The 4-H Chick Chain project is designed to teach 4-H members recommended care and management practices for the family laying flock. The Extension Service in numerous states offer Chick Chain programs to 4-H youth. The 4-H Chick Chain project provides youth the opportunity for hands on experience in the areas of poultry management, health, nutrition, and biosecurity. With the waterfowl migration season around the corner, extra care should be taken to avoid an avian influenza outbreak in backyard flocks. Waterfowl carry avian influenza virus in their nasal secretions and fecal excretions, posing a great biosecurity concern for any flock housed below their path. Avian Influenza is considered highly contagious and often leads to high death rates in backyard flocks. Here are three important tips for keeping your flock safe this migration season:

Isolation

Isolation is the first and most important step to keeping your flock safe from disease. Confine your birds within a controlled environment. Keeping your birds in a pen, or enclosure, ensures not only their safety from prey, but also safety from wild birds and other vectors, like rodents, carrying disease. Not only should you keep your flock safe from outside vectors, but you should also never let other domesticated poultry near your flock. Keeping your birds away from other flocks ensures no disease transmission between the two. Just because a flock looks healthy does not eliminate the risk for underlying disease.

Traffic Control

Controlling who visits your flock is essential in keeping disease away. Just like wild birds and rodents, humans can unknowingly carry bacteria and viruses to your flock. Knowing who is coming in contact with your birds ensures minimal opportunity for disease transmission to arise. Its good practice to keep visitors away from your flock if they have been around another flock in the past week. Caretakers can easily pass bacteria from one flock to another even if proper sanitation practices have been taken. Allowing one week between alternate flock visits ensures no bacteria is left to pass on. Just because a disease can’t infect a human, doesn’t inhibit its ability to use humans as a vehicle to a more susceptible host (your birds!).

Sanitation

Good sanitation practices should be taken to ensure you don’t bring unwanted bacteria and viruses to your flock from tools and equipment used inside their pens. Clean and then disinfect all material and equipment you use; consider disposable footwear and hand sanitizer for anyone who visits your birds. Disease and bacteria can be carried into your flock by anything you bring into their enclosure. It is good practice to clean, sanitize and disinfect anything that Is used in your coop or encounters your birds from outside of the coop. Clean first to remove any organic matter.  You cannot disinfect organic matter so clean first, then disinfect. Disposable footwear ensures nothing stuck to someone’s shoes is introduced into the flock. Our shoes encounter many different locations in a day, there’s a lot of bacteria that they can pick up and bring to your birds. Disposable footwear also keeps you from tracking unwanted coop litter into your home, keeping you and your family safe from unwanted zoonotic diseases, as well as your birds.

In order to practice good biosecurity, it’s important to know where disease comes from and how it can come in contact with your birds.  Disease is transmitted by two pathways: 1) direct and 2) indirect.

1. Direct transmission is when a healthy bird comes in physical contact with a sick bird. Keeping your flock isolated from other flocks and wild birds is the number one step to avoiding direct transmission of disease to your birds. If you notice any signs that one of your birds may be sick, its good practice to quarantine that bird and any others showing symptoms to avoid further spread of disease.
2. Indirect transmission is when a disease agent is carried to susceptible birds by:
   • Humans (likely the #1 threat)
   • Contaminated Feed
   • Contaminated Water
   • Environment
   • Shared Equipment or Tools
   • Rodents or other vermin
   • Pets

Proper sanitation and hygiene practices should be taken to avoid indirect transmission. Because bacteria are too small for the eye to see, indirect transmission is sometimes harder to prevent then direct transmission. Following proper sanitation guidelines and keeping unknown visitors away from your flock is the best way to keep your flock safe from indirect transmission of disease.

When keeping backyard flocks, it’s important to remember that these are farm animals that belong outside and not pets that should be in your home. Salmonella is common in backyard poultry, and outbreaks occur annually in the US. While salmonella cannot infect your flock, it can make their caretakers or anyone else that comes in contact with the bacteria sick. Salmonella can stick to floors, carpets, couches, countertops- anything the birds come in contact with- and can stay long after the birds are back in their coop. Here are some important tips for keeping you and your family safe from Salmonella outbreak:

• DO NOT kiss and snuggle backyard poultry.
• DO NOT eat or drink anything around your birds.
• DO NOT touch your mouth after handling birds.
• Always wash your hands with soap and water IMMEDIATLY after handling backyard poultry.
• Adults should supervise activities and handwashing of children.
• Children younger than five, adults over 65, and people with weakened immune systems are at greater risk for serious illness from diseases spread zoonotically (transmitted from animals to humans, or vice versa).
• Consider keeping sanitizer near the coop and using it regularly.
• Children under five should not handle backyard poultry. These children are more likely to unknowingly put their hands in their mouths before a guardian has a chance to help them wash their hands.
• Handle eggs carefully:
  • Collect eggs often (eggs left in the nest for long periods of time become cracked and dirty).
  • Throw cracked eggs away (germs can easily enter the egg through a cracked shell).
  • Refrigerate eggs to keep them fresh and slow the growth of germs.
  • Cook eggs until the yolk and white are firm; egg dishes to 165 degrees F.

The 4-H Chick Chain can be a fun and rewarding experience for members and their families, but extra caution should be taken in order to keep you and your birds healthy and happy. Common sense, good biosecurity, and proper hygiene will help minimize the disease threat. Backyard poultry can be a great opportunity with many benefits, but it is important to keep everyone healthy to fully enjoy them!