As an Agriculture teacher one of my favorite topics to teach about is poultry. There are so many topics and discussions to cover that I could teach a year round class on poultry alone and would not be able to cover everything. With that being said, I do believe it is important to understand the anatomy of the egg itself.
Marek’s disease is a type of avian cancer caused by a virus. It primarily affects chickens between the ages of 4 – 20 weeks. There is currently no known treatment for Marek’s, but thankfully there is a vaccine available!
Any poultry illness can potentially become a national outbreak if backyard poultry owners fail to do their part in maintaining good biosecurity practices. Let’s outline the main points of good biosecurity for a backyard flock owner.
Do you have a chick with bent or crooked toes? Marie with Meyer Hatchery writes about some causes of bent or crooked toes in chicks and how to treat it.
The frizzle feathering sometimes found in chickens is a rare occurrence, and therefore highly desired in some breeds. Here is an overview of how the frizzle feather mutation occurs and why not all chicks sold as frizzles will have frizzled feathers.