Understanding Common Poultry Diseases in Kenya today

Various types of poultry diseases can cause serious loss in the poultry farming business. Diseases occurs due to lack of proper care and management, inadequate nutritious feeding and some other factors. Generally diseases can be defined as ‘changes of general or usual physical condition’. Almost all types of animal can be affected by different types of disease in their lifetime. Poultry birds are not exception, they also get affected by numerous diseases. This types of disease can suffer the poultry health seriously. If you want to establish a profitable commercial farm or want to raise a few poultry birds on your backyard, then you must have to keep your birds free from all types of diseases. Usually poultry producers face some problems during establishing a new poultry farming business such as lack of capital, location, housing, food management, diseases etc. Among all those problems, poultry diseases are most important to consider. Disease can destroy the whole farm and you might loss money seriously. The meat and egg production of poultry can suddenly decrease due to various types of diseases. Many poultry birds die every year throughout the world, due to various types of diseases. As a result of this, producers loss a huge amount of money. In a word the main reason of financial damage of poultry farming business is various types of diseases.

Classification of Poultry Diseases
There are many types of poultry diseases. The major types of poultry diseases are described below.

Contagious Diseases:  Some diseases spread from affected birds to healthy birds. This types of poultry diseases are known as contagious diseases. Contagious diseases are of 3 types, which are described below.

·                   Viral Disease: This types of diseases caused due to various types of virus. Newcastle, chicken pox, gumboro, mareks, duck plague etc. are viral poultry diseases.

·                   Bacterial Diseases: The diseases which are caused by bacteria are known as bacterial diseases. Cholera,pullorum etc. are some bacterial poultry diseases.

·                   Fungus Diseases: This types of diseases attack the poultry birds through fungus. Spargilosis, fevus, thrash, micotoxicosis etc. are fungus diseases of poultry.

Parasitic Diseases: The organism which live in other animal’s body are known as parasites. This organisms creates some diseases while living in other animal’s body. This types of diseases is known as parasitic diseases. Micoplasmosis, colibesilosis, steptocackich, coccidiosis, espegilosis, worms, lice etc. are parasitic poultry diseases.

Malnutritious Diseases: If you don’t feed your birds well balanced and nutritious feed, then they might suffer by malnutritious diseases. Malnutritious diseases are of two types.

·                   Vitamin Deficiency Diseases: The diseases which caused due to lack of vitamins are called vitamin deficiency diseases.

·                   Mineral Deficiency Diseases: Some diseases attack the poultry birds due to lack of sufficient amount of various types of minerals. This types of diseases are known as mineral deficiency poultry diseases. Mineral play a vital role in keeping the poultry birds healthy. So they become sick and live unhealthy life due to mineral deficiency diseases.

Other Poultry Diseases: The poultry birds also get affected by some other miscellaneous diseases like cannibalism, egg bound etc. Although cannibalism and egg bound are not specifically poultry diseases.