Poultry Keepers Podcast

Poultry Health Master Class-Part 2

• Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon • Season 3 • Episode 137

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In this episode of The Poultry Keepers Podcast, Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon continue their Poultry Health Master Class with an in-depth look at real-world health issues every poultry keeper faces. Learn how to recognize early symptoms, identify management causes, and apply effective solutions for viral and bacterial conditions that can affect your flock.

Topics covered include:

  • Understanding and managing Mycoplasma-related respiratory disease
  • Recognizing Botulism and how Clostridium bacteria cause “limber-neck” in chickens
  • Identifying Gout in poultry and how protein and calcium imbalance trigger joint pain
  • The difference between Bumblefoot and Gout—and what causes each
  • Roundworms, tapeworms, and cecal worms: how they spread and how to prevent reinfection
  • Coccidiosis: how it develops, the role of soil management, and how balance builds natural immunity
  • Why overusing medications like Corid can actually harm gut health
  • Practical prevention through nutrition, sanitation, and observation

If you want to improve your flock’s long-term health and understand the “why” behind poultry problems, this session is for you.

Listen, learn, and take notes—because a healthy flock starts with informed management.

To listen now go to: www.thepoultrykeeperspordcast.com

#PoultryKeepersPodcast #PoultryHealthMasterClass #BackyardChickens #PoultryCare #PoultryHealth #ChickenDiseases #FlockManagement  #HealthyFlocks #Mycoplasma #Botulism #Coccidiosis #ChickenWorms

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Alex:

Welcome to another episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In this episode Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon complete their Poultry Health Master Class. Now here's Carey.

Carey Blackmon:

Say, you're gonna need a scapel, a microscope patients.

Jeff Mattocks:

Well, you really have to get it cultured, right? So you, you're pulling blood work. You're doing, you're doing cloacal swab, you're doing, uh, mouth swab, you know, mouth, tongue, throat swab. Uh, you may be doing a swab off the nostrils if there's discharge. You know, you're getting these to a lab for being cultured so they can pinpoint it, right? And so with,

Carey Blackmon:

uh, if they're all mycoplasma related, the same thing will fix it regardless of which one it has, if it's even fixable,

Jeff Mattocks:

right? Most, most of those are not truly fixable. Okay. Because there's a limited amount of antivirals out there, right? I mean, there's some, there's some, right? And, and some of the herbs are excellent. And this is when I'm going for that combination of oregano tea tree, probably some cinnamon oil, you know, um, and I'm using it off label a little bit higher than you should. But a couple things have to happen. One, you had to have made the observation really, really early at the onset of that virus. Okay. And you started treatment then, um, you, you've got'em quarantined and separated. So when you start getting into the, you know, the CRDs, anything mycoplasm, family related, um, I, I honestly think it's time to get the hatchet out, right. I, I just. To me, it's not worth the gamble, um, of how far that's gonna spread in your flock. So you can try quarantining them and treating them, but I truly feel that they're gonna live with it. Right. That virus is gonna be in them. It may not be active, but under severe stress.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. When they get stressed out, it'll pop out. Like a lot of stuff, it's gonna pop

Jeff Mattocks:

out again.'cause I've seen, you know, I've seen this with new castles a lot. You know, you think you got it under control, you treat it, it like crazy. The flock looks healthy, everybody's cruising right along, and you know, a rainstorm or something goes through and you know, you got another outbreak.

Carey Blackmon:

Right. So Rob said he thinks Dena guard's still available. Um, I've seen something that was supposed to be, I, I wanna say like the generic version. Something like that on Amazon. I don't know if they're similar or not. I just know that the name is very similar and a lot of people say it, but yeah, you could mix that in water and see what happens. But like Jeff said, it's viral. I don't, I don't really know. If you don't get it fast, I don't know that anything will fix it. Uh, Jeff, what about botulism? How does botulism affect chickens and what clues you think you'll see in that?

Jeff Mattocks:

Uh, well, okay, so botulism comes from Clostridium bacteria. Okay. And. And it's funny because a guy called me this morning, right? Um, with the symptoms and mm-hmm. It's happened to me a couple times, but it's, um, we, you ever see the old guy at the back of the old guy in church who's falling asleep when the preacher's bringing the sermon, right? So the head slowly drifts forward, and then he catches himself and he slowly drifts forward. So some people refer to it as limber neck. Some people I've heard it called church neck. Um, but any animal, when it's reached its threshold of tolerance for the Clostridium bacteria or what it ferments into causing botulism, right? They lose control of head and neck muscles. So they're unable to lift their head to a normal height, right? And keep it there. Right. Um, and that is the 100% telltale symptom. Um, I love it when I get the call and people are describing to me what's going on, and I say, well, you got botulism. No, I don't. I said, okay, okay. You have the wrong person to talk to because you have bot. And you need somebody with P-H-D-D-V-M, blah, blah, blah at the end of their name to identify it for you for, you know,$150 later. But any animal that cannot hold its head up and it slowly loses control of it. It is 100%. Some form. Yeah, 100% guaranteed Botulism. Right now when I, when I visit chicken yards and I see those potholes, you know, they dig in them, they'll scratch down in there and they're eating at the bottom, you know, and those, you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about, right? Oh yeah. They dig. Yeah. They'll dig,

Carey Blackmon:

they'll dig their own hole and get in it. Especially in the summertime.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. But when they start eating, so when Clostridium ferments, it makes this, uh, almost like a sickening, sweet smell.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. And

Jeff Mattocks:

it actually attracts'em to eat it, right? So it, it, they, they, they like the taste of it. And then early, early on, it's almost, it's, it almost feels like a euphoric type drug, right? So it kind of makes'em feel good, you know, when they eat a little bit of it. So they eat a little more, and then they keep coming back every day and they eat more, and they eat more, and they eat more. And eventually it builds up in their system. And it will eventually kill'em. And I have not found a really good treatment. Once it's in the bloodstream to the point it's there where you're seeing, you know, uh, the loss of head control, it's 50 50. If you can pull that, that bird or that animal out of that situation, so, so, uh, a clostridiums a hundred percent management, you know, it's, it's a hundred percent management issue. Whether you fed moldy feed, spilled feed on the ground, you know, things like that, um, they have to ingest it. Right? It's not spread from bird to bird. Uh, it's not contagious, right. It's something that they've ingested.

Carey Blackmon:

Got it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Alright, cool. Hold that thought. We would like to take a short break to express our appreciation to the Fertrell Company for their sponsorship of the Poultry Keepers 360 Live programming. Fertrell has been a trusted name and sustainable farming and poultry nutrition for decades, and their commitment to providing high quality natural product aligned perfectly with the values we hold there in our poultry community. Thank you Patrell for partnering with us to empower poultry keepers everywhere. We're truly grateful for your dedication and support.

Carey Blackmon:

All right, so let's see. What, what is gout in poultry?

Jeff Mattocks:

Gout is very similar to what happens in a human. Um, most times it's from overfeeding protein, and you'll get a uric acid buildup. Um, we tend to see it because one of the largest Molt, more active joints is the hawk joint, where you go from feather to scale in the, in the leg,

Speaker 4:

right?

Jeff Mattocks:

We'll tend to see it there. We can see the crystal formations in the foot. Um, so, you know, uh, I don't know how many people realize that. Sue probably knows it, but. In the human body, when a toxin or an overload of something is detected, the body tends to push it to an extremity, right? So it'll go out to fingertips, it'll go out to toes, it'll go to feet. It's going as far away from, uh, major organs as possible. Mm-hmm. To reduce the, you know, the, the effects. Right. So, and this is what happens with uric acid in humans. Same thing's happening in chickens and it ends up building up in the hawk joint or the foot joints. Okay. Um, the easiest, the bird will start walking Funny. Um, are walking, you know, very oddly, um, some people refer to it as high stepping. So when you see a chicken that takes this, like over-exaggerated step, like they're bringing, they're keeping their leg almost straight and taking a really high step and like they're trying to prance

Carey Blackmon:

around or something. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Um, that's the easiest way to detect it or see it. Uh, it's not the only way. So in our standard file, you know, um, here, um, I also worry about seeing them sitting all the way back when they, when they go to the sitting position to be sitting all the way back, sitting on their butt, right? Literally sitting on their butt instead of having their legs folded under them. So if they're not using or bending that hawk joint, um, you know, the way they should. To take normal posture position. Again, this is why pictures of posturing is really, really important for helping people diagnose what's going on. But yeah, so if they're sitting with their legs out in front of them, right, they're sitting back on their butt and they got their legs a little bit too far out in front of them, out from under the body.

Carey Blackmon:

Need you to

Jeff Mattocks:

Can't see it. Yeah, you can see it that way. You're not really gonna see it in the joint. It's just, it's getting hot, it's getting sore. The bird's gonna be less mobile. Right. They're not gonna move around. They're not gonna want to move around as much as the other birds. Right? So you're gonna see less mobility, um, and they're not gonna walk. They're not gonna have the same walk and gate as if the other chickens do, but. Most often. So the, the number one cause is the overfeeding of protein. You know, and I've beat that to death, you know, since we've had this show on, you know, you don't need to overfeed protein, right? You need to get your amino acids right. Don't overfeed protein feeding more protein is not the answer. Okay? Get the right feet, balance it out. So anyway, um. Now in, in roosters or male birds that are, have been overfed calcium for too long a time, you can also see very similar signs of gout. Um, it takes a lot longer. It's not as noticeable. But you know that you'll end up getting some calcium buildup in some of those joints causing pain, you know, like arthritic type pain. Yeah. Um, and then they won't be as functional or as mobile as you want'em to be.

Carey Blackmon:

So again, it's kind of a management thing.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, it's a dietary, it, it, it's a dietary imbalance. It's a hundred percent management. It's not, gout is nothing contagious. It's not spreadable, it's not gonna go bird to bird, nothing like that. So

Carey Blackmon:

now sometimes the bumblefoot could be a staph infection too, right?

Jeff Mattocks:

Uh, you, you said something completely different. Gout and bumblefoot are not associated. So bumblefoot. Is 100% caused by, uh, an exterior puncture, you know, like a splinter or something, right? That, and I find it more in wetter conditions where the beddings been allowed to go too wet. The bird's been on it too long. The footpad gets, uh, the footpad gets extremely soft and pliable. And then it, it allows, you know, whether people using wood chips, uh, large shavings, some sort of environmental thing, that there's a small puncture in the bottom of that foot pad that allows that staff bacteria in okay. And starts to grow in that foot. It doesn't come from the inside. Right. It so there's a lot of people who think that, you know, it's, they, they were fed wrong or whatever that, you know, Bumble foot's gonna start from the inside of the bird. No. It, it has to enter in through the skin and then load up in that point to be a true bumblefoot.

Carey Blackmon:

Gotcha.

Jeff Mattocks:

Right.

Carey Blackmon:

Um. What about roundworms, sequel worms, gait worms, those kind of things?

Jeff Mattocks:

Uh, you know, the, the eggs and the larva have to be ingested, right? Again, they're not gonna be spread from bird to bird through contact, through shared feeders, through shared wattles, nothing like that. Um, you know, it's gonna be a buildup of the egg and the larvae in the bedding or in the ground, the soil that the birds are on, things like that. So, um, you know, they can get tape worms, they can get roundworms, they can get, you know, there's, there's a handful of different kind of internal parasites that birds can contract. And you know, this is why you and I discourage people from feeding on the ground. Okay. It's just you just don't do that. Okay? And, and people say, what? My chickens eat off the ground all the time. Well, do they really? Let's pay a little bit more attention. So they're gonna go scratch some dirt, or they're gonna go scratch something. And what they're really looking for is they're waiting for something to move. They're looking for an insect,

Carey Blackmon:

right? Yep. Looking for something to pop out and take off running right?

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, that's what they're, and sometimes they'll actually go down if they think they see something and they'll use their beak to like stir through the dirt that spot, right?

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Right. But they're not, so people think that they're eating something right. And they, they just don't spend enough time with their birds to, to know what the bird's actually doing. You know? They're, they're just,

Carey Blackmon:

I had one person to me say, well, birds at free range, they eat off the dirt. I'm like. Yeah, kind of probably more accurately they eat off the grass, but

Jeff Mattocks:

I mean, they're eating. They're

Carey Blackmon:

also not, they don't poop where they're free ranging except for behind them. You know? When you have'em in a pen and they poop all over the place, you're throwing it in their poop. Right. Uh,

Jeff Mattocks:

you know, so the bird's instinct is to go out, scratch, you know, kick around some dirt, take a step back and look for something scavengers. Right? That's what they're doing.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

So when you see'em, you know, again, even a free-ranging bird, the majority of the time. They're, they're eating like a full seed, right? That mm-hmm. Just fell off of something. Rarely are they eating a seed. They're really looking for the insects. Okay? Yep. They're looking for the ant, they're looking for the spider, they're looking for the small lizard, you know, salamander, whatever. Um, that's what they're after, right? And, and they, believe it or not, they find a lot, there's a huge amount of insects per square foot. A good range area that you can get a lot of really good protein from. Free ranging if that's, you know, if you can do that. Right. So

Carey Blackmon:

I was gonna say there, there's a lot less of a population in my backyard than what there used to be.'cause since I enclosed the whole thing and built some rather large grow out pens. I, I throw chickens, you know, I put some pulls in one of'em and with some turkeys and, you know, they're just like, Ooh. And they just started going to town. They hunting and pecking all across it. Finding stuff, you know, you, you have chickens in your yard and you won't have ticks. Crickets, frogs. None of that stuff.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, I mean, I told the story on here once before, but we had a snapping curl that would come across the road from the pond, layer layer eggs, and one, you know, when they hatched one early summer and or mid summer. Uh, we actually had two or three of our chickens running around with baby snapping turtles. They're holding onto running around like they found the best thing ever. Right. You know, these little, you know, inch, inch and a half long baby snapping turtles were headed back to the pond. Right. And

Carey Blackmon:

I mean, was it, was there a shell hard at that point?

Jeff Mattocks:

No, it's not.

Carey Blackmon:

Right. So I. Chicken pecking on some wood or something.

Jeff Mattocks:

My wife was freaking out. What am I supposed to do? I'm like, do nothing. They're, they're doing what they're supposed to do. Leave'em alone. Right. And

Carey Blackmon:

chickens are chickening and if they got caught, the totals ain't totalling.

Jeff Mattocks:

You know, the two and a half years that I had guineas here, uh, on the property we pick zero ticks off of any of the pets I Bett or family bet they are the best tick eaters. But my neighbors were not there. They're just also the

Carey Blackmon:

most annoying. Noisy, yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

My neighbors weren't real happy about me having Guineas. Right. So I can see

Carey Blackmon:

that. But

Jeff Mattocks:

they're hilarious. They're just hilarious. Right.

Carey Blackmon:

So what is Cox Acidosis?

Jeff Mattocks:

Co acidosis is a, like a really small parasite down at the protozoa level. Um, you know, and the bird, again, has to ingest it outta the ground or somebody else's poop, right? They're picking up theosis and it builds an infection along the intestinal wall, you know, where it starts burrowing in and colonizing. Um. But you, you don't treat it with a parasite, you don't treat it with, um, like a wormer, it doesn't respond to that, uh, just because of how it lives and thrives. And the, the size and shape of the body is extremely small. I mean, it's, they're, you're not gonna see'em with the naked eye, whereas at all other internal parasites, you can pretty much see when they're mature. You can see them with the naked eye without a microscope, but you're not gonna do that with, uh, with a co acidosis. But you know what, co acidosis is everywhere in our environment. It's been a long time since I looked up the stat, but they know that a co acidosis cyst in some. Soil types, as long as there's moisture, it's not bone dry. Right. Are viable for up to 10 years without a host. Okay. Just, just laying there in the ground, waiting for their turn. So, but the bird, if you got it, but the bird has to eat it. Right.

Carey Blackmon:

And

Jeff Mattocks:

again, if you got contagious, got

Carey Blackmon:

in dirt, is there a way to get rid of it?

Jeff Mattocks:

It's in all dirt. I mean, unless, well, okay, so let

Carey Blackmon:

me rephrase it. If you have toxic levels. In your dirt. Is there anything you can do?

Jeff Mattocks:

Well, remember I said if it has enough moisture, so every time you disturb that soil, dry it out. This is where, you know, when I was encouraging people to use something, you know, like a lime on their soil on a regular basis, right? Lime is a desiccant. It's gonna suck moisture. Um, and also those o sister are not gonna be happy if the pH changes really quickly, right? So if your soil after your chickens is, you know, six, somewhere around six pH, more than likely. Mm-hmm. Right? And then all of a sudden you change it to an eight or nine, you know, with a dose of Lyme, even for that seven day period after you treated it. That's enough to just totally rock that o assist world, right? So, and steal moisture from it. So while lime is not considered a sanitizer and has some excellent sanitation qualities to it, right? But other than that, you're not gonna get rid of cods Soys, right? They're, they're there, they're gonna be there. You can do whatever you want. I mean, you can scrape off the top three inches of your soil on your property, give it to somebody else, bring in brand new, and it's already there. Okay. That's what I'm saying is if it's not there, it's gonna be there in really short order. It's part of that soil ecosystem. Mm-hmm. It is supposed to be there. Okay. It's, it's just part of the balance and, and truthfully. Uh, this, don't, don't, don't get scared. Don't fall off. But if you actually did a stool sample, sent it off, you would probably find some cyst or coccidia in your stool sample at some levels, right? It's part, oh, perfectly

Carey Blackmon:

healthy birds.

Jeff Mattocks:

Exactly. It, it is part of the biome. So zero coccidia or oys is not good. Right. And, but then too many is not good. So it's just keeping everything where it's supposed to be. Right. You keep, you keep the community harmonized. Okay. And, and everybody works together.

Carey Blackmon:

I mean, that's, that's kind of the benefit to using all that stuff together. And the, and again, you know, we keep harping on the management side of it. That's part of that management is keeping all the stuff, the nutrition, the health, the soil, the water quality, keeping all of that in check. So it does all balance. And if it's all balanced, then great. But if you, like he was talking about earlier, if you send some a stool sample off and it has zero levels, okay. You probably gave that bird some kind of something recently, and if it has nothing, it also has no immunity. So I would think that if it's level was right at zero or zero, if you had an outbreak, that would probably be the bird that died.

Jeff Mattocks:

Right? But see, when you take out all the cods. You know, I am convinced that there's a large percentage of poultry keepers, like after seeing backyard, backyard chickens in different groups that I was on only for less than a week because I couldn't take it. Right. I'm convinced that Corid is part of their liquor cabinet. Right? They've got it right there beside their vodka and everything else, right? Yeah. They, they never run out. They've always got a bottle, right? They, they always have a bottle, right? So it's. Um, you know, so, you know, when you go to zero on something like that, you're opening up space in that digestive tract for something else or something else, you know, like the larger parasites or, you know, a a, a Clostridium bacteria or a salmonella bacteria or a, you know, whatever, right. They all have to be in there at the right levels and they keep each other in checks and balances. Right. So just, it's just part of the natural ecology, digest, subtract. It's like

Carey Blackmon:

the, the pecking order of the gut.

Jeff Mattocks:

Mm-hmm.

Carey Blackmon:

Well, Rob said that he's had people say that they had a vet do a float test and there was zero coccidia parasites, and he tells'em they had a bad test. Which that's,

Jeff Mattocks:

yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

I mean, either somebody's lying, the test was bad, or they just gave the bird a bunch of antibiotics before it went.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. I mean, on a float test, I'm, I'm hoping So you're, you're actually looking for the O assist, which is the egg, right? Nothmm, not the, um, the coccidia, but you know, I'm hoping between 30 and 40. Program. Right. So it, it's always done on a pergram basis, right? They take one gram of, of manure or poultry poop, and that's what they, you know, that's what they float out in the saline solution, right? And they do that and then they pull their sample off the top of the little eyedropper type, you know, sample thing and put it on a slide.

Speaker 4:

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Mattocks:

And then they do the math. So it's, um. You know, like 30, 30 to 40 is fine. 50, I'm not scared yet. You know, we make a couple of Minorca adjustments, 60, we can still make some Minorca adjustments, get things back in shape. Once you start getting up, you know, 80 to a hundred, then I think we have to do something a little bit more managerially, uh, harsh, but still don't really need to use. Or apro. But anyway, that's just my 2 cents worth. Give him some milk. Give him some milk.

Carey Blackmon:

I was gonna say milk or yogurt. You know, the APRO basically blocks the the thymine where, and that's a B vitamin that helps with a whole lot of other stuff. So if it's used incorrectly. It'll do more harm than good.

Jeff Mattocks:

It blows my mind. How many people talk about R neck in mature birds. I only see R neck in the first three weeks of life. In most poultry forms, right? In most poultry strains breeds families, whatever.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

You know when people start talking about R neck in year old, or year and a half old, or you know, even anything really over eight months old. I'm thinking, man, what did you do to screw this bird up? I mean, did you feed medicated feed for the first year of life? And I, you know, R Neck is caused so that the appearance of R Neck is either a thiamine deficiency or, um, there's another offshoot call on spon spon. Anyway. Um, but it's where a vertebrae doesn't develop, right? So it can be a genetic thing that will show up later in life, but it's a really, really, really low percentage possibility. But, you know, people just jump to conclusions that it's automatically R neck. Um, and it, and I'm not saying that it's not, you know, depending on what that bird was fed and how it was raised, but, uh, man, I.

Carey Blackmon:

I had a person send me a picture of a bird that you know appeared to be full grown. And he said, is this r? And I'm sitting there, I'm like, I wanna say yes'cause I, that's what it looks like, but that bird's big. And I just messaged the person back and said, do you regularly put cord in your water? Oh yeah. I treat Cox Ad Os every month. Anyway, I said Roll Tide. Um, that is about half of what I had on here to cover, so,

Jeff Mattocks:

oh man. We didn't get to the big ones like Merricks and

Carey Blackmon:

It's all right. It's alright. I knew, okay. I knew some of these. May take longer than others because of the topics and the controversies. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know what rabbit holes we would find and all that good stuff, so I kind of planned them in an order for a reason. Okay. Um, so we'll pick this up in two weeks and that we'll talk about Merricks rickets, egg drop syndrome syndrome, um, and the supportive care. And what should be in a chicken medicine cabinet?

Jeff Mattocks:

Sounds good to me.

Carey Blackmon:

All right. Till then, we will see y'all in the comments. Okay.

Alex:

This concludes another episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. Be sure to join us next week as we bring you another new episode. Until then keep learning, keep improving and keep enjoying the birds that you love.

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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