Turkey Tragedy

Well, it's official.  We have the dreaded turkey disease called Blackhead here (confirmed by gross necropsy).  I don't know if it was in our soil or if it came in with some new chickens....but one thing is for sure, we will be doing our best to get rid of it ASAP.  Our adult turkeys so far are unaffected, but the losses to our poults has been catastrophic.  We have 3 left out of the original 24, and I'm not holding much hope for the remaining animals.  We currently have 12 turkey eggs in the incubator and will be doing the following to eliminate the contamination and spread of the disease immediately so that the new poults will not be infected. 

1. All dead birds will be burned.
2. The incubators will be dismantled and sanitized.
3. The henhouse will be cleaned out...new roosts built, nestboxes sanitized, and the interior walls whitewashed and the ground limed.
4. The chicken pens will all be limed.
5. The chickens will be treated with colloidal silver for 3 days, 3 treatments 10 days apart
6. All feeders and waterers will be sanitized
7. The brooder house will be whitewashed, the floor scraped and limed, and the brooder pen will be tilled and limed.
8. Any bird showing suspected illness will be quarrantined.
9. Turkey poults will be kept in a chicken-free area.
10. We'll be buying more poults in a few weeks, as well as incubating any eggs we can from the adult birds.

This is a huge setback for our production of turkey meat for the year; but we will press on.