QUEBEC CITY, Que. — Extensive planning was required when poultry companies like Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson Foods announced they were going antibiotic free in their operations.
“Removing antibiotics completely is still a challenge,” said Shivaram Rao of Pilgrims Pride.
It is essential to have treatment options available when early signs of increased deaths are observed, he said at the animal nutrition conference of Canada held in Quebec City May 10-11.
In 2013, less than five percent of chicken produced in the United States was antibiotic free but by 2018 about 55 percent is expected to be raised that way, said Rao.
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Many companies remove antibiotics from chickens at 35 days of age and have adopted new health practices that start at the hatchery.
“In the last 15 years the use of enzymes in feed has helped in this area. The program needs to be everywhere to make a long-term ABF (antibiotic-free) program successful,” he said.
Tyson has a plan in place to eliminate antibiotics important to human medicine from chicken production by September, said Dr. Scott Gustin, a veterinarian and director of technical services.
It is a major challenge for the company that places 36 million birds every week.
When a company decides to go antibiotic free, producers must improve their awareness of bird behaviour and be able to diagnose problems sooner, he said.
Diseases like omphalitis and neocrotic enteritis are major issues and producers need to be able to recognize them and act quickly.
“The whole process has to be a little bit better,” he said.
Necrotic enteritis damages the intestine and birds can die.
“I can see it on the mismanaged farms but I can see it also among some of our very best producers,” he said.
Vaccines against some of the common poultry diseases may present good future options, but they are not perfect. Better sanitation, management and alternative products are needed. Producers and veterinarians also need to know which bug they are dealing with because that influences which products to use.
Tyson has been using probiotics for about eight years to help control clostridia. It has also tested more than 30 antibiotic alternatives in the last four years.
Additives cost an extra $10 extra per tonne for feed but they have to consider the cost of sick or dead birds.
Researcher Brett Lumpkins of the Southern Poultry Research Centre in Georgia is part of a team investigating ways to control coccidiosis in poultry fed antibiotic-free diets.
Coccidiosis is the biggest disease among chickens around the world and costs about $3 billion a year to control globally. The strains may differ slightly but the destructive effects on the intestines are the same.
There are eight species of cocci that affect different regions of the gut.
One oocyst can be picked up by a bird and spread, resulting in 30,000 oocysts in a gram of litter. A large 12 by 120 metre barn could have 720 trillion oocysts by the time the birds are 20 days old.
Even with a full clean-out after the cycle of birds is removed, it is impossible to get rid of every speck where the pathogen may survive.
Vaccinations are available and should be considered more in the future. They will be the main control for coccidiosis because there are no new drugs up for approval.
Vaccines satisfy antibiotic-free programs so about 75 percent of chicken production has been vaccinated, said Lumpkins.
