Egg-laying hens

Maintaining flock health

Everyone with egg-laying hens, regardless of whether you are a smallholder, crofter or a backyard keeper, has legal responsibilities to care for their health and prevent disease from spreading.

Before getting hens, you have a legal duty to familiarise yourself with health guidance: read the Guidance for the Welfare of Laying Hens and Pullets. You should also set up plans to manage hens’ welfare, find a vet you can call on and know how to do a chicken health check. 

If you live in a remote area, see the Highlands and Islands Veterinary Services Scheme for contacts of vets.

In addition, there are certifications which have stricter welfare requirements, including RSPCA Assured and organic, which affect how you can market your eggs. When planning how to maintain your flock’s health, consider how the eggs will be labelled for selling (see ’Labelling’). 

Biosecurity plan

Biosecurity means setting up and following a plan of actions that reduce the risk of your birds getting disease and spreading it between themselves or beyond the flock.

Your biosecurity plan should include actions for: 

• Reducing the risk of people, equipment and vehicles bringing in disease
• Reducing the risk of wild birds bringing in disease
• Reducing the risk of new hens bringing in disease (see ’Adding hens to your flock’).
• Regular cleaning of the chicken coop and managing the range (see ’Cleaning’)
• Controlling vermin
• Contingency in case of disease outbreaks, which may require hens to be kept indoors (see ’Chicken diseases & parasites’)
• How to safely store and dispose dead birds and animal by-products (see ’Dead birds’)

When planning biosecurity measures, check if you are in a Higher Risk Area for avian influenza. 

If you have a small flock, your biosecurity plan can be quite simple but you should still have one. The Scottish Government have published a small flock keeper’s guide to biosecurity. 

You should review your biosecurity plan regularly and have it ready for inspection (see, ’Inspections’).

Read more:

• ’Bird flu (avian influenza): how to prevent it and stop it spreading’, DEFRA & APHA
• Biosecurity and preventing welfare impacts in poultry and captive birds, DEFRA
• Notifiable Avian Disease Control Strategy for Great Britain, DEFRA 
• ‘Disease prevention for livestock and poultry keepers’, DEFRA

Health & welfare plan

You should create a plan which outlines how you will care for your flock’s health and welfare throughout their lifetime. Your biosecurity plan will be part of this, but the health & welfare plan focusses on your hens rather than controlling disease.

The health & welfare plan should cover regular flock inspections, vaccinations, treating disease and parasites and controlling feather pecking.

Create the health plan with your local vet and review it with them annually. 

Read more:

• Veterinary Health & Welfare Plan, Guidance for egg-laying hens and pullets, RSPCA

Chicken diseases & parasites

Chickens are affected by many diseases and parasites which can be lethal if not treated. 

Many of the common diseases are related to the hens’ diet and hygiene, and it is important to follow your biosecurity and health plans to prevent problems. Your hens may also get ill when having issues with laying eggs. 

Check the health of your flock regularly. You must attend to hens appearing to be ill or injured without delay and call the vet if they do not get better or get worse. Seriously unwell or injured chickens should be isolated if necessary to prevent additional suffering.

Loss of feathers may indicate that your hen is unwell or suffering from feather pecking, but it may also be caused by their yearly moult. 

The Poultry Keeper has published a useful overview of diseases and health problems affecting poultry.

Further resources:

• ’Common diseases in backyard poultry in Great Britain’, APHA
• ’Health and Diseases’, the Poultry Club
• ’Common Chicken Illnesses and What to Look For’, Keeping Chickens UK
• ’The top 6 most common chicken health problems’, British Hen Welfare Trust

Notifiable avian diseases

If you suspect that your hens has any of the notifiable diseases, you are legally required to immediately tell your local APHA Field Services team by contacting them.

• Avian influenza (bird flu)
• Newcastle disease

Register your flock with APHA to get notifications about outbreaks in your area (see ’Flock registration’) or sign up to alerts.

Control of notifiable avian diseases

To control notifiable avian diseases, the government can impose zones which requires bird keepers in certain areas to follow control measures like movement restrictions. These measures apply to you regardless of how many hens you have. 

Check the interactive map of control zones in Scotland.

If a notifiable disease is confirmed in your flock, all of your hens will be culled and you will receive compensation, but this is only for non-diseased birds.

However, if your keep chicken breeds that are considered rare/at risk, you can apply for an exemption from culling. To do this, you must apply to APHA with a contingency plan for your breed at risk, which demonstrates that sparing your hens will not undermine disease control.

Read more about control measures in the Notifiable avian disease control strategy for Great Britain. 

Further resources:

• ’Avian Influenza’, British Free Range Producers Association

Chicken parasites

Internal and external parasites are common for hens, and can be very difficult to get rid of once established. You should familiarise yourself with the symptoms and know how to treat parasites early on. 

Common chicken parasites include red mite, lice, and worms. Many parasites activate when temperatures rise in the spring, and you should be vigilant during this time.

To prevent parasites, ensure that your hens have places to dust bathe to keep themselves clean and maintain good biosecurity, especially a clean pasture (see ’Cleaning’). 

It may be necessary to treat your chickens with medicine to get rid of parasites – see ’Medicines’.

Read more:

• ’Poultry Pests & Diseases’, the Accidental Smallholder

Medicines

Sometimes it is necessary to medicate your hens to prevent or cure disease. You should not use antibiotics routinely and as prescribed by a vet, to avoid disease-causing bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.

You can legally use only veterinary medicines authorised by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate – see the directory of approved veterinary medicines. Some can only be prescribed by a vet, and organic certification may restrict which medicines you can use.

You must also keep records of any medicines used — see ’Keeping records’. 

Read more:

• ‘Veterinary medicines’, Health and Safety Executive
• ’Poultry Medication’, Poultry Keeper

Using veterinary medicines

Veterinary medicines can be hazardous to human health if handled incorrectly, and their safe use is controlled by law if you sell eggs from your hens. This applies to you if you are self-employed and to anyone else working at your holding.

Follow this guide by the Health and Safety Executive on how to use animal medicines safely and comply with your legal duties. 

You must wait until the end of the withdrawal period specified in the product before eating or selling any eggs from your hens. Read more about medicine residues on Food Standards Scotland.

Worming

Instead of using wormers routinely, it is a good idea to test your chickens regularly for worms to check if they need to be wormed. You can do this by buying a worm egg count kit which is sent to a laboratory for testing.

Vaccinations

Vaccinating your hens is not legally compulsory, but can be used to prevent and control some diseases. Usually, vaccination can only be done to very young chicks and poultry vaccines often come in large batches of over 500 doses which can make them impractical for small flocks.

Common chicken vaccinations include:

• Marek’s Disease
• Infectious Bronchitis (IB)
• Avian Rhino Tracheitis (ART)
• Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG)
• Salmonella – salmonella vaccinations are compulsory for the British Lion certification

When introducing new hens to your flock, check if the breeder has given them any vaccinations. Do not mix vaccinated and unvaccinated birds. 

It is illegal to vaccinate your birds against avian influenza without a permission from the government.

Find out more about chicken vaccinations:

• ’Vaccinating chickens’, Poultry Keeper
• ’Vaccination’, British Hen Welfare Trust
• ’Vaccinating Chickens’, Keeping Chickens

Feather pecking

Feather pecking is an abnormal behaviour for hens, where they peck and eat the feathers of other birds. It can develop into cannibalism, which other birds can learn and spread through the flock, so it is important to recognise and address feather pecking early on.

Feather pecking can occur in any chicken rearing system, but risk factors include lack of space, large flock sizes, boredom and inadequate nutrition.

FeatherWei has useful guidance available on recognising, preventing and controlling feather pecking. Read the FeatherWei management guide.

Some keepers use beak trimming to control feather pecking (see ’Mutilations’).

Read more:

• A guide to the practical management of feather pecking & cannibalism in free range laying hens, DEFRA
• ’How can feather pecking be managed in cage-free layer hen systems?’, RSPCA
• ’Feather pecking and cannibalism in small and backyard poultry flocks’, Poultry Extension (USA)

Mutilations

Mutilating your hens is defined as removing or damaging sensitive parts of their body, and is prohibited by law. 

Trimming your hens’ beaks only to control feather pecking is legally permitted, but organic certifications may ban it.

• If you have 350 hens or more, beak trimming is legally allowed only on chicks less than 10 days old and with infra-red technology unless it is an emergency measure to treat feather pecking. 
• For smaller flocks, it is recommended that beak trimming only be used as an emergency measure. 

Clipping your hens wing feathers to prevent them from flying is not considered mutilation. 

Read more:

• ’Permitted procedures’, Welfare of laying hens and pullets: guidance, Scottish Government

Slaughtering hens

Egg-laying hens may be slaughtered for various reasons, such as emergency slaughter of a critically ill or injured chicken or culling hens.

You do not need a licence to euthanise or cull your hens yourself, as long as this is done on your farm/croft, by yourself and through either cervical dislocation or decapitation. Meat from hens culled through home slaughter can only be eaten by you and your immediate family.

If you want to use another method or sell meat from your chickens, the person slaughtering the hens must have a Certificate of Competence from Food Standards Scotland. 

It is an offence to cause avoidable suffering to an animal when slaughtering it, and only a competent person should do this. When slaughtering hens, they must first be stunned and then killed before they regain consciousness.

The Humane Slaughter Association has practical guidance for ethical slaughter of poultry and guide on practical slaughter of poultry for smallholders. If you have any questions about slaughtering your hens, contact Food Standards Scotland. 

Read more:

• ’Slaughtering poultry’, Accidental Smallholder
• ’Home slaughter’, Food Standards Scotland
• ’Slaughter’, Food Standards Scotland

Hen carcasses & waste

Hen carcasses, parts and other material coming from your birds that is not meant for humans to eat is called animal by-products. The disposal of animal by-products is legally regulated depending on their health risks. 

This means that you cannot dispose of hen carcasses, waste eggs or chicken manure as general waste. They must be send for disposal by an authorised business, or you have some options for disposing them yourself.

• Carcasses must be collected by an approved knacker, hunt kennel, maggot farm, incinerator, or renderer. You can make your own arrangement with the collector or use the National Fallen Stock Company which connects farmers/crofters and collectors. If you are in a remote area, you are also allowed to burn or bury them.
• Eggs and egg products can be composted or anaerobically digested, processed into fertiliser, or used as animal feed with some restrictions. However, if the eggs are from ill hens, you must process/sterilise them first. 
• Manure can be composted or anaerobically digested. You can also spread it on land if you  follow precautions for botulism, and you must stop farm animals grazing on this land for 21 days after (or two months for pigs).

More details and instructions about different animal by-products is published by DEFRA.

Fallen livestock reporting and disposal

Dead livestock must be disposed of appropriately.  In most of Scotland, they cannot be buried or burnt in the open because of the risk of disease spread through groundwater or air pollution. Fallen stock must be disposed without ‘undue delay’ (usually within 48 hours of death). There are a number of disposal options available.

Some remote areas of Scotland have been granted exception to bury dead animals if other disposal options are not available. For more details of the areas and methods of disposal please see the guidance.