Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the honour and pleasure of chairing tonight's webinar. A little bit of housekeeping.

We will be keeping all the questions over to the end. If you move your mouse over the screen, you'll see that the little black control bar normally at the bottom, opens up and there's a Q&A box. Just click on that, type in any of your questions and we will hold those over to the end.

And Richard has kindly agreed to stay with us and answer those. Also, just to give you a heads up, we do have some poll questions going through tonight. And I'll explain those as and when we need them.

But just watch those. They really are important because not only does it give you a chance to think about things and answer questions, but it also gives a bit of feedback to the presenters. So it's nice for them to gauge where they're going and how things are going.

So tonight's presenter is Richard Jackson, and he grew up on a turkey farm and had a very keen interest in breeding and showing rare breeds of chickens and ducks. He graduated from Glasgow Vet School in 2010 and has worked at St. David's poultry team ever since then.

He became the clinical director in 2013. And Richard has also run a number of training courses and given several webinars on both management of diseases and backyard poultry. Richard, welcome to the webinar tonight and it's over to you.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this evening's webinar on showing backyard poultry, risks and rewards. And before we start this evening's webinar, there was sort of 3 things I just wanted to mention to all of you listening this evening. The first one was that there's a comprehensive set of notes to go alongside this evening's webinar.

So, rather than frantically scribbling down bits of information, As we go through the webinar, and just relax and enjoy it and then take in as much as you can, but there will be comprehensive notes provided, so there's no need to worry too much. The other thing that's worth pointing out to everyone is, hopefully, everyone's aware through the British Veterinary Association's blog on Evian influenza that we've currently got, quite a number of cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the UK at present, and the strain is H5N8. Now, in response to this, Animal Health put in place an avian influenza prevention zone, which I have to say, the name's not particularly helpful.

But what it really means is that there's a housing order in force currently, and I suspect that that's going to go on right through to the springtime. So, currently, All poultry must either be housed, or if they have access to a range, then the range area must be netted on top so that there's no potential access from wild birds into the range area. And that is a legal requirement, and the local authorities have the responsibility for enforcing that.

Additionally, part of the avian influenza prevention zone order is that there must be no mixing of waterfowl, i.e., ducks and geese, with other poultry, i.e., chickens and turkeys.

So a lot of backyard keepers tend to have mixtures of different types of poultry on their holding, and I did it when I was growing up as well. And certainly that's a big no no, and again, against the law with the current zone. And as you'll Be aware, AI is notifiable, and I'm not going to dwell too much more on avian influenza this evening, predominantly because just before Christmas time, I presented a webinar for the webinar vet on AI and I believe chatting to the team this evening that that webinar is still available on Webinar vets.

So, if anyone's got any major sort of interest in the AI situation, it would be worth logging in and watching that webinar. The third thing I wanted to mention to everyone was that quite a few of you may have attended some of my webinars in the past, and I'm always very keen whenever I agree to do these webinars that we've got something new and different. So there may be a few bits that are common to previous webinars have done from a disease perspective, but there is some very useful information, particularly when we come to ectoparasite control, and there's a very exciting new product on the market, which we'll talk about later on.

But without further ado, we will start to talk about showing poultry risks and rewards. So, I guess the first question is, why on earth would you want to go to the bother of showing poultry. Now, I did pinch this photo off the internet, but it does illustrate the lengths that people go to whenever they go to show their birds.

They will wash their chickens down, they will blow dry their feathers, and generally a couple of days before showing to make sure that they're in tip-top condition. People tend to put Vaseline on the chickens coombs and wattles to make sure they're nice and shiny. And for breeds with yellow legs, they will be feeding the birds maize for a few weeks before the show to make sure that the legs are an optimum bright yellow.

So it's a bit like bodybuilders, I guess, getting a spray tan before entering a competition. People take showing chickens incredibly serious and it's a bit like the fraternity of people that tend to show garden vegetables, they get very, very competitive and quite protective of their stock. For me and for the majority of people who have shown birds, I think it's predominantly about the social aspect.

You meet people from all walks of life at shows, you develop friendships with them, you get to know them, and generally have a bit of fun doing it all. It's certainly not all about the prize money. The prize money for showing poultry is very, very little.

And if you've got to think about the fact that a lot of shows involve driving maybe 34 hours away, possibly an overnight stay in a hotel, food and drink, the prize money wouldn't cover it. So typically prizes can be anywhere between 5 pounds and maybe up to 100 pounds, but it's not big bucks at all. With other species, such as dogs, if you take them to crafts, obviously winning crafts is going to hugely increase the value of your genetics.

It doesn't quite work like that in the poultry world. I think in the good old days, it certainly did, but nowadays, winning major poultry shows might increase the value of the bird up to a couple 10. Quid, but you're certainly unlikely to get into the thousands.

And the other problem is that a lot of people go and they buy hatching eggs on eBay, and they tend to source new genetics through that route, which isn't ideal because you can buy in diseases. And, but unfortunately, a lot of people have moved with the times and especially now with the housing order in force, we're not allowed to show our chickens, and then people will be increasingly using online methods for sourcing new, new genetics for their birds. But of course, you didn't join me this evening to really hear about the, the rewards of showing poultry.

I guess really as vets, we all like to know about disease and, and I guess the negative side of things, and I wanted to predominantly to focus on, on the risks, really, of showing birds. The mainstay of this evening's webinar will be to talk about the disease risks, but I thought I would just mention in passing, there's a huge amount of stress involved with showing poultry. You're going to be washing the birds, you're going to be taking them out of their coop, probably in the early hours of the morning, putting them in a cardboard box, adequately ventilated, I might add, or into a cat carrier.

And then the birds are taken to a show and popped into a little cage, like the one that you can see here in the photograph. Then, as the bird settles in, there's lots of noise from other livestock, be it other chickens, cockerels crowing, ducks quacking, or turkeys gobbling. And then you've got the kids walking past the cages, poking their fingers through the bars at the chickens, and then, yeah, if they're unfortunate, the chickens will fight back and start to peck at them.

And then you've got the judges going around and poking and prodding and handling the birds. So, showing poultry is an immense stress. From a legislation point of view, there's really little governance on transporting individual birds to poultry shows.

There's a heck of a lot of regulation surrounding transporting animals or chickens commercially and for, for slaughter or for egg laying. But when it comes to pet birds, there really isn't much protection. The other thing I wanted to, I guess, show everyone in this photograph is that although the cages have got solid partitions between them in many instances, You can see here that the cages on the top are further back than the cages on the bottom.

So the litter and the droppings from this chicken here can drop down into the cage below, potentially transmitting disease. The other key thing to remember about poultry shows is they tend to involve multiple species of poultry. And when we think about diseases like bird flu and Newcastle disease, It's quite unfortunate that waterfowl tend to be asymptomatic carriers, and that shows these birds have the potential to then go and infect chickens and turkeys.

So, we'll kick off with the respiratory pathogens, and I'm going to go through the the most common ones and talk a little bit about the clinical signs and prevention, predominantly. So, the most common respiratory pathogen of poultry is infectious bronchitis virus, followed in closely in 2nd place by mycoplasma Galoepticum. We can get avian rhinotracheitis, and I will mention in passing Newcastle disease, and also, as we mentioned, avian influenza.

So I'm going to go through these pathogens and have a little chat with you this evening about clinical signs, prevention, and we'll talk a little bit about treatment as well. Now, infectious bronchitis is, I suppose, slightly frightening to everyone at the minute because it's caused by a coronavirus and as with all coronaviruses, it has the potential to mutate readily. So with chickens, we've had coronaviruses in them for decades now, and we've got lots of different variants of, of infectious bronchitis in poultry.

And that means that our vaccines have had to keep pace with the different variants, and I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. It's really important to stress to everyone, both owners, vets, and the general public, that infectious bronchitis, although it's a coronavirus, is completely different from COVID-19. OK, so there is absolutely no risk to humans from infectious bronchitis.

Infectious bronchitis is spread via the respiratory route and via the fecal-oral routes. So you can see that there's huge potential for the spread of infectious bronchitis at a poultry show. The virus can survive in the environment for quite a few weeks, and it's got quite a short incubation period of between 1 and 3 days.

As the name suggests, it causes respiratory signs, so the birds might have runny eyes, runny nose, you might have some sneezing in them. But what's interesting about poultry is that many of these respiratory pathogens, in fact, all the respiratory pathogens, have the potential to damage the eggshell gland, leading to either pale eggs or eggs with poor shell quality. And this may be temporary or it may be permanent.

It's worth noting that many breeds of chickens lay white eggs naturally, so white eggs are not always a cause for concern, and it's worth asking the owners if there's been a change in the eggshell colour rather than have you got some birds laying white eggs, because that might be totally normal for the breed. In countries such as the United States, white eggs are the norm, whereas here in Europe, we tend to prefer brown eggs. Historically, diagnosis of infectious bronchitis was based on paired serology, but I have to say that I much prefer PCR so we can swab the trachea or we can swab the coinal cleft in the roof of the mouth.

Protection for backyard poultry really comes down to vaccination, and for me, I would prefer that we did an inactivated vaccine for a couple of reasons. The live vaccines are very difficult to handle and administer successfully, and the live vaccines tend to only cover a single strain of infectious bronchitis. There is an inactivated vaccine, and I'll mention it in a few slides' time, called Nobilis RTIVul.

And that has antigens against several infectious bronchitis strains, avian rhinotracheitis, Newcastle disease, and as a bonus, it's got antigens to egg drop syndrome, which isn't really a concern for backyard poultry. Mycoplasma galaepticum is probably better known by a lot of vets with regard to poultry. And again, it is spread via the aerosol route.

But very importantly, and we'll talk a little bit about this later, that mycoplasma can be transmitted via ectoparasites such as red mite. Again, the incubation period can be as little as a few days, and it can cause respiratory signs. And there's not really any difference between the different respiratory pathogens in the clinical signs that you will see.

One of the problems with mycoplasma is that it can lead to acaseus sinusitis, which you can see here in this photograph on the right of your screen. As with infectious bronchitis, we can get pale eggs or eggshell abnormalities. And the other thing that's really important with mycoplasma is that it establishes latency inside the macrophages, and it can recrudesce when the bird is stressed.

So many carriers of mycoplasma don't actively shed it until you stress them. So you bring the birds to a show and hey ho, you've got your mycoplasma recrudescing, and the bird is shedding it for the rest of the birds at the show. Again, diagnosis can be via paired serology or PCR, and we would tend to prefer PCR testing.

And protection is via an inactivated vaccine. It's rather unfortunate that historically, vets have recommended to anyone showing poultry that they would treat the birds with antimicrobials upon returning from a show to prevent mycoplasma taking hold in their flock. I'm not entirely sure that's the right approach, and I really do think as a profession, we want to be encouraging all people breeding and showing poultry to be vaccinating the birds against the common respiratory pathogens.

The next disease is avian rhinotracheitis, ART. And it is a metapneumovirus. It's spread again via the aerosol route with a short incubation period.

And as with the other pathogens, it causes respiratory signs and poor eggshell quality or colour. The good thing with avian honotracheitis is that it doesn't establish latency and immunity should be protected for life. And again, our diagnosis is via PCR or serology, and we can use an inactivated vaccine to protect the birds.

Now, I wanted to mention Newcastle disease to you all for a couple of reasons. Newcastle disease is a notifiable disease of poultry, and the clinical signs can be very variable and can be similar to avian influenza. So Newcastle disease is caused by a paramyxovirus, and it's spread again via the aerosol root or it can be spread faecal orally.

And Newcastle disease in particular can be carried asymptomatically by waterfowl. So at these shows where you might have ducks and geese next door to chickens and turkeys, there is the potential for infection. And a bit like AI, Newcastle disease can vary in its pathogenicity and the tissue trophism, depending on the strain.

We can get the nervous form, we can get the respiratory tract signs with it, or alternatively, we can get viscerotrophic Newcastle disease, which causes diarrhoea. And in very severe cases, we will only get sudden death. Now, I just wanted to draw your attention to a couple of the photographs here.

So at the top, on the left-hand side, we've got our dodgy looking eggshells, and you can see that the eggshells look a bit wrinkled. So this is due to the eggshell gland damage. The photograph on the bottom left is of the bird's gizzard and proventriculus at the top.

And hopefully you can appreciate there's some petechial haemorrhages of the proven riculus. And these are pathogonomic lesions for Newcastle disease. So if you see these lesions, you've most certainly got notifiable disease, in the flock.

I've also included the photograph on the bottom right, which is of a green diarrhoea. So, whenever you look up a lot of poultry disease books, they will have green diarrhoea as a pathogonomic clinical sign for Newcastle disease. And I just want to stress that it isn't really.

All you've got there is the white bit of the dropping, which is the bird's urine, the urates, and the green bit, which is the bile. And all that tells me is that that bird is not eating normally. It doesn't tell me it's got Newcastle disease.

It might not be eating because you've transported it to a show and therefore it's got an empty GI tract. So I wouldn't freak out too much about seeing these green droppings. In case anyone's wondering, the photograph on the top right is of the, the cecal tonsil.

So this is a little patch of gut associated lymphoid tissue, just at the entry to the Zika, and you can see that there's some haemorrhage here. Another reason that I mention Newcastle disease is that when we tend to get outbreaks, some show organisers will actively encourage and in some cases demand that anyone showing poultry will vaccinate their birds against Newcastle disease. Again, we would tend to go with an inactivated vaccine, but I don't really know how you can successfully demonstrate that the birds have been vaccinated.

Any time I've shown birds and they've requested it, all they've asked for is a vet letter, but short of microchipping the birds, I think it's very difficult to be fully certain that the birds that are being shown are the ones that have had the vaccine. So, before we continue, I'm going to hand you back to Bruce, who will read out the first poll question. Right, folks, so as promised, here we go with our polls.

Quite easy, just go through it and choose the answer which you best suggest suits the question. The question is, which is the most common respiratory disease pathogen in chickens? First one is infectious trachea bronchitis.

B, mycoplasma galaepticum, C, Avian rhinotracheitis, D, infectious laryngotracheitis, and E, Mycoplasma synovia. Simply just click on whichever one you feel is the correct answer. And those results will all then be tabulated.

We'll give you about 20 or 30 seconds to make your mind up. Remember, please, that these are, anonymous. So, don't be shy.

Take a guess. . You, you can choose whichever one you want, and we won't know who chose which one.

Right, we've got about half the people who have voted. So we'll give you another 10 or 15 seconds, try and get the others involved. Come on guys.

Off the fence. Take a risk. There we go, a few more coming in now.

Right, 3 more seconds and let's end that poll and share those results. Richard, can you see that? Yes, I can indeed, Bruce.

And oh, it's roughly sort of a 50/50 split there predominantly. So, infectious bronchitis is the most common respiratory pathogen. Mycoplasma is a close second, and I think to be fair, it's probably better known by both keepers and by vets.

So I can kind of see why people said mycoplasma galaseptic and, so, yeah, well done, everyone. So, in terms of what we do, if we do get respiratory disease in birds that have been shown, I think we just want to think about how we would manage these cases. I think in the good old days, a lot of vets would reach for the betrol on the shelf and either inject the birds or administer it orally.

But I think with our focus on one health and antimicrobial reduction, we should always question whether or not antimicrobial therapy is truly necessary. We may just wish to manage simple viral cases symptomatically. So, some vets will use bisolvent powder.

Some vets will look for essential oils. So there are preparations out there such as mintamix, which is a blend of eucalyptus and tea tree oil, and that can help act as a decongestant. I think we always want to ask, is there mycoplasma involvement?

And hopefully we would have some PCR results to back that up. If there is mycoplasma, then certainly antimicrobials would be indicated. Are there secondary bacteria present?

So whether or not there's mycoplasma or if it's infectious bronchitis, for example, is there a secondary infection there with predominantly E. Coli, in which case, again, we might want to use antimicrobials. Now the question as to which antimicrobial we use is a bit of a tough one.

So I think fluoroquinolones for me are predominantly on the basis that we shouldn't be using them as a first line of defence. And if you look at a bottle of Berel, it will explicitly say that it is not to be used in birds producing eggs for human consumption. And I kind of think that that means that we shouldn't be using that at all in backyard poultry, especially female ones, because legally speaking, backyard poultry or show birds are technically and legally food producing animals.

Now some vets got a little bit clever with this and decided they would use marbofloxacin because there was no mention of not to give it to birds producing eggs for human consumption. So whilst legally that might be the correct approach, I think it's probably a slightly cheeky approach. For straightforward mycoplasma cases, thylacin, which is a macrolide, and thiamulin, which is sold as Denegar, both made by Elanco, are very effective and have got a zero egg withhold.

But the problem with both products is that they're not great against secondary bacteria, i.e. E.

Coli. Probably my approach for mycoplasma cases where we've got E. Coli or infectious bronchitis with E.

Coli, would be to go down the tetracycline, doxycycline route. But again, these preparations would be prescribed under the cascade. Now, hopefully everyone's aware that the cascade requires a minimum of a 7 day egg withhold.

However, it also mentions that you need to take into account the physiology of the animal you're treating. And for laying chickens, they will have 14 days' worth of developing egg yolks on their ovary. And I really think with backyard chickens, any off-label use of veterinary products should necessitate a minimum of a 14 day egg withhold rather than a 7 day egg withhold, but that's only my personal opinion, that's not.

A legal requirement. And obviously any treatment should be recorded in a veterinary medicines book. The other question is, do we want to treat all the birds within a group?

I think certainly if you've got several birds showing clinical signs, you probably do. And if you've got mycoplasma there because it's very liable to spread across the flock. You may want to isolate any severely affected birds, or indeed quarantine birds for a couple of weeks after they come back from from shows.

But what you've got to think about chickens is because they're social animals and they can be quite horrible to each other, if you isolate a bird and then suddenly reintroduce it a couple of weeks later because it's been sick or because you've quarantined it after showing it, and you can get a situation of why the reintroduced bird is bullied. We might want to provide TLC for the bird, so that means sort of maybe feeding it some mealworms, anything that you can do to encourage it to, to eat and the sort of, feel good in itself. I think it's really important to warn owners with mycoplasma in particular, that it can exist in a carrier state, and really mycoplasma positive birds should not be taken to shows because they're a liability and a risk to the rest of the birds being shown.

We want to keep the birds as stress-free as possible, but I honestly think taking them to shows, it's very difficult to to minimise stress. I think the whole process is incredibly stressful, and I guess one thing owners can do is make sure that when birds are in transit, that they've got as much space as possible and that the cat carrier or corboard box they're in is well ventilated. Now, I've put in a photograph of a particularly unfortunate case of a silky chicken that was presented to me with a horrible cases sinusitis.

Now, this bird was presented live to me and it was euthanized, and as you can see that there's some pus coming out of the bird's eye, and the owner thought that that swollen sinus under the eye could just be simply lanced. I could squeeze out the pus and give the bird some antibiotics and the way it would go. But unfortunately, with chickens, as you can see in the top photograph, and I appreciate it's a bit gruesome, the pus inside birds is really, really thick and it doesn't come out very easily.

The sinuses are incredibly scrolled and vascularized, and they bleed like crazy. So what I wanted to convey to everyone is, if you've got horrible cases sinusitis in a bird, it is a job for an experienced avian surgeon, not for a general practitioner. The other thing I would say is that if a bird ever got to that stage, it certainly wouldn't be fit to be shown again anyway.

But I just thought it was worth pointing that out to everyone. In terms of vaccination, I guess the the vaccine that I would recommend would be the nobilis RTIB multi ND plus EDS. So that's quite a mouthful.

But essentially, the RT is the Avian rhinotracheitis, your ART. Your IV multi is your multiple variants of infectious bronchitis. Your ND is your Newcastle disease and your EDS is your egg drop syndrome, which you don't really need to worry about.

And we would recommend that the birds are given 2 doses 4 weeks apart into the breast muscle. And we would recommend then that the birds get an annual booster. I would also recommend that we do not vaccinate birds under 4 weeks of age simply because they don't have the breast muscle mass to withstand being vaccinated with an oily adjuvant.

From a mycoplasma control point of view, MGA is our mycoplasma galaepticum killed vaccine, and this is made by Zoettas. And it should be given again, 2 doses, 4 weeks apart with an annual booster. And again, we would recommend that the birds aren't vaccinated before 4 weeks.

Both vaccines can be given at the same time in different injection sites and just do one jab in each side of the breast, and that works quite nicely. Because these vaccines are killed and they come in 500 dose vial, you could maybe try and get several of your poultry keepers to try and get their vaccinations done for the birds at the same time, so you can use a single vial of vaccine. We're not going to depart from respiratory disease and move on to salmonella, and this is just a very, very brief.

Discussion about salmonella in poultry in particular. So, the two types of salmonella we really want to think about in our show birds are Eididdis and Typheurium. And again, stressed birds may shed the bacteria, which isn't isn't a massive surprise.

These strains of salmonella cause no issues for the chickens, but they can cause vomiting and diarrhoea in man. And what you've got to think about with these shows is that there will be kids walking past, poking their fingers into the cages and predominantly not washing their hands afterwards. And then you've got the judges handling these birds.

So there is a risk to both kids and judges and indeed anyone else that decides they want to touch the cages. For commercial flocks, by law, they have to be tested every 15 weeks, and the eggs from positive flocks cannot enter the food chain. But if you've got less than 350 birds, there's no legal requirement to test for salmonella.

So, what options have we got available for show birds? Well, one option would be to send faecal samples off after the show to an approved laboratory. Or alternatively, and again, this would be my preference, would be to vaccinate these birds with an inactivated vaccine.

So there's a vaccine called Gallamine S C plus ST, and as you can guess, the vaccine covers enteritituti and typhamurium. And again, it's two jabs 4 to 10 weeks apart with an annual booster. So the vaccine programme for poultry is quite easy.

Being a poultry vet and you can be a little bit lazy. Now, if some owners are not very keen to vaccinate, whether it's because of cost or they don't want to be jabbing their birds. In the days before we had salmonella vaccines, we used to give the birds competitive exclusion probiotics, and the product that got the most attention was one called Avigaard, which has got over 250 different species of bacteria that are commensal in a healthy chicken gut.

For backyard chickens, the version is called Beryl's friendly bacteria, and these could be given orally to the birds whenever they return from a show. But I cannot see any reason really why we wouldn't want to vaccinate our birds against salmonella. I think it's more for the protection of people attending the show and for for the judges.

So I'm gonna hand you back to Bruce for the 2nd pool question of the evening. Right, thank you, Richard. And Richard's been a little bit mean here just to make sure you're paying attention.

He's hopped back a little bit on the question. So this question says, which respiratory pathogen can recrudesce when a chicken is stressed? A, infectious bronchitis, B, mycoplasmic galepticum, C, Avian rhinotracheitis, D, Newcastle disease, and E, avian influenza.

You know the story? Just click on the one that you feel best represents your opinion, and it will anonymously come through to us. And then when we are finished, we will reveal those results, so that, Richard can see who's paying attention.

Right, we'll give you another 15 seconds to get this going. Come on guys. Give us a choice here.

Which respiratory pathogen can recrudesce when a chicken is stressed? 5 more seconds. Right, I think we have an end here and Richard, it is unanimous.

Well done, everyone. No, that, that's perfect. It is indeed mycoplasma galaepticum.

So, although it's not the most common respiratory pathogen, it is quite dangerous from a showing point of view because the stress will allow the mycoplasma to recrudeesce and the bird can shed it. So, well done to everyone who got that correct. So, we're now going to move away from viral and bacterial pathogens to creepy crawlies, so onto our ectoparasites.

And this is really the, I guess, the area whereby there's been the most changes and and some revolution, really, which will be quite interesting to talk about. So, I guess the most common ectoparasite of chickens is, of course, red mite, which is the bane of every poultry keeper up and down the country. Indeed, it's led to many people stopping keeping chickens, and people have burned down their coops because they can't control of the little buggers.

Red mites are very common, and I think you should think of them as a cross between a vampire and a flea. So like fleas, they spend the majority of their life off the host, and like vampires, by day, they hide away from sunlight in the cracks and crevices of the perches and of the nest boxes, and at night they emerge pale and grey, and they suck the blood from their victim. And once they've fed, they become a bright red and progress through to black and dark brown.

With red mite, you might not know that you've got an infestation, predominantly because they're active at night. They are, however, visible to the naked eye and some owners will tell you that you can smell them, but I'm not entirely quite convinced that that's the case, but I'm not going to to question them on it. They tend to prefer warm weather, so in the summertime their numbers will build up rapidly and in very hot weather they can complete their life cycle in as little as 10 days.

And they can live for up to 2 years without feeding. So from a showing perspective, a lot of these birds will be caught up to take to the show in the early hours of the morning. So the mites might still be actively on the birds and feeding.

The birds are then taken in their cardboard boxes or their cat carriers to the show. And then A lot of these shows tend to be 2 or 3 day events, so the birds will sleep in the show at night. So there's the potential for the red mites on the birds to go and crawl onto other chickens within the show, or indeed to go and get into the actual cages at the show site as well.

And as I said, these mites can live for years, so the mites could potentially be carried over between different showing seasons. And so it is a genuine risk and a real concern. So in terms of what red mites do to to birds, they suck blood.

They really are the vampires of the chicken world, and they can cause restlessness in low numbers, and in severe numbers, they can cause anaemia, characterised by a pale comb and wattles. Sometimes when chickens that are covered in red might lay their eggs, the mites are squished onto the surface of the egg and they cause little blood spots on the eggs. And severe infestations can and regularly do kill chickens.

Although it's an ectoparasite, they are probably some of the most dangerous organisms to backyard and commercial chickens, and there's a whole plethora of research projects going on to try and work out how we best control red mite because they are such a problem. And although we tend not to use them in backyard chickens, a lot of insecticides or acharoides are used to control red mite commercially. And red mites are becoming more and more resistant to these products.

In terms of diagnosing red mites, In the old days, people used to go out to the coop at night with a flashlight, but I prefer these little mite traps that are about the size of a large matchbox, and you cable tie them to the perch. So the idea is that the mites, after feeding, will crawl into these mite traps, and inside, you've got sticky paper. So the mites are actually stuck to the paper, and you can quantify the burden of mites.

And that allows you to assess the efficacy of any mite treatments that you use. But I think the key thing with diagnosing red mites is that you need to be ever vigilant, and it's an ongoing war rather than a single battle. In terms of treatments for red mites, I guess the historic mainstay really has been diatomaceous earth, which is a sort of a volcanic ash which dehydrates the mites through grinding on the waxy cuticle of them and then sucking up the moisture so the mites dehydrate and die.

It is safe, but with the recent EU biocides directive, some diatomaceous earth preparations were taken off the market because it was felt that they may cause respiratory issues for owners, and but the majority of preparations still are available. And it's designed to be applied liberally to the nests and to the dust bathing areas. And it is really good for prevention of mites or to treat low levels, but I think it doesn't really cut it when it comes to large burdens.

One of the most ingenious things I ever saw was a backyard chicken keeper getting a cat litter tray and mixing kids' play sand with mite powder so that when the birds dust bathe in the place sand, they got the mite powder through their feathers. The other mainstay historically, of red mite control was poultry shield, which is a well-known quatt disinfectant. It's safe, it's cheap, and it cleans and disinfects.

So what we would have historically recommended to owners with mite problems was that you removed the bedding from the cooper. You scrubbed it with a detergent and warm water, just fairy liquid, and then let it dry, and then we would recommend that the owners applied poultry shield to the surfaces, let that dry, and then liberally apply mic powder, especially to the dust bathing and the nesting areas. It's also recommended that owners do not use straw as a bedding because the mites like to hide in the straw itself.

But again, this approach only works for low levels of mites. And To sort of quote Boris Johnson talking about game changers, I guess one of the, the highlights of this evening's webinar, and if you're not familiar with it, I hope that you will be afterwards, is that there's a new product that was brought to the market by MSD Animal Health called Egg salt. Which is fluolanner, and I believe that it's available in some flea preparations for dogs.

But essentially this product's been worked on by MSD for the last decade, and it is designed to be given in drinking water to chickens to control the mites. So the idea is that you give the egg salt for one day in the drinking water, that gets into the blood and tissues of the chicken, so that when the mites feed, it paralyses them, so it acts on the GABA receptors. You've got to repeat the treatment a week later to kill any of the, the eggs of the mites that hatch out and start a new population, but it is highly effective.

It's only been available for the last 18 months, and there's no reported resistance to it. And a lot of owners like it because it's effective and it's really easy to administer. You're not scrubbing coops, you're not trying to spray the environment with insecticides, and it's got a zero e withhold.

I mean, I think that there's so many positives to it, and it is very, very safe and very effective. So, and if you're not familiar with egg salt, I think that it's something to keep at the back of your mind. And I didn't realise it until I went to write this evening's webinar that actually egg salt is available now in 50 mL bottles.

So, it was designed for the commercial market and being available in 1 litre containers, and it's great to know that MSD are producing 50 mL bottles. A 50 mL bottle will still treat several 100 backyard chickens, and other practises and suppliers are actually breaking down 50 mL bottles into even smaller volumes. But I think it's definitely for owners that have got major problems with red mites.

I think it's definitely the way to go. Before we had our exal treatment, one of the products that we recommended to owners struggling with red mite was to use ivermectin 1%, and then that would be given on the bird's back of the neck. So you part the feathers, and we would use 1 drop per 500 grammes of body weight.

Ivermec would be given off licence, so you'd have to apply a suitable egg withhold, and as we've already said, I personally would go for a 14 day egg withhold, but legally it has to be a minimum of 7 days. In the past, some owners have used frontline fipronil spray, but I want to point out to everyone that there was a scandal about 18 months ago in the Netherlands in Belgium, whereby commercial poultry keepers were using fipronil to control red mite, and fipronil is illegal to use in food producing animals. It's on the EU table of substances.

Permitted to be used in food producing animals and it explicitly prohibits the use of fipronil. So frontline must never be used to control red mite in either backyard or commercial poultry. For the organically minded owners, predator mites may be used, so you can buy predator mites, which come in these little tubes that you can see in the photograph, and then they are attached onto the, the perch.

And the idea is that these will literally eat the red mite. They're OK for moderate levels of red mite, but you cannot use them alongside any other mite controlled treatments. And finally, another new product out to the market is a product called Durgal.

And again, this was designed for commercial poultry and but is now available in backyard flock size packs. And what Dal does is it's a silica type product, and it makes the surface of the perches and the nest boxes slippery to the red mite so that they cannot move and climb onto the poultry and feed. It's highly safe.

It can be applied to the chicken if you do it accidentally, it won't cause any problems. And again, the efficacy is pretty good. So if you've got owners that don't want to pay for egg salt or they don't quite want to give potential and Veterinary treatments to the birds.

They want to use something a bit more natural than Durga would be an alternative route. But I think it's really exciting that we've got both durgal and egg salt available for backyard poultry and show poultry in particular. I think if you've got top class show birds, you don't want them getting red mite burdens and taking them to a show is a good way of picking up ectoparasites, as it is salmonella and other respiratory pathogens.

I'm not going to pass you back to Bruce for our 3rd poll question of the evening. So, thanks, Richard. Speaking of salmonella, why should owners worry about salmonella when showing poultry?

A, they shouldn't as salmonella only affects young birds. B, it can cause disease in all poultry. C.

It can cause illness in both man and birds. D, it poses a risk to other livestock at the show, and E, it can cause disease in judges and children attending the show. So once again, why should owners worry about salmonella when showing poultry?

Select which answer you feel is the most appropriate and just click on it and that will then register your vote. As I've said before, these are completely anonymous. So if you're not sure, have a go.

Nobody will know. I'll give you another 5 seconds to vote on this one. Righty, let's stop that poll and share those results for you, Richard.

Excellent. So, well done, everyone. It can cause disease in in judges and children attending the show.

So I think that we shouldn't underestimate the risk of salmon and, as I said, kids do like to poke their fingers through the the bars on, on cages. And the judges obviously have to handle the birds. But well done, everyone, and that, that, that's really good.

So, very briefly, just to cover a couple of other quick ectoparasites this evening, I thought it was worth mentioning the northern owl mite. For all intents and purposes, the northern owl mite is very similar to red mites. They feed on chickens sucking the blood.

They have the potential, like red mite, to cause anaemia. They can also cause irritation to the bird. They can potentially cause death.

And additionally, both red mite and northern owl mite can carry salmonella. They can carry mycoplasma galaepticum, amongst other pathogens. So these ectoparasites can physically carry within them, and whenever they bite the birds, they can transmit pathogens between chickens.

Now one of the differences with the northern fowl mite and red mite is that the northern fowl mite spends its entire life on the birds, so you can see these mites on the chickens by day. One thing that northernal mites can do is crawl into the chicken's ears, and they will cause irritation. And that causes the chickens to scratch their their faces, and again, they can damage their eyes when they do that.

In terms of treatment for Northern foul mite, it's literally identical to red mite treatment. You can use mite powder, you could use ivermectin, or you could use egg salt. And I think all them treatments would be equally valid depending on the burden.

We might want to have a think about lice, particularly in winter. So whilst mites tend to be a problem in summer, lice tend to be a problem in winter. And lice are golden brown.

They look like little grains of muscovado sugar, and they're about 1 to 3 mils in length. They can irritate the birds and they tend to feed on the exudates. And again, the treatment and control of mice would be very similar to red mite control.

I'm gonna hand you back to Bruce for our 4th poll question. You still there, Bruce? Yup, sorry about that.

Which of these is not an acceptable treatment of red mite? Sneaky twist, mite powder, exalt, fipronil, poultry shield, or predator mites? Ah, we see this time Richard, everybody is awake and they're expecting the questions.

And the answers are coming in very, very quickly. So I will just give it another couple of seconds and then we will. Close that pole.

Right, and share the results. Excellent, everyone. So fipronil is the correct answer, and I think of all the questions that we've had for poll questions this evening, this is the most important one.

And fipronil must never be used to control red mite or any ectoparasite, for that matter, in, in poultry. So well done to everyone on that. We're just going to very quickly talk about two last ectoparasites before we take any questions that any of you have this evening.

I was just going to mention the the pluming mite, which is Derinassis Galilee, and this is a burrowing mite, which burrows into the feather shafts of the birds to cause the birds pain and discomfort. Now whilst chickens will happily peck the feathers of their flockmates, they rarely will peck their own feathers, but the de pluming mite is probably the only cause of a chicken actively pulling out its own feathers. In terms of treatments for the deep pluming mite.

None of the Treatments for red mite that involve treating the environment or mite powders or poultry shield are going to affect the deep pluming mite because they're inside the feather shafts. So you've really only got two potential treatments. The first one would be ivermectin at 1 drop of ivermectin 1% per 500 grammes body weight.

But again, you've got to use the off-label and apply a suitable egg withhold. Or in theory, egg salt will work against it. But I think with both the deep pluming mite and scaly leg mite, which I'll talk about in a minute, there's not enough data out there to show that eggs.

Will control them, but logically, I see no reason why it wouldn't. And I should add to everyone that I'm not getting any sort of payment from MSD to promote egg salt. I'm just very excited about the fact that it is available, having spent a lot of years trying to battle ectoparasites in in poultry.

And finally, scaly leg mite is another potential pathogen that chickens can pick up at shows. And again, it's a burrowing mite, but this time it burrows between the scales on the legs and it causes inflammation. You get exudation, you get a thickening and a crusting off the scales on the legs.

It'll upset the birds. It's a bit annoying to have scaly legs, but predominantly from an owner's point of view, it's unsightly, and certainly if you're showing chickens, it is a no no. If you went to a show ring with a bird with legs looking like that, I can assure you that, yeah, they certainly have no chance of winning prizes, and I think that you'd probably be hauled up for for bringing such a bird to the show.

It's predominantly a condition of older birds, so it takes several months to develop, and as the mites burrow in between the scales, they leave a little tunnel behind them through which they breathe. In terms of treatment for scaly leg mite, there's lots of stuff out there on the internet. Everything from bathing the chicken's legs in warm water with some baby shampoo, and to use a soft toothbrush to remove the scales, which doesn't work very well, I have to add.

You can dunk the bird's legs in surgical spirits to kill the mites, and, and that, to be fair, is reasonably effective. It's certainly what I did whenever I was growing up showing poultry. Or some people recommend putting Vaseline on the legs, and this does two things.

It softens the scales, but it also blocks the tunnels. Through which the mites breathe, and they will suffocate on time. Personally, I think if I had a chicken with severe scaly leg mite, I would probably try egg salt because again, it's in a carro side, so I think in theory it should work.

But again, it's not licenced for scaly leg mite. Or alternatively, we do know that ivermectin given off label will work for treating scaly leg mite. So, I'm going to pass you back to Bruce for the 5th and final poll question of the evening.

Right, guys, you know what to do on this one. So, which disease do some poultry show organisers insist that birds are vaccinated against? A, salmonella, B, infectious bronchitis, C, Mycoplasma galasepticum, D, Avian rhinotracheitis, or E, Newcastle disease.

Which disease do some poultry show organisers insist that birds are vaccinated against? Here we go. And the results are, or the votes are starting to come in.

This one you've got them thinking, Richard. Not quite as fast as the last one. Come on guys.

Which disease do some poultry show organisers insist that birds are vaccinated against? If you're not sure, give it a guess. Nobody will know.

There we go. A few more coming in. I'm gonna give you another 5 seconds on this one.

Right, let's close that and show you those answers, Richard. Excellent. So, well done to everyone who said Newcastle disease.

It, it is one of the diseases, or the main disease that show organisers might ask keepers to vaccinate their birds against. I think what I would say is that probably chickens that are being brought to shoes, and I should say this applies to turkeys and waterfowl, should probably be vaccinated against all of these pathogens. So, Newcastle disease is the one that they ask for most commonly, but I would add in that they probably should be vaccinated additionally for avian rnotracheitis, mycoplasma galaepticum, salmonella, and infectious bronchitis.

So, I'd like to thank you all ladies and gentlemen, for joining us this evening for this webinar. And I think we've got a few moments, Bruce. We've got about 7 minutes to take any questions that anyone has.

Yeah, folks, once again, if you want to pose questions through to Richard after that fascinating webinar, click on the Q&A box and pop your questions in there. At the moment, Richard, we don't have any, so, I can take this opportunity to thank you for a, a fascinating webinar. I must be honest, I personally have never never been involved in showing, poultry, and I, I've never even really thought about it, to be very honest.

. But yeah, there certainly are a lot of traps that one can fall into. I think I think definitely so, Bruce. And, and, you know, I, I think that the key thing for, for people to take away from this evening's webinar is that there's lots of pathogens, really, we want to be thinking about with showing poultry from the respiratory diseases and salmonella against which we need to be vaccinating through to our ectopar.

Sites, predominantly red mite, and for those of you dealing with backyard chickens, I really would seriously have a look at egg salt because I, I think it is probably going to be the biggest revolution in terms of veterinary treatments for backyard chickens that we've had for a long time and probably are likely to have. Yeah, and, and, what was also great was, you know, I mean, I, not being a, a chicken vet or a vet who even thinks they know anything more about chickens than eating them, is, the fact that you can't use fipronil. I mean, fipronil and Beryl were the two standard go to's for, for so long.

Definitely Bruce, and I think that that's one of the things that's caught a lot of practitioners out and you know, certainly the fipronil one is serious if, if that's given. Yeah, and I mean there's there's so many possible loopholes or or consequences of that for both the, the, the vet and for the, the public at large. So, I think, Bruce, we've got a question in on the Q&A tab.

So, it's basically, if respiratory diseases often present with very similar clinical signs, when is it appropriate to consider contacting APHA for a suspected notifiable disease such as AI? It's a really, really good question and one that we, we do tend to get asked quite frequently. I think that there's not a right and wrong answer to it.

With the current outbreak, animal health have tried to be a bit more helpful because I, I think it's very difficult for, you know, a general practitioner or indeed an owner to work out whether it's serious or not. In a commercial flock, we would tend to say if they lose more than 0.3% of their flock per day, they need to be thinking about contacting a vet.

But for someone with 3 chickens, if they lose one, that's 33% of their flocks died. And so that doesn't work. I think we need to remember that a lot of backyard birds, if they're not vaccinated, many diseases like mycoplasma and infectious bronchitis can be very serious.

So, with commercial poultry, because they're vaccinated against the common pathogens, when you do get respiratory disease, you start to get a little bit more nervous. But with backyard chickens, it, it could be any of the pathogens. I think what Defra tend to do is if someone loses a significant proportion of their flocks, so let's say they, you know, they've got a flock of 10 birds and you lose maybe 3 or 4 birds, and the rest of the flock are looking sick.

They then tend to get a little bit more concerned, and particularly if you've got nervous signs, because I guess that would be one of the things that can be different about the notifiables versus the common respiratory pathogens, that with bird flu in Newcastle, you could get nervous signs. Whereas with infectious bronchitis, mycoplasma, and a neurotracheitis, nervous signs tend not to, not to be a presenting sign. But It is very difficult, and just with the recent outbreak, my own experience was, it was best to, if you're not sure, to at least speak to the duty APHA vet, and normally they're pretty good about chatting it through.

And at least you've covered yourself because you've contacted them, and most of the time they they won't be too concerned, and you sort of you've, you've got a halfway house between, you haven't made too much of an issue, but at the same time, you've covered yourself in case of to be something notifiable. And I think also you need to just keep abreast of the animal health website on in or sorry, on the avian influenza. So, at the minute we know AI is in the UK and particularly in wild birds.

So if we saw nervous and respiratory signs, I would be more concerned. Whereas at peace time, let's say last summer when we didn't have any AI in the country, I wouldn't be too worried about seeing respiratory disease in a backyard flock. Big differentiation.

Richard, are you still there? Yeah, go ahead there Bruce. I say that's important.

Absolutely, and I think that is really important and I think that if anyone's interested, you can sign up to the APHA email and text lists. So whenever there are cases in the UK they will email and text you, and I think that's really useful. And the BVA has been very, very good about contacting people as well.

Yeah, yeah. There, there really has been a very good response to this latest AI outbreak. Right.

Can you hear me, Richard II. Absolutely. And to be fair to animal health, they've done a sterling job with it all, especially given the number of cases we've had of late, both in in backyard poultry, commercial poultry, and indeed in wild birds, and they've been very good at keeping everyone informed.

And I know that the BBA intends to continue to notify all vets about the ever evolving situation, and I think we just need to make sure that all owners are housing their chickens as well at present and keeping waterfowls separate from other poultry. Keep themselves and their birds indoors and quarantined. Yeah, there's it's quite a lot of parallels between AI and COVID at present, for better or worse, I'm afraid.

We said we were gonna stay away from the C word. Yeah. Richard, thank you so much for your time and and for a fantastic webinar to sharing your information with us and, and really making it very understandable and some key nuggets of information.

So thank you so much for your time. You're very welcome, Bruce, and thank you to everyone for attending this evening and thank you, Bruce for hosting this evening. Thanks everybody for coming and to my controller, Amy in the background for making it all run properly.

Thank you and good night. Good night.