Footwear (shoes, boots, clogs) can be a major source of transferring disease.
When you or your farm workers have been in contact with other birds, ensure that any items that could have been in contact with those birds are cleaned thoroughly. Vehicles, clothing and other equipment can all carry disease.Apply disinfectants using brushes, sponges, or spray units.Disinfectants are not effective if they are applied over caked on dirt, manure, or bedding. Thoroughly clean and scrub objects before applying disinfectant.Regular cleaning helps you to prevent the spread of diseases.Certain diseases can survive for a long period of time in the bedding, examples are Marek’s disease and the Avian Influenza virus. Clean and disinfect thoroughly between batches of birds, replace all the bedding.This also includes when bedding smells bad, is damp or has become dirty. Always remove wet bedding and replace it with fresh dry bedding. Birds are often consuming things off the ground, which could result in ingesting harmful parasites, bacteria or viruses that may have come from an infected bird. Parasitic, bacterial and viral diseases can stay around for weeks or even months in dirty environments. Effective biosecurity and cleanliness go hand in hand.It should be attractive for the birds to spend the night. Provide proper nighttime housing, with proper ventilation.Have a proper rodent and pest control scheme in place, monitor your traps daily.Bury your fencing deep enough to ensure that predators like foxes, badgers and coyotes don’t get in and your birds don’t get out!
Make sure that your birds are securely fenced in. Keep predators and rodents out! Enclose your flock properly and consider closing your facilities during the nighttime.When your birds have outdoor access, keep them in a screened area that prevents them from any contact with wild birds. This is especially true for migratory waterfowl. Limit any possible contact with wild birds as they can carry disease.We strongly advise you to provide them with clean company shoes and clothes before visiting your birds. All visitors should always sanitize their hands and clean their shoes properly. Limit the number of people that come in contact with your birds, especially if your visitors have birds themselves.Your birds are healthy and it’s important to keep out disease from the outside surrounding. Restrict access to your farm and flocks.We suggest the following measures to promote biosecurity on your farm: Sanitation addresses the cleaning and disinfection materials, equipment and people entering the farm, and the “clean” way of working on the farm. Traffic control is not only about the supply of birds and goods, but also about the visits of people to your farm and the traffic patterns within the farm. It allows time for periodic clean-up and disinfection, which is often neglected.
In many poultry operations, all-in/all-out management is applied, which allow simultaneous depopulation of facilities between flocks. Don’t forget to separate your birds by age groups. Isolation also applies to the practice of isolating your sick birds from the healthy birds to prevent further spreading of disease. If your birds have outdoor access, it is also important that you use fencing that can guarantee the aforementioned. A poultry house will keep your birds in, but it also keeps unwanted visitors out. Isolation refers to the confinement of animals within a controlled environment. In general we can say that biosecurity constitutes of three major components: Biosecurity is a proven method that can help to promote the health of your flock. Please keep in mind, biosecurity is the cheapest and most effective means of disease control available! No single disease prevention program will be effective without taking proper biosecurity measures.