Cleaning and Disinfecting a Poultry House Between Batches

When the buyer's truck pulls away with the last crate, the house looks empty. It is not. The litter, the dust on the rafters, the slime inside the drinker pipes and the beetles in the wall cracks are all holding the diseases of the flock that just left, and they will hand them to the next chicks during the first week of life, when those chicks have the least ability to resist. A proper turnaround is the only point in the year when you can break that chain completely. It takes about a week of work and a week of waiting, and it follows a fixed order that should not be shuffled.

Why disinfectant poured on a dirty floor does nothing

Most farm disinfectants are neutralised by organic matter. Droppings, feed dust, feather dander and the greasy film that builds up on walls all react with the active chemical before it reaches the germs underneath. A thin crust of dried droppings shelters germs from a product that would kill them in seconds on bare concrete.

That is why the work is divided into two jobs. Cleaning removes the dirt, and with it the great majority of the organisms. Disinfecting then deals with what is left on a surface the chemical can actually touch. A washed house with no disinfectant is safer than a dirty house sprayed with the most expensive product in the shop.

The organisms you are fighting are tough. Gumboro virus survives in a house for months. Coccidia eggs (oocysts) last a long time in litter and floor cracks and are barely affected by ordinary disinfectants. Marek's disease virus rides on feather dust, and Salmonella hides in dust, rodents and litter beetles. Each is carried over by something you can see and remove.

Get ready before the last bird leaves

A turnaround goes wrong when the birds are sold on Friday and nobody has bought detergent by the following Wednesday. In the final week of the batch, assemble what you need:

• Shovels, hard brooms, a scraper or hoe, stiff hand brushes and a long-handled broom for rafters and mesh.
• Sacks for litter, and an agreed buyer or dumping place away from the houses.
• Detergent. Farm detergent is best, though washing powder or liquid soap works on a small house.
• A pressure washer if you can hire or borrow one. If not, a hose, buckets and a knapsack sprayer kept only for the poultry farm, never one that has carried weedkiller.
• Disinfectant, insecticide and rodent bait from a veterinary or agro-chemical shop.
• Gloves, rubber boots, eye protection and dust masks for everyone doing the work.
• Enough water. A small pressure washer uses roughly 400 litres an hour and a bigger one can pass 900, so in the dry season fill your tanks beforehand.

Plan the feed as well, so the bins run nearly empty on sale day. Feed left in a house that held birds is contaminated with their dust, and finisher is the wrong ration for chicks anyway.

Finally, sell or remove every bird. Keeping fifteen unsold broilers in a corner "until someone buys them" defeats the whole exercise, because those birds go on shedding whatever the flock was carrying. The reasoning is explained in our article on all-in, all-out broiler production.

The first day: insects, feed, equipment and litter

Spray for insects while the house is still warm

Black litter beetles and their larvae live in the litter. As soon as the birds and their body heat are gone, the beetles crawl into wall cracks and timber, where washing will not reach them. They come back out when the new chicks arrive and bring infection with them. Mites behave in a similar way. So within a few hours of the house emptying, spray an approved insecticide over the litter surface, along the base of the walls and around the posts, following the label. Let it work overnight before you start shovelling.

Take everything movable outside

Empty the feeders and take them out along with drinkers, brooder guards, heaters, nest boxes, perches and curtains. Stack them on a concrete slab or a tarpaulin, not on bare soil.

Remove the litter without spreading it

Dry litter thrown about with shovels fills the air with dust that drifts into every other house on the farm. Dampen the surface lightly with a watering can or sprayer first, just enough to hold the dust down, and wear a mask. Bag the litter inside the house and carry the sacks out through one door. Load them directly onto the buyer's vehicle or take them to a heap well away from the poultry houses and downwind of them. Litter piled against the outside wall will be walked back in on boots within the week.

Used litter has real value to crop farmers, and our guide to handling and selling poultry manure covers storing and pricing it. One caution belongs here: the buyer's truck and sacks may have been on other poultry farms yesterday, so load at the gate and keep the vehicle away from houses that still hold birds.

Dry cleaning from the rafters down

With the litter out, clean the house dry before any water goes in. Water turns dust into paste that sticks in every corner, so remove as much as possible while it is still loose.

Start at the highest point. Brush the underside of the roof sheets, the rafters and purlins, the tops of the posts, light fittings and cables. Then brush the wire mesh on both sides, since mesh blocked with dust and feathers also cuts ventilation for the next flock, and sweep the ledge on top of the dwarf wall. Finish with the floor: scrape off caked droppings, especially where drinkers stood, then sweep twice, pushing everything towards the door. Sweep out the feed store in the same way.

Washing: soak, scrub, rinse

Switch off the electricity at the main switch before washing and cover sockets, bulb holders and any fan motors with plastic tied in place.

Washing has three stages. The first is the one most often skipped.

1. Soak. Wet every surface with water and detergent at low pressure, from a knapsack sprayer or a hose with a spray head. Detergent breaks up the greasy film that plain water runs over. Leave it for at least 20 to 30 minutes so the dirt softens, and do not let it dry out.
2. Wash. Work from the roof down to the floor and from the far end of the house towards the door, so dirty water always flows over surfaces you have not yet done. Without a pressure washer, scrub with stiff brushes and plenty of water. Pay attention to corners, the joint between wall and floor, cracks in the concrete, the mesh frame and both faces of the dwarf wall.
3. Rinse. Rinse with clean water in the same order. Detergent residue interferes with some disinfectants, particularly quaternary ammonium products, so do not leave suds on the walls.

Wash water is heavily contaminated, so lead it to a soakaway or drain that runs away from the poultry houses, and not into a neighbour's compound or a stream.

Now check the result. Wipe a damp white cloth along a rafter, the mesh frame and the wall ledge. If the cloth comes away brown, that section is not clean and the disinfectant will fail there. Wash it again.

Then let the house dry. Open the curtains fully. Disinfectant sprayed onto a wet surface is diluted by the water already there and ends up weaker than the label intends.

Repairs belong in the middle, not at the end

Repairs make dust and bring in workers and tools, so do them after washing and before disinfecting, while the bare house shows its faults clearly.

• Fill cracks and holes in the floor and dwarf wall with cement mortar. Cracks hold oocysts, beetle larvae and moisture.
• Patch every hole in the mesh and close gaps under doors and at the eaves (see our article on keeping rats, snakes and wild birds out).
• Fix roof leaks, because a leak means a wet patch in the next batch's litter.
• Replace rotten timber and torn curtains, and test bulbs and sockets once everything is dry.

The empty house is also the best time to bait for rats, because their food supply has just disappeared. Use covered bait stations along walls and in the feed store, out of reach of children, dogs and poultry, and collect dead rodents daily.

Disinfecting: the right product, the right strength, enough of it

Choosing a product

Buy a disinfectant made for livestock housing whose label lists viruses, bacteria and fungi. The main types are these:

If the last flock had coccidiosis or Gumboro, tell the vet or the shop, because coccidia in particular need a specialist product and the general disinfectant on the shelf may not touch them. Formalin fumigation is still used on some farms, but formaldehyde is hazardous to breathe and should be left to trained people with proper respirators.

Working out how much to mix

The commonest fault is mixing one bucket and making it stretch. Every surface has to be visibly wet. As a rough guide, the total area of floor, walls, mesh and roof underside is about 2.5 times the floor area, and wetting it properly takes about 0.3 litres of mixed solution for each square metre.

As an example, take a house 8 metres by 25 metres:

• Floor area: 8 x 25 = 200 square metres.
• Total surface: 200 x 2.5 = 500 square metres.
• Solution needed: 500 x 0.3 = 150 litres, which is ten fills of a 15-litre knapsack sprayer.
• If the label says one part product to 100 parts water, 150 litres of solution needs about 1.5 litres of product.

Use the dilution on your own product's label in place of the example.

Applying it

Wear gloves, boots, goggles and a mask. Spray in the same order as washing: roof underside and timber, then mesh and walls, then the floor, finishing at the door. Then leave the surface alone for the contact time on the label. Many products need to stay wet for ten minutes or more, so do not rinse, and spray in the early morning or late afternoon, not at midday when the solution dries in seconds.

Feeders, drinkers, tank and pipes

Equipment carried out on the first day gets the same treatment as the house. Soak feeders, trays, drinkers and brooder guards in a drum of detergent solution, scrub every part including the underside of feeder pans, and rinse. Dip or spray them with disinfectant, rinse anything that will touch feed or water, and dry them in full sun on a clean surface. Wash curtains on both sides.

The water system needs separate attention because its dirt is hidden. Vitamins, medicines and warm water leave a slimy layer (biofilm) inside tanks, pipes and drinkers. Bacteria live in that layer, and the next flock drinks them from the first hour.

1. Drain the header tank and all pipes.
2. Scrub the inside of the tank with a brush and remove sediment and algae. Fit a lid if there is none, since light grows algae and open tanks collect dust and lizards.
3. Fill the system with a water line cleaner or a chlorine solution mixed as its label directs for cleaning empty lines. Open each drinker or nipple until you see or smell the solution arrive, so the whole length is full.
4. Leave it standing for the time stated on the product, commonly several hours or overnight.
5. Flush with clean water until it runs clear with no smell. Cleaning solution left in the pipes will put chicks off drinking, and that is far more dangerous than the slime was.

Water hygiene during the batch is explained in our article on water for poultry.

Earth floors, mud walls and old timber

Many low-cost houses have a rammed earth floor, and earth cannot be disinfected properly. Liquid soaks in, and disease organisms sit below the reach of any spray. You can still reduce the load. Scrape off the top two or three centimetres of soil along with the litter and cart it away. Fill hollows with fresh laterite and ram it hard. Let the floor dry in the sun and wind for as long as you can, since dryness and time are your main disinfectants here. Some farmers dust hydrated lime over the dry floor. Lime is caustic, so wear a mask and gloves, spread it thinly, and cover it fully with litter so chicks never stand on it.

Rough mud walls and unplaned timber are full of pores and cracks. Brush them hard, spray them thoroughly and give the house a longer rest. When money allows, a cement screed on the floor and plaster on the dwarf wall make every future turnaround work better.

The rest period, and how farmers ruin it

Once the house is disinfected and dry, close it and leave it empty. Organisms that survived the chemicals die off steadily without birds to multiply in, faster in a dry house. A common target is about two weeks from the last bird leaving to the chicks arriving, with the finished house standing shut for the last five to seven days. After a serious disease outbreak, ask your vet or the district veterinary office how long to wait. They will often advise three or four weeks and a second round of disinfectant.

The rest period is usually spoiled in ordinary ways:

• Workers walk in with the same boots they wore to carry out litter. Wash and disinfect boots, or keep a pair that stays inside the clean house.
• Unwashed tools, a wheelbarrow from the manure heap or feeders borrowed from another farm are carried in.
• The door is left open and village chickens, dogs or wild birds wander through.
• Fresh litter is stored in the open, where rats and wild birds foul it before it is spread.

Three or four days before the chicks are due, spread fresh dry litter, bring the clean equipment back in and set up the brooding area. Our chick brooding guide covers the layout and the pre-heating. From this point, entry rules are the same as if birds were already inside (see our article on biosecurity for small farms).

A two-week turnaround, day by day

Book the chicks against this calendar, not against the day the old batch is sold. At Halaal Farms we confirm the hatch date before you pay, so you can count back from it and know which day cleaning must start. If the buyer for your old flock delays, tell the hatchery early and move the chicks. Send your dates through the order form, or look at our broiler chicks page first.

Our chicks are vaccinated at the hatchery before they leave, and it is worth asking what each batch has had. A vaccine cannot protect a day-old chick placed onto litter and dust loaded with the last flock's infections, so the clean house and the vaccinated chick have to work together. To talk through a turnaround after a difficult batch, call 024 915 1503 before your next order.

Questions farmers ask

Written by the Halaal Farms Ghana team. We hatch and import day-old chicks at Opeikuma, Kasoa, and deliver to all 16 regions. This article is general guidance for farmers. For diagnosis and treatment of sick birds, speak to a vet or your district veterinary office.

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