Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
so. During the rainy, cool autumn and spring seasons, many pens require cleaning on a
weekly basis.
Number and type of birds are also a consideration. A small backyard shed with six
hens may need cleaning only every month or so. Add two ducks and reduce the number
of chickens to four, and even though you still have six birds, you will most likely need
to clean on a weekly basis. Ducks' eating habits and wetter manure makes their dwell-
ing messy fast. They also have flat little feet that pat things down and make the litter
very compressed, increasing the smell and trapped gases that can build up and create a
problem.
Use the smell test.
When pens aren't cleaned often enough, your birds can suffer
respiratory illness from a buildup of ammonia, a product of decomposing waste. If you
smell a strong ammonia stench, it's time to clean.
Try to keep the litter base in your pens as dry as possible. This makes for a healthier
flock. When it becomes wet and moldy, all kinds of situations may arise. Birds can con-
tract everything from respiratory disease to foot infections. Even if there's no stench, but
the litter is packed down and resembling asphalt or concrete, a cleaning is needed.
Roommate Review
While all types of poultry could, perhaps, coexist together, chickens, ducks, geese,
guineas, and turkeys can all live in the same facilities with some adjustments to the liv-
ing system. Chickens, turkeys, pheasants, quail, and other game birds are fairly dry birds
that don't dabble much in their water; their litter stays on the dry side. This is especially
true for guineas, which produce a very dry waste product.
Waterfowl, however, are very messy and you'll have to find time to deal with that.
They will cause a great deal of frustration for people who want to keep everything clean
and dry 100 percent of the time. Once baby ducks discover water, they go wild with
it. Most of the health problems related to sanitation come about as a result of improp-
er cleaning for young stock. See
chapter 4
, Baby Basics, for more tips about cleaning
brooders and other facilities for very young birds.
Sharing Disease
In certain parts of North America, it's unwise to keep turkeys with other poultry because
they contract many of the diseases that chickens carry, yet show no symptoms. For ex-
but infection is not as easy to recognize as it is in the chicken population. You could lose
a bunch of turkeys before you realize they are infected with chicken diseases.
If you house all your poultry in one building, the waterfowl will make it unbearable
for everyone else. They like to splash and play in water — even when it is cold and
