What the Hell is Colibacillosis?

Colibacillosis, or E. coli infection, is an opportunistic bacterial infection that affects poultry and causes a lot of losses to the farmer.

The disease is caused by a bacteria, the Escherichia coli (mostly abbreviated as E. coli).

Escherichia coli exists as a good bacteria in our gut and in the intestines of the bird, but it becomes infectious if given the opportunity either by a viral infection or too much stress onto the birds.

How Does It Happen?

1.    If the birds are eating contaminated feed and drinking dirty water. Feeds and water can be contaminated with litter or chicken droppings Remember, E. coli is already in the litter.

2.    If the feed store doesn't have proper bio security (we can easily pick E. coli from contaminated places, latrines, etc.

3.    Most of us are using piped water or automated water or cages. The bio film that collects in water pipes is another breeding ground for the stubborn bacteria.

4.    The automatic drinkers that you don't dismantle to wash have a bio film inside them.

5.    The wheelbarrows you use to collect manure/droppings is the same you use to transport feeds but you don't even disinfect the wheelbarrow before transporting feed? Expect E. coli.

How Does E. coli Manifest?

1.    Yellowish and dark diarrhoea.

2.    Appetite loss.

3.    A soiled vent in chicks, the navel or umbilical cord failing to close and oozing out watery discharge.

4.    Can cause cough.

5.    And ruffled feathers.

Furthermore, the same bacteria can get access to the bird either through nostrils (dust), mouth (contaminated feed and water) or via the vent.

When E. coli passes via the vent, it affects the reproductive system, starting with swelling of the ovaries, "burning" of some ovaries, and failure of eggs to pass out and pile up inside the reproductive system. Reproductive system getting filled with water and sometimes the egg failing to join the reproductive system, but laid in the intestinal cavity, and a lot of cellulitis mostly around the thigh muscle.

Chicks can easily show signs of E. coli when they have just been placed in a brooder.

At this point, the disease can be transmitted from the hatchery to the chicks if the hatchery was not properly disinfected or if clean eggs were placed together with contaminated eggs (talking to that farmer who hatches his kuroilers in a neighbouring hatchery).

But still, chicks can get E. coli from a poorly disinfected brooder, contaminated equipment (including the vehicle that carried them). Before you blame the source of your chicks for the early mortality, check if you disinfected well or if you had good hygiene in your brooder....what type of feed did you start with? Was it clean feed?

Oooh!!! You much like rain water, but how clean are the tanks, water gutters and the roof? Yes E. coli can still exist there.

I don't discourage use of rain water, but make sure it is clean or treated before use.

Chicks may show the following signs of E. coli between the first six hours of placement to about two or three days.

1.    A pasted abdomen, with water oozing out.

2.    Mortalities that can go up to 8 - 10% of the flock.

3.    Poor appetite, some birds may appear weak, unable to stand, lying down on their chests, wings spread but feet may be facing behind.

4.    Birds appear very light, without any weight at all.

5.    In the first five days of brooding, the birds show yellow diarrhoea, associated with a little cough in the brooder, some birds might have some of their eyes swollen, with mucus and closed at that tender age.

·         Salpingitis is a condition where the reproductive organ that forms the egg becomes filled with either watery discharge or piled up eggs. It is caused by E. coli that can either exist in the litter (passing via cloaca or water or contaminated feed).

A bird that gets such a problem becomes very heavy, unable to stand or walk properly, and eventually it dies. The condition is irreversible.

·         Egg yolk peritonitis happens when the egg yolk fails to join the reproductive organ, but instead falls into the abdominal cavity. E. coli likes a "proteinous" environment...so in this case it just increases in multiplication.

Still this condition is irreversible, but can be prevented.

All the above two conditions are connected to colibacillosis.

E. coli forms wounds in the intestines, making digestion, absorption and utilisation of feed imperfect.

Prevention

1.    If possible, please avoid using water from the trucks. Those guys fetch water from dirty swamps and they will always lie to you that they have treated the water.

2.    Always clean your water reservoirs well and let the first rains pour down before you start collecting water. Make sure water gutters are always cleaned before rains.

3.    Water pipes should always be well flushed with a pressurized pump and cid 2000.

4.    Water tanks that serve the poultry house should be cleaned too.

5.    Dismantle automatic drinkers and wash them well with a detergent.

6.    Avoid water pouring on the floor.

7.    Water sources should not be near to garbage dumping sites or toilets.

8.    Inside the poultry house, don't allow birds to drink dirty water...always pour away the dirty water and allow clean water to flow.

9.    Feeders should always be cleaned.

10. In cages, there are some feeds that may cake up from the feed troughs. These should be removed.

11. Feed ingredients used should be dry, and clean. Talk about mukene that is sundries on the lake shores...it’s even packed wet to get good weights that fetch profits for them, but carrying more sand and E. coli.

12. Do your farm workers disinfect their boots before they enter the feeds store? Or they just enter as they come from poultry houses and toilets?

13. Feed troughs should be well designed not to pour feeds so that it’s not contaminated with litter.

14. Reducing exposure of your birds to other pathogens that damage the respiratory system and the gut will help to reduce chances of E. coli infections.

15. After infectious bronchitis damaging the respiratory system, E. coli can easily get access through that system.

16. Or it can affect after the effects of Newcastle and Gumboro...so biosecurity measures should be emphasised on the farm.

17. Too much stress on the birds reduces the immune strength against E. coli, leading to an outbreak. Reduce the stress (transport stress, vaccination stress, disease stress, and stress after counting the birds, deworming stress...).

18. Poor ventilation and accumulation of a lot of ammonia in the house leads to an outbreak.

It’s a mistake to keep birds in rental houses.

It's a mistake to block ventilation in the name of security or blocking direct sun rays....improvise other measures, but leave the ventilation alone.

It’s a mistake not to give your birds sangrovit, because sangrovit protects the birds against viral infections, bacterial infections and fights stress which would have made the infection worse. So give sangrovit to protect your birds against these infections and have a better performance.

19. Hey.......! How often do you remove the droppings from your cages? Too much ammonia in a poorly ventilated house can worsen the condition.

Oooh.....to the deep litter poultry farmer! Keep the litter dry, reduce once it accumulates beyond 3 inches. And change litter every after 2 weeks of rearing.

Treatment

Note: E. coli can easily build resistance against some of the antibiotics like tetracyclines if wrongly applied, but there are good options for treatment, including NEOMYCIN (neoxyvetal, nemovit, etc.) or GENTAMYCIN (gentylo...) based drugs.

Remember, such infections that cause damage to the intestine will reduce intestinal function of digestion and absorption...to avoid this, give Multivitamin for 3 to 5 days after treatment.

Now this is the working formula against Escherichia coli.

1.    The best option is to protect the gut against any bacteria, any virus, or any other pathogen.

2.    Protect the gut, don't let any pathogen to get into the blood stream, and don’t allow the mycotoxins too.

3.    Fight against any kind of stress to get off the birds, give birds a good appetite.