Jeff. Hey, thanks for inviting me, Rip. I enjoyed it last time and I'm sure we'll have a good time this time as well. Very good. Jeff's going to be sharing with us a little bit today about illnesses and the role that nutrition may or may not play in some of those illnesses.

0:45 I got to admit and I was just telling Jeff before we started recording this that the first time I had heard him speak on this, it literally blew me away. So this is something you're going to want to take notes on. So, Jeff, what are some of the more common illnesses that our viewers are more likely to encounter that may have a nutritional relationship? Most of the illnesses or diseases that we have out there are coming out of the environment, so protecting yourself from those are going to be more keeping that immune system functioning at a very high level. A lot of that is going to be coming from the right vitamin levels, primarily vitamin E and selenium.

1:32 I also play a pretty significant role in supporting that immune system and keeping the birds as healthy as possible. If they're already as healthy as they can be, they're going to be able to fight off When they're exposed to certain illnesses. They're going to be able to fight it off more naturally and they're going to get through it, build their own immunities to it. Often when I see somebody who contacts me with a catastrophic illness, as I dig a little deeper, they tend to be feeding feeds that are on the lesser expensive side, trying to keep their bills down.

2:12 They probably have a few more chickens than they actually need, but they can't bring themselves apart with them, so then the feed bill gets out of hand. They start looking for that layer feed or something like that. They don't realize that this is like a spiral downward, heading you to less protection for your birds. I got to admit. for a very, very long time I was right there with them, cheapest for me. It took me a while to learn the lesson, but it was a very valuable lesson. once I finally figured it out that I was only shooting myself in my own foot by doing that, yep, yep amen to that, because if people would just cut back or call birds back to a manageable level, keep the best that they have and then feed them better, the economics work out to be the same in the end.

3:08 But people just have a hard time parting with chickens. They love them, they want to keep them. So really keeping the vitamin levels and the proper nutrition up is going to be your best defense as far as any illness goes. As I'm talking to people and I'm sure you're the same. The things that pop up most often are things like coxidiosis, which is often misdiagnosed and it's actually necrotic anoritis. Right, because it's hard to tell the difference just by physical symptoms. The manure may look the same, the bird's activity level may be the same. Watching some of the Facebook posts out there, it's like somebody shows a sick chicken and everybody either wants to give it cord because they think it's coxidiosis Every problem with a chicken goes back to coxidiosis or they want to give it ivermectin and they want to worm it.

4:06 Both are environmental. So people can be their own worst or best friend and keep in the environment cleaned up and don't be feeding birds off the ground and discourage them from eating spilled grains off the ground. They're designed to scratch and peck something off the ground, but we don't really want it to be their feed. Find something else that they can chase after eating besides those That environment. Again, it's not necessarily nutritional, but if the bird's immune system is functioning at a high level it won't be as affected.

4:52 It's going to have a couple days of feeling off and it's going to get right back with the program and live ahead. It's when necrotic anorhitis or coxidiosis wins the battle. So, preventing those, nutritionally speaking, making sure that you're feeding a good probiotic periodically, not every day, just once or twice a week. Find a probiotic. I don't care if you go get plain yogurt at the grocery store. Just put a couple dollops on top of their feed and make it available to them. Receive the gut continually with beneficial bacteria. This gives us beneficial exclusion as the term we use.

5:35 So the more there's only so many sites in the digestive tract for bacteria to connect to the intestinal wall or the gut wall, and the more of those we fill up with beneficial bacteria, the less chance of coxidiosis or necrotic anorhitis to be able to attach to that intestinal wall and cause severe illness. Both of those are going to feed on the intestinal wall. They're going to chew away at the villi on that gut wall, kind of like an ulcer going to erode away. So anyway, let's back up. Probiotics is going to be your number one. So as a preventative feeding probiotic you're going to be really happy with doing that.

6:23 I can treat 100 birch with one pint of plain yogurt. That's how far that stretches. You're not looking at a huge investment by any means. You can go get a quart of plain Greek yogurt Any yogurt doesn't matter, plain yogurt Then a quart's going to treat up to 200 birch For 298 or whatever the cost of that yogurt is. You did a great thing, even if you only did it once a week. That's going to be beneficial. The simple sugars in the yogurt that come naturally from the milk are also going to feed the beneficial bacteria already residing in the gut.

7:03 Not feeding the necrotic anorhitus, not feeding the coccytiosis oocyst, but feeding the positive lactobacillus-type bacterias and just feeding the gut. In general. People get all excited if they have a little bit of coccytiosis. A little bit of coccytiosis is completely normal in that chicken's digestive tract. People don't understand that. If you sent me a menor's sample and I did a fecal float on it and I saw zero oocyst, that birch probably on the verge of dying because it does not have a healthy gut. So zero is not the right answer.

7:44 Same thing for parasites. I did that same fecal float and I'm looking for parasite eggs. I want to see 40 to 60 parasite eggs per gram of menor. That sounds like a lot and that's not Okay. So until you get well over 100 egg count, fecal egg count per gram, we don't really have anything to worry about. The birch are fine. Just don't. Zero is not the right number. Small amounts are part of the ecosystem of that chicken's digestive tract. Anyway, for treating parasites, if they're actually go ahead. Did you have something? No, i was just going to say Okay, and I'm assuming you can start this at a very early age, with chick right on up through adulthood.

8:30 Oh, yeah, exactly, i like to the first 48 hours, the first two to three days. I want them pretty much chicks to only get on feed So they know exactly what feed is, and usually at the in the afternoon of day three we can start with some type of a plain milk product. I don't care if it's whole milk, yogurt, whatever they choose is fine. Yogurt's easy to use. Whole milk is also fairly easy to use. Both will have the exact same effect on the digestive tract of that chicken. So I started day three. I like to do again about day seven and I'll do it again at day 14.

9:14 The timing for this is as a preventative for coxidiosis. You notice I said day three, not every day. Day three, day seven, day 14. I'm about a week apart and I'm seeding the gut. I'm helping the gut seed itself with positive or beneficial bacteria which takes away a space for coxidio to attach, form and grow. So that works really good. I've got several larger growers, you know, on that protocol. You know they're doing the day three, seven and 14. Most of our birds, if I can get them past day 21, 21 and 28 in there, they'll have enough immunity to coxidiosis that we don't really have to worry about it ever again And that birds like okay, unless something in the environment goes completely haywire, that bird will have its own, you know, natural bio system and the coxidiosis should not be a problem.

10:20 Now, if I go in and treat a bird, i just had an incidence of this The one contact could be horrible coxidiosis losing birds but the birds were started on a medicated starter. Those medications that have polyamorytacord in that feed will not allow that bird to develop its own natural immunities to coxidiosis. All right, it's going to inhibit, it's going to retard or slow down that immune system for development. I know a lot of people like to use medicated feeds because that's what the feed store tells them or that's what their friends all use, or whatever the reason is.

11:04 But in a good, fairly clean environment with low exposure to coxidiosis those birds will actually be able to thrive and be healthier in the long run. This is way off topic of what you asked me to come on for, but using medicated feeds actually is going to probably more than likely affect our overall reproductive performance. As the adult bird It's going to get into the system, it's a negligible amount. We might be talking about 5% difference in hatchability, but if you're working with a really hard to fertilize type, if you're working with a breed that's hard to copulate and fertilize naturally, 5% can be huge for you Some of those really heavy breeds that have a hard time mating naturally we're just kind of putting ourselves back one more step or behind that curve.

12:10 Those amproliums early on are going to interfere with proper development of other body systems. The longer you feed it, the more it's going to delay everything else in that chicken's life. Try not to do it any longer than you have to. You can get the same effects out of using copper sulfate in the water as using amprolium in the feed. One tablespoon of copper sulfate blue crystal powder in five gallons of drinking water. You can run it periodically for three days. You're going to get the exact same effects as though you're feeding a medicated feed or putting cord in the water.

12:56 It works fine. I don't like to do anything prophylactically or just as a preventant When it comes to something like copper sulfate or cord. Use them as designed for short burst, short periods. It only takes two to three days to get things back to normal if we fix the environment and got things under control. Copper sulfate to me is a whole lot more natural. It's easy to get. It doesn't require any kind of drug license, even though amprole doesn't either It should. Anybody can walk into a tractor, supply them by a gallon of cord any time they want.

13:36 They have no idea the long-term effects that that's having on our environment, their bird, everything I mean. We're killing earthworms and things in the soil because of overuse and improper use. Jeff, where could a poultry keeper find copper sulfate? Can they get that at the feed store, at the drug store? Garden center. Garden center is almost always keep little five-pound bags of copper sulfate. Just read the label. Good, make sure that it only contains copper sulfate, that they didn't put any in agent or anything else in there. Better feed stores that actually manufacture their own feed should have some copper sulfate as well.

14:21 People can't find it. They're welcome to reach out to me. For a while we were packaging one or two-pound bags for people just to keep in their medicine cabinet as a break glass in case of emergency kind of thing. We'll figure it out. It's not that hard to find. People seem to get overwhelmed when they're looking for copper sulfate. I think they're overthinking it. Like I said, any good garden center I can go buy copper sulfate. Blue crystal powder dissolves in water. Usually I'll make a stock mix in the house with warm water. I'll take my tablespoon and put it in a quarter or a half gallon container. I'll mix that with hot water just to make sure I get a thorough dissolve.

15:05 Then I'll take that out and put it in the five-gallon bucket and then fill it up with cool water cold water right out of the hose or however the water is being filled. That way I know I got a really good dissolving and copper sulfate doesn't like to dissolve as well in cold water, depending on where you live and what your well water temperature is. For us well water comes out at between 55 and 60 degrees. You're down in Florida. Your well water is a little warmer than mine. It's a lot warmer than that. You would be fine dissolving yours directly. If your water temperature is much below 70 degrees, i think you're better off to dissolve it with hot water, just to be safe.

15:53 Just administer it. I tell folks three days on, never more than three days, because copper will load up in the soft tissues and we can get some long-term negative effects. It's doubtful that we will, but it is a potential. I don't want people calling me and saying, hey, you killed my bird. I'm going to find out if it cup or sulfate for six months straight. It can. Copper can be toxic. Let's shift gears here for just a minute. What about amino acids? Is there anything we can do or should be concerned about when our amino acids and our feeds are not balanced right?

16:39 So for showbirds, amino acids are really huge. I mean you guys, the show community or the poultry community that has fancy fowls. You know they're looking for the better feathers, right, they want better feather development And that's what they're going to see from better amino acids, primarily methionine. That's harder to get than the lysine. Lysine is fairly easy to achieve the numbers because it's coming out of grain type proteins which is in most of our feeds. The methionine doesn't come out of grain protein very well but doesn't show up very well in grain protein. So having a meat type protein.

17:20 but methionine is responsible for community system development, internal organs and all those systems, how they develop at those early ages. So from day one to 16 weeks, having that appropriate methionine level, and I would say everybody is waiting to be above 0.45% during that time, 0.5 is even better. And if you've got some, if your fowl has an ex, you know a huge amount of plumage, like you got a really heavy plumage bird, i would be running at 0.53 on methionine.

18:01 Now That's free, you know, for as a poultry fans here, you'd almost be out there putting it on with a salt shaker. Okay, it's. If you bought pure methionine, you know it's hard for you to add that directly to a feed and supplement it. So most of the time I kill folks to use fish meal, and fish meal will bring that methionine level up and all the amino acid levels up. And you know, as little as a teaspoonful a day of fish meal can make a huge difference. Again, that depends on the size and weight of the bird. The smaller, medium size birds and that four to six pound teaspoons good.

18:44 Heavier birds, heavy plumage, you know, up in that 10 pound range or higher I could be doing two teaspoons a day of fish meal. Birds like it, they like the smell of it. It's a meat protein. They usually go right after it, so it's not usually a problem to get them to clean it up. Other folks aren't real happy because it's powder and it falls to the bottom. So you're going to want to figure out a way to help it stick to. You know, the other grains that you're mixing or that you're feeding, so it stays kind of in suspension, so to speak, and fish meal and other meat type proteins. You know they're going to bring a lot of those missing amino acids And they also I mean a good fish meal runs around 10% fat So you're going to be picking up the omega threes that your bird needs, that it's not getting anywhere else.

19:40 You're going to have better liver function. You're going to have better cholesterol depositing. You know the benefits kind of go on and on. But what they're going to see the most is a way, better feather formation. You know the feathers are just going to structure. You know, at a higher level You can overdo it. I mean, beyond that level that I talked about earlier, you're just kind of wasting the methionine. It's just going to end up in herring out the back end. So if you're feeding the fish meal and you want to know if you have too much or don't have too much, is well, if you taste it in the eggs you probably have too much and back it down a little bit.

20:24 But the other thing is it is undigested or unabsorbed protein is going to come out as an ammonia smell. So you're going to have a much higher ammonia smell, you know, in the chicken house or wherever you're keeping your birds. So you may need to adjust it that way. You know, people are also welcome to contact me and I get back to them as much as I can And I can try and help them balance it out, you know, and figure out the right level based on their birds, because a Bantam is not going to even need a full teaspoon. Half a teaspoon for a Bantam type breed, just because of their body weight is going to be plenty And that's a pretty good rule of thumb, you know.

21:08 Based on their body weight, because of how much feed they intake, you know, and how many, you know how much feather we have to deposit. What about vitamins and minerals? Yeah, I was a No, there was no virginity. Yeah, i mean I kind of made a little bit of a cheat sheet after you and I talked. So there's no sites out there that give you really great nutritional requirements for breeders. So you know, it took me a lot of figuring it out. It took me a lot of figuring it out and go find something.

21:49 And Hubbard if you do a search on Hubbard breeders or Hubbard poultry, they probably have And their technical library will lead you down the right road. But they're calling for 65 to 7,000 internationally units of vitamin A per pound of feed And vitamin D in that 2,000 to 2,500 range, vitamin E at around 100 internationally units per pound. So those are just some of them, but they give you a full list of the different vitamins you need out there. Now this is not. These types of feed still are not off the shelf, ready or available for breeding folks, for folks who have Fancy Fell.

22:34 Okay, it really saddens me that you know somebody is not paying attention to it And they may have been paying attention to it. I see a couple of companies starting to think about it. You hear them. Comboc out of Ohio has put together, you know, a breeder, a higher breeder feed Still doesn't hit those levels I just talked about, but at least they're making me attempt. I think where it's failed in the past is it has a hard time hitting any market saturation. So when people see 25 or $26 a bag for a feed, they're like no way I'm going down to track their supply and buy my you know, 16% layer feed And they don't understand what they're missing.

23:20 They until they try it. Okay, they'll never see the difference until they actually try it. And you can also, you know you can purchase supplements to compensate for these and add it to existing feeds, which you know is something that you and I know that I've come out with. It's one way to do it. It's at about $0.03 per bird per day. You know, when I say it that way it's not as scary. But when somebody calls the water bag, they're like holy crap. You know that's expensive. Well, i can tell you from experience and since I started using it with my birds, i have noticed a huge difference, not only in the way the birds plumage looks, but also in the way the birds bodies feel in my hand.

24:08 And also I see a difference in activities and they just seem to be much calmer. You know, i've got bird rocks and and God, those things I thought were pretty calm, and these, now that I've got them on this, your supplement, golly, they're underfoot. I'm tripping and falling over and afraid I'm going to squish them, but such they've just gotten real chummy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If their nutritional needs are being met. That's exactly what you want. I mean they should be, depending on the breed, you know they're going to be really calm, laid back, not too excited about anything. That's a good sign.

24:49 That's really a good sign And I'm glad you're seeing that. And the thing that really shocked me, to be honest with you, is it didn't take very long before I started seeing a change in their attitudes and that sort of thing. Like I said, they were much calmer. The other changes have been a little bit slower and coming about, but that you know, with plumage and some of these are young birds and you got to wait until they mow those new refesers in. But it definitely makes a difference And I would highly recommend it. Yeah. Right after the mow as many as most people are seeing the biggest difference. So if they start, you know, just before the mow, while the birds going through the mow, coming out of the mow, they see, they notice the plumage part of it way better, over about a month to two months time they'll notice less internal fat, more body density.

25:46 The bird will just, you know, they'll get that denser, harder, more solid feel. That's not going to happen overnight, but the attitude change or the personality change we see, usually within 70 to 10 days. You just notice a big difference in their whole demeanor. So yeah, i just wish more people. if they're not going to spend the money on the better feeds that are out there, then they need to figure out a way to supplement the vitamins, the amino acids which is coming from the fish meal or other amino acids.

26:27 They're going to see a huge difference And down the road, increasing those vitamins, like I was talking about Hubbard and those vitamin levels. those vitamins, particularly A and E, are critical for fertility and hatchability. but also it goes all the way through to the chick and that chick vigor. So when it pips out just getting a chick that's ready to meet the world. And I'm just eagerly awaiting being able to start setting again, because I know, with as much difference as I'm seeing in my birds now, that that's going to transmit down the line to things that are better stronger chicks, better hatchability, better livability, and I'm just excited about it.

27:24 Breeding performance can definitely go back to nutritional aspects. They always bump up the selenium levels for breeder flocks. They always keep the vitamin A and E levels higher than usual. The D actually still helps, but the D is also helping to get the right calcium deposit so you get the right eggshell formation. Everything kind of ties together with everything else. So folks get weaker shells and they think they just add more calcium. That's not the right answer. Chances are so. Calcium is the cheapest part of a chicken feed. That calcium number on a chicken feed is the cheapest ingredient in that entire bag.

28:08 So if more calcium was the right answer, more people would be putting in higher levels. Chances are something else is off. Is the vitamin D off? Is the phosphorus level off? Phosphorus is more expensive, vitamin D is more expensive. So they're going to run those at those minimum levels to just barely get by, to help keep their price down, because they know the shopper coming in is going to. The first thing you're going to look at is price per bag And they're not comparing labels, they're not reading ingredients, they're not you know. So sometimes we're our own worst enemies in that aspect.

28:49 But some of the nutritional related illnesses that folks could see, i've seen curly toe, ever seen curly toe. So that is a riboflavin deficiency And I see that often get misdiagnosed as marics or something else. But curly toe and a chick that shows up between day five and day seven is a riboflavin deficiency. Part of the B vitamin spectrum Sprattle leg, where it looks like you kind of broke their leg right out to the side, that's a manganese deficiency. Now, if it's one out of a hundred, no, it's not.

29:30 If it's 10 out of a hundred, yeah, then you have a manganese deficiency. Same way with the curly toe. Just past a couple of years I've heard more rickets showing up, which is a calcium, vitamin D deficiency in those baby chicks And this is where that milk really plays into it. Or dairy product, because you're going to get a very simplified calcium and vitamin D out of those dairy products. So milk at that three, day three, day seven, day 14 timeframe and you can even continue to day 21 if you want. You can do it once a week. For the rest of the light It doesn't matter. But dairy products are going to help a lot with rickets.

30:13 It went for a long time without seeing rickets. I probably went seven or eight years without a diagnosed case of rickets And then this past two years I've diagnosed at least a half a dozen, which is unusual, i mean that's yeah. I don't really see that very often. You know lethargic birds, you know whether it's chick or chicken myopathy, where they kind of get, you know, lose some function or muscle function and things like that. That's back to that vitamin E and selenium. Look, I don't want to write it out and buy vitamin E and selenium and start dosing after their birds.

30:58 Both of those can be toxic. There's a science behind how they should be properly fed and administered, and more doesn't always mean better. But having the right levels is important. So they should talk to somebody who has really good experience and understands those functions and make sure that they have the right levels. Most of the time I find that just adding vitamin E works, because selenium is not very expensive either. It's not an expensive ingredient in feed, but the vitamin E is a very expensive. So if we can figure out a way to just supplement a little bit of extra vitamin E So to properly absorb selenium we have to have the right level of vitamin E The two works synergistically together in the body.

31:49 Like I can put a whole 50-pound bag of selenium in a chicken coop and let them have at it. It's not going to do anything but make sick chickens. So if I don't have the vitamin E to facilitate proper absorption and utilization within the body system. Those two work hand in hand. So same vice versa. Too much vitamin E gets toxic If I don't have enough selenium to kind of buffer and work it correctly. Yeah, i've never seen it, but iron and copper deficiencies are going to show up as So people with heavy cover or high color levels in their birds especially if you've got a bunch of blacks and you've got a bunch of rust colors or reds in there copper and iron are going to show up in those feathers or not going to show up in those feathers and the feathers just aren't going to have the right depth of color.

32:49 But they'll also lead to anemia. Again, i don't see this very often. Sure, those are very expensive, but there are some backyard mixes that I've ran into where people don't understand the importance of those and it'll make a big difference. Good. I was just going to say talk for a minute, and I can't remember exactly where I heard you say this, but the role of B-vitamin and the effect that it has on a flux demeanor. So B-vitamins as a whole, all the B-vitamins are what we refer to as our calming vitamins or they're your stress management.

33:36 That's a better way to say it, because when you or I or any creature is under a heavy stress load, the B-vitamins burn off very rapidly. B-vitamins are normally stored in the liver or the brain, mostly in the liver, but the vitamins that enable us to manage stress better, no major stress comes along. Those B-vitamins are also critical to be deposited in the yolk for the chick, for hatchability. Getting that chick off the ground, those B-vitamins are critical for that.

34:18 But that's also a stressful event. Coming into that shell is not an easy task. We just kind of look at it and wonder how that happens. But your B-vitamins are going to be your stress vitamins and they're also going to be key to reproductive performance. B-vitamins are expensive, so again, they tend to. In a commercial-type feed they tend to keep those at lower levels to help hold the cost down. So the bargain buyer will buy their feed over the next guy's feed. In a breeder situation that's definitely the wrong way to go.

35:02 Every chick you can get to hatch is your future. I can't help but wonder what role B-vitamins might play in some of our flottier breeds like legrins, menorcas and coles, the Mediterranean birds who tend to be naturally flighty by nature, and I'm wondering if those folks that are raising those breeds might give that a shot. And if they just want to run a cheap experiment, there's a liquid B-vitamin complex called Total B Liquid and it's a sublingual made for humans that can go underneath your tongue, but it's a blend of B-vitamin specifically for boosting that, and 1 milliliter, which is one dropper full, comes with a dropper so you can take it.

36:03 One dropper full is 1 milliliter, so 1 milliliter is good for about a gallon of chick water And they should run. they should have a control group. get some of this Total B sublingual, put a few drops in their water bowl. just have a half a dozen birds that you're running the test with. put a few drops in each water bowl every day and watch the demeanor change If they're keeping them, you know, pinned up, individual or mating. some people don't always see the difference when it's a whole flock setting, but everybody sees the difference because it can be very gradual you know it's a gradual change and things that you know change gradually are not as obvious to some people.

37:03 Otherwise they'd have to take a before and after video, run it for about. It's going to take 10 days probably to notice a significant difference. But if you had one individual, you know hyper bird and if you're keeping them in 10s, i think you could see that you know pretty quickly. Just calm them right down. Very interesting. And so, folks, if you breed one of these fly-dee or breeds, or you have a few birds that are fly-dee, get yourself some B vitamins supplement and see what you can do for your bird. Maybe just a very simple solution. Yeah, and inexpensive as well. The total B sublingual is under 10 bucks a bottle.

37:44 You know it comes in a little one-out fluid bottle. It's going to last you quite a while. It's going to let you know whether or not your feed has the right levels of B vitamins already in it. Right, if they respond to it and you're missing something. They don't respond to it, then they're it's going to be. Then you probably have a half decent feed and there's no need to. You know, go yell at your feed guy and tell him you need more B vitamins. Well, jeff, i know you're a busy guy. I don't want to keep you too long because I know you've got a lot of irons in the fire today and all the farmers, since it's raining, are going to be giving you calls and just burning out the rest of your day for you.

38:25 But I want to say just thank you so much for taking the time to defend with us. And, golly, every time I hear you talk there's something, the little bell goes off up here. You know, i need to remember that. I got to, i got to try that, because it has been a very enlightening experience just to hear you speak, and it's, i know I'm not the only one to get something out of it, because we've got a lot of viewers out there to get a lot of it out of it as well, because I hear from them on a regular basis. So thank you very, very much. Thanks for having me.