How to Manage Inactivated Vaccine Reactions in Layer Pullets
Vaccines play an important role in helping the layer industry support bird health as well as meet production goals and food safety requirements. When implementing a vaccination program, you need to know how to properly manage potential vaccine reaction in order to reduce the economic impacts that can occur if and when a more severe vaccine reaction occurs.
Read also: How to protect your flock from Avian Influenza ( AI)
There are two types of poultry vaccines – live and inactivated. When a live vaccine is properly administered, reactions are typically minimal and will primarily occur at the site of replication. However, inactivated vaccines are injected and reactions that might occur are usually seen at the injection site. Inactivated bacterins, like Salmonella, Mycoplasma gallisepticum, Infectious Coryza and Fowl Cholera tend to have more reactivity in poultry and will be the focus for this article.
When an Elanco Technical Consultant is working with a producer to implement a vaccine program for inactivated bacterins, these are three tips we share to ensure they are able to successfully manage vaccine reactions.
Managing Poultry Vaccine Reactions
Learn MoreStart your birds off on the right foot
The first seven days is an important time in the life of a bird. What happens in the first week sets the tone for how the pullet flock is going to grow and what they’re going to look like as layers. One of the most important things to focus on is making sure the pullets are able to build a healthy immune system. This is important because a healthy immune system supports healthy weight gain and overall health of the bird. When your flock has a positive health status at the time of vaccination, they will have a better chance of experiencing a normal vaccine response.
The foundation of a healthy immune system starts with quality feed, proper ventilation, temperature and access to clean water. But another key component is having good maternal antibodies to Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDv) and Chicken Anemia Virus (CAV). Managing immunosuppressive pathogens in the first few weeks supports a robust immune system that allows the bird to respond consistently and effectively to inactivated bacterins once they are administered.
Proper vaccine handling
For inactivated bacterins, maintaining a warm temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius) – plus or minus five degrees – during vaccination is important. As you prepare for vaccine administration, we recommend creating a checklist that has time points marked out. Your check list should include these steps:
- Remove vaccine from cold storage 12 hours prior to vaccination
- Allow vaccine to gradually warm to room temperature before placing in water bath
- Prepare the water bath
- Allow vaccine to acclimate to water bath temperature
- Hourly checks to make sure the vaccine and water bath maintain the desired temperature
- Calibrate the syringes to the desired vaccine dose
One of the most reliable ways to create a water bath is using a sous vide water warmer as your heating mechanism. The vaccine bottles are placed inside the water bath and the water is circulated by the sous vide warmer to maintain a precise temperature. We recommend also having a manual thermometer on hand to regularly check the temperature of the water bath. This provides another temperature check point that will help ensure the birds are not being injected with a vaccine that is too hot or too cold.
Proper bird handling
Proper bird handling is important during vaccine administration because it enhances bird welfare and supports the end goal of getting birds back on feed as quickly as possible to maintain uniformity. Birds are already going through a stressful time, and you want them to be able to focus that stress on responding to the vaccine appropriately instead of an injury that occurred from blunt needles or improper handling during vaccination.
To avoid injury from a blunt needle, we recommend changing needles every 1,000 injections or less. It’s also important to check the flock for lacerations in the skin and signs of obvious bleeding at the site of injection right after vaccination. Incorporating both of these steps in your vaccination program will help support proper bird handling procedures.
Monitoring Vaccine Reactions in Layer Pullets
Along with proper vaccine management, it’s also important to make sure you’re proactively monitoring your pullets post-vaccination. The two main things to pay attention to are weight gain and uniformity. Don’t be surprised if birds don’t gain much weight in the first week after vaccination. However, by the second week birds should be back on their regular feed consumption and weight gain profile. If this is delayed flock uniformity can be negatively impacted, which can be an indicator that a more severe vaccine reaction has occurred.
Preserving weight gain and pullet uniformity through a well-managed vaccination process helps support overall egg production and profitability.
Read also: Optimizing hatching eggs management
Importance of Poultry Vaccine Programs
There is a cost to protecting your poultry production and keeping birds healthy. Administering inactivated bacterins does put additional stress on a bird, however implementing an inactivated bacterins vaccination program also helps preserve food safety as well as support disease prevention, animal welfare, shell quality and production later on in the life of the bird. As the old adage goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Contributed by Chase Miller
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