Poultry Keepers Podcast

Poultry Health Master Class-Part 4

• Jeff Mattocks, Carey Blackmon • Season 3 • Episode 141

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Welcome to Part 4 of the Poultry Health Master Class, featuring poultry nutritionist Jeff Mattocks and poultry educator Carey Blackmon. In this final session of the series, Jeff and Carey walk through advanced poultry health concepts, including how to recognize internal issues through necropsy, how heart attack presents in chickens, and how to manage rare but serious conditions like Egg Drop Syndrome (EDS).

You’ll also learn practical, science-based natural remedies for improving flock health, including the correct use of garlic, oregano, sulfur, ashes, cayenne pepper, and herbal tinctures—and why using these tools only as needed keeps them effective.

This episode also covers:
 • Diagnosing a heart attack in chickens using firmness, tone, color, and posture
 • How Egg Drop Syndrome spreads, what it looks like, and how to support recovery
 • When a leathery egg isn’t EDS (normal pullet behavior)
• How external parasites take hold, and how to get rid of them for good
• Using dust baths, sulfur, and internal support to change blood chemistry
• Oregano oil as an antimicrobial and antiviral (not an antibiotic!)
• Why herbs should be used as treatments—not daily feed additives
• Whether scalding affects necropsy results when processing birds
• How cayenne pepper helps with blackhead and parasite pressure
• The value of the Merck Veterinary Manual for diagnosing poultry problems

This master class gives backyard poultry keepers the practical, real-world knowledge to manage health issues, support recovery, prevent unnecessary losses, and avoid the misinformation common on social media.

Don’t forget to subscribe for the next series on Poultry Coop Design, and revisit Parts 1–3 to complete the full Master Class experience.

#PoultryKeepersPodcast #PoultryHealth #BackyardChickens #ChickenHealth #FlockManagement #PoultryNutrition #ChickenCare #NaturalPoultryRemedies #HomesteadChickens #ChickenIllness #EggDropSyndrome #MerckVetManual

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Alex:

Welcome to a new episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In this episode Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon complete their discussion on poultry health issues with Part four of the Poultry Health Master Class. So let's jump right in where we stopped last week.

Jeff Mattocks:

Now if you grab a hold of it and it's it's really firm, like a brand new fresh grape that's not even ripe like you got at the store, okay? It's gonna be really firm. It'll take something to squeeze it. Okay? Compared to the grape that's been in your refrigerator for three weeks that you probably should have thrown away a week ago. Now you know how

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

You know how mushy those are. Yeah. That's what a heart attack heart feels like. Okay. It'll have no muscle tone. It'll have hardly any firmness. A lot of times the pericardium sac around the heart will be cloudy. Okay. And sometimes the veins in that outer surface of the heart will be extremely dark. I'm like, they'll stand out. They'll be vividly dark. So heart attack's one of the easiest things to diagnose, and in a lot of cases birds will actually flip over and be laying on their back with their feet in the air when they die of a heart attack. So that's where the posturing thing, if people would take, that's why when people

Carey Blackmon:

send you pictures, you want a picture before they post

Jeff Mattocks:

it. Don't touch it. Just get as close as you can. Get me a really good picture. The position it dies in can tell you probably 25% of the story.

Carey Blackmon:

Okay?

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay. And, but now people think they have to get it in the right position to show you their dead chicken. You just unscrewed up everything I wanted to see, so just leave it alone. Okay. Just leave it alone.

Carey Blackmon:

What about egg drop syndrome?

Jeff Mattocks:

It's not often that you see egg drops syndrome, but and. So when birds are, out, wandering around and an egg with no shell or an egg maybe with a little bit of membrane, leathery membrane on it, or like that, it's carried by ducks. It's pretty common, with migratory ducts. And it doesn't affect them as much as it does. A chicken, right? But it can be catastrophic. You're gonna see a significant drop, like you're gonna see probably a 40 to 50% drop in egg production, and you're gonna see just piles of egg all over the place, right? And no, it's like the hand loses control of her UCT and her ability to, place the egg properly. And it just falls out our backside and just makes a mess everywhere. And again it's a virus, egg drop syndrome and hard to combat. Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

But that would be one of those things where if it was a pullet and it laid an egg that looked like that, it's not egg drop syndrome, it's just a pullet egg. And like anytime everything's not working yet.

Jeff Mattocks:

If you get one, okay, let's say you've got a 20 or 25 bird flock, right? If you get an occasional one egg with leathery membrane or something like that, okay? That's one thing, right? If you start seeing three or four or five of those in a day,

Carey Blackmon:

you got a problem.

Jeff Mattocks:

You got a problem, okay? Yeah. And it can affect puls, it can affect older birds. It doesn't, it's not specific to age whatsoever got it. Yeah. It's rare to see it, but the West Coast had a lot of it and they just didn't go public and tell anybody. That was two years ago, I had a larger flock of 20,000 birds that, got hit by EDS EDSV, it, it drop syndrome virals. Yeah. And yeah, now it's cutting into his income pretty significantly. So we were doing a whole bunch of stuff. To try and get it, and really you just increase the nutrition, you get the, you help the bird fight it off on their own, so like you're boosting the nutrition to the next level again. And again, you're trying to minimize stress. We did run some garlic in the water, some garlic tincture in the water, things like that. Yeah. But you weighed it out, and 45 days later, things got back on track and the production came back up again. I didn't hear anything more about it, but it was a thing for almost 90 days, he was losing a pile of money.

Carey Blackmon:

So that was the last one that I had on my list that I got from folks. Now I wanna talk about natural remedies. Probably the first and what I think is the most common is garlic. What all would you suggest people use garlic for?

Jeff Mattocks:

Tinctured, garlic, or even, if you're not a prepared individual and you're just, it's an emergency if you bruise up some garlic bruise, a few cloves of garlic, if. Slice it up a little bit. Let it sit in a five gallon bucket for 24 to 36 hours, you're gonna get some of the benefits of the garlic, the Allison, and the garlic. It's not gonna be as good as the garlic tincture, which, we've given that recipe away how many times, Carrie? It is in the file

Carey Blackmon:

section.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay. You made some, have you used any? Okay. On me. Okay. But garlic has been, for centuries, almost millennial, millennium garlic has been used as a nature's antibiotic. Okay. So it has that effect. I didn't know this until, not very long ago, but you remember when the Black plague, the bubonic plague went through Europe? And it was this thing. It was terrifying. Lots of people died. Yeah. People would carry a clove of garlic and a little leather sack around their neck.

Carey Blackmon:

Around their neck. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Come to find out that the off-gassing vapors of that garlic constantly going into their nostrils and mouth when they breathe was enough effect to give them a layer of protection from the plague.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. So how's that? Not only

Jeff Mattocks:

how's that for crazy, huh?

Carey Blackmon:

So it, not only will it help with vampires, but it also helps with the plague.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

And CRD or whatever else.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Yep. But, you get the most effect out of it if it's bruised.

Carey Blackmon:

Okay. Yeah. So when I made my tincture I just, I took a whole bowl. I pulled the outer skin, the flaky crap, pulled that off and put it on a cutting board, and I used a rubber mallet, bam. And my wife was like, what are you doing making a tincture? I'm bruising. I'm bruising my garlic. She said, I don't think that garlic's good anymore. I said, oh, no, I need it like this. That's exactly what I want. It'll let Allison come out. Who's Allison? I'll tell you about it later. And she just shook her head and went back to watching tv. Let's see. Brian wants to know what is the best natural treatment for external parasites?

Jeff Mattocks:

It's not a one thing, External treatment. There's not I would, you need to be running dust baths. I like wood or coal ashes. It's excellent. You don't have that. I'd mix up something for sure that has sulfur in it. But internally, I would be feeding them some garlic and some sulfur to work on it from the inside out. Right? And when you change the blood chemistry with the sulfur and the garlic, the external parasites will no longer like to feed on your chicken. Do so I would do a combination of dust baths and garlic and sulfur and the feed, but at some point. Ryan you're gonna have to do a hundred percent clean out in the nest boxes, roost, bedding, everything. And when I say a hundred percent, I'm talking like all the dust, cobwebs, you're doing a blow down from top to bottom, getting all the old dander and dust outta there. And then you're gonna go through and disinfect all that with something that'll, get rid of the mites and the lice, but. They're, once you have'em, they're a pain to get rid of and it's hard to, you almost have to move all your birds to another location while you're doing that clean out or a really nice warm spring day and, you run'em all outside and you better get busy. Yeah.'cause they're gonna want their nesting space and roosting space back.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah. So what about oregano? I know oregano is another, it's a natural antibiotic. What all would it be good for and how would you recommend using it?

Jeff Mattocks:

It's not an antibiotic, so I'm glad you said that and I'm not picking on you. It's an antimicrobial, so it will work against bacteria, but it's also a really nice antiviral. It works within the digestive tract only, so the development of using the oregano with a little bit of time and cinnamon oil. Okay. From the better companies out there, which, I promote the strong animal people, which is a subsidiary or it's part of Raco. I trust their science and I trust their way of doing it. Excellent for necrotic enteritis. Excellent for coccidiosis. Anything e coli, salmonella, anything going on in the digestive tract? So it doesn't do much, in the bloodstream it would, right? Yeah. You can't get the concentrations high enough, but somebody figured out that oregano oil contains caracol and thymol. And those are the two active ingredients in Listerine. Okay. And they're extremely great as far as antibacterial, antifungal, anti, viral. It's a great product, but I don't, I like to use all these things like garlic, oregano. Cinnamon thyme. I like to UI to have them available in my toolbox as a treatment. And when you start feeding them all the time, or when they become part of the daily routine, you can no longer use them as a treatment, right? Because the inside of that chicken has. Adapted, right? So the microbes in her gut have adapted to being fed oregano on a daily basis. So I, I like to use things like that. I'm big on using herbs for treating, but if you feed'em every day, they're no longer in the toolbox for a treatment, okay. That do not have the same effect.

Carey Blackmon:

So that. That makes it to where it's like the same reason doctors don't want to give a kid antibiotics just because you think they need them. The, if you take it and you don't need it, eventually your body will build up a resistance. And when you do need it, you're gonna be SOL. Let's see. Got a question here. It says. Yeah, will scalding interfere with the results you're gonna get when you're gonna perform a necropsy on the chicken you're gonna eat? So if he wants to do one to see what a perfectly healthy, or if that person wants to do one to see if it's gonna be perfectly healthy. As a base, if they scald the chicken first. Will that affect it?

Jeff Mattocks:

If you do a proper scald right, and your temperature's not too high and you don't leave it in there for 10 minutes, if you do your scald correctly with 1 40, 1 45 temperature, for roughly 45 to 60 seconds, no, it will not interfere with doing a necropsy. You're fine. Okay. Yeah, you're all good. It's really fast. It doesn't take long to get those, if the temperature's right, it doesn't take long on the dung, right on the skull to, to get the feathers to break loose and make'em easy for plucking. So if the skull is done right and no, it's not gonna interfere with the results. The only thing that, you know, if there was a skin lesion or something it on the surface of the bird, that would be the only thing that you're gonna throw off. But no internals, everything internally. It's still fine to do a necropsy. Got it.

Carey Blackmon:

Homestead matter says oregano oil is also amazing. Pain management for humans.

Jeff Mattocks:

I never know it for pain management.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah, me neither. But Tamara has a oh, I can't remember what it's called now. But she's got, she pain is a constant thing for her all over her body and the doctor's wanting to put her up for pain management and all this kind of stuff. And she really don't wanna do that. So I'm gonna look into this, see if I can't get her some relief'cause she has like inflammation here and there and all kinds of stuff.

Jeff Mattocks:

So you didn't try the berries that Dwayne was telling about you never heard about, you didn't hear that?

Carey Blackmon:

No. Recently, like I, she didn't always see the way I did about natural stuff until she's seen that I haven't had an antibiotic in over a year. I'll drink some stuff that tastes horrendous. That's got garlic and the stuff that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Yeah. CEG from Ron Ronco. Ronco.

Jeff Mattocks:

Roco, yeah. Raco. That's stuff. But you're not using the Rocco stuff, you're using the CEG, aren't you?

Carey Blackmon:

So I've used the CEG, but I've also used the other.

Jeff Mattocks:

Oh, you've used it Prospero?

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay.

Carey Blackmon:

I made a tincture with it and I felt really horrible and I needed to go to work and, trying the CEG right before you go hop in your truck to take off, a tablespoon of, it's not going to affect your driving skills. However, the didn't make you, the officer that pulls you off, pulls you over. Yeah, so I tried the other stuff. It's a debate which tastes worse, but two hours later I felt better.

Jeff Mattocks:

So again. See the Prosper eo, if you've got an intestinal flu, stomach virus, food poisoning, something like that. The Prosper EO is the ticket. You take a tablespoon of that. Give it 45 minutes. You should be on the right track. It, it's horrible going down. It is horrible. And it has its own burning effect, but it's because of the oregano oil.

Carey Blackmon:

And you add some cayenne, some garlic, some echinacea and more oregano in with it. Yeah. And it tastes rough. But'cause like I felt like I had. Stomach flu type stuff.

Jeff Mattocks:

Then you took the right stuff that would not be CEG,

Carey Blackmon:

and I took it a few, like an hour or so later. I almost felt like a new person by the end of the day. I did feel noticeably better yeah. Yeah. Turmeric, what was that good for? Welcome to the fourth and final part of the Poultry Health Master Class. In this episode Jeff Mattocks and Carey Blackmon complete their discussion on poultry health issues. So lets get started.

Jeff Mattocks:

That's pretty much I, okay. I don't know all the benefits of. Turmeric. Okay? Ric or turmeric, however you wanna pronounce it, doesn't matter to me, but I know that it's excellent for joint health, right? And relieving joint swelling and joint pain. Other than that I don't, I haven't studied turmeric long enough. It's not in my normal tool bag.

Carey Blackmon:

Yeah, so me neither. One of the thing, the reason it popped up is I was, I, while I was spent a ridiculous amount of time on research gait I ran into a study that talked a lot about this and it basically compared turmeric to being like ibuprofen, really good for anti-inflammatory support. It actually supports the liver, unlike ibuprofen. But really good anti-inflammatory for animals that have joint pains.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yep. Humans, animals, whatever. So yeah. Yeah.

Carey Blackmon:

Cayenne

Jeff Mattocks:

pepper. The big benefit of cayenne pepper is it's a co coadminister thing. Cayenne causes the tissue. You know that it comes in contact, like digestive tract, the gut pro ulus and all that. It'll swell, right? It'll soften and swell the tissue, right? So if you've got something like oregano going in there, or you've got other, echinacea, garlic, it allows a higher level of, it allows a much higher level of absorption Now. A large amount of the internal parasites don't like capsicum caps station, right? So they're gonna, it'll run them off. But again, it, it's not something that you want to feed all the time. There's actually a pretty good study for the Turkey folks. Anybody with turkeys? It runs off blackhead, right? So putting, putting cayenne pepper and you want the higher scoville units, but putting cayenne or hot pepper in Turkey feed works not only as a preventative and as a treatment for blackhead. In Turkeys pretty amazing actually because when you go look up blackhead, it'll tell you that there's no treatment. There's no like antibiotic or anything that, that will work against Blackhead. Yeah. Okay. But it works. So a friend of mine did the research when he was at nca. Yeah. The National Center for Appropriate Technology used to be the old atra. But

Carey Blackmon:

anyway, it's, that's where you can get real nerdy. Yeah. Let's see what else we have.

Jeff Mattocks:

Did you get that homepage that I asked you for?

Carey Blackmon:

Yes. I was fixing to pop it up Also. Homestead Matters. Can you send me like some dosage information or something like that? Just send me a PM on that on Facebook if you're on there or something. Or send me an email. Cause I'm really curious about that for my wife.

Jeff Mattocks:

Let's see here. It was poke bear. Did you? You never heard about the poke bear from Dwayne. You need to get with him on that okay. All right, folks. So earlier in the show, in the comment section, if you've never been to the Merck Vet man, Carrie put the link in for the Merck Vet Manual. I'm fixing to do it again. Okay. And this is where veterinarians go when you stump them. This is where they go to get, information, and help diagnose things. So you need to have, you need to bookmark, keep this Mark Vet manual. You need to have it at your disposal. Spend some time looking through your least favorite subjects. Things like, cocc IDs, necrotic, enteritis, CRD. You can go look at all the things that we've talked about, right? It'll tell you what to look for. It'll give you the symptoms, what it does to the bird, what you might, A lot of times they have really good pictures. For those of you like me who don't like to read, and they'll tell you if there's a treatment, management tips, all kinds of stuff. And so for the folks who come here, I'd much rather you get your information from a place like this and out there in poultry groups on social media because there's so much bad information Oh, yeah. Out there. And people just don't know what they're doing going and looking at the Merck Vet Manual can be your friend. It's nerdy, I probably go to the Merck Vet Manual three to five times a week when I'm talking to people on the phone trying to, make sure, or they want proof of what I told them, it probably is. So I go there and I get the link, or I'll copy the, the information. You send it to em, send it to him, right? It's there you go. I've been relying on the Merck Vet Manual for over 20 years. Okay. So it's a thing. It used to be a hard copy paperback that would sit on your shelf, yeah. And it was wonderful that somebody, scanned it all in and made it available this way, but you can get it either way. But

Carey Blackmon:

so I was gonna order a copy of it and I was told not to that they didn't recommend it unless you were gonna subscribe. Because apparently for vets, they have a service to where that they can pay X amount every I don't know. And every time they release a certain number of updates or update a certain amount of their information, they'll send them another copy. So I was told to download the app downloads, and you can use it on your phone. It's in the Apple store and the Google store, or bookmark the webpage because it's free. You don't have to pay nothing for it at all. And it updates whenever there is an update, whether it's a treatment or a new disease, they find, anything like that, they update it. Yep. And it's got, it's got a lot of pictures. So anyway,

Jeff Mattocks:

we like

Carey Blackmon:

pictures.

Jeff Mattocks:

It covers all species of animals. It does a really good job. I just, my, my skin crawls and the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I see people giving, the keyboard quarterbacks are given diagnosis for things and they're completely wrong. Yeah. This is where this is where I go. Okay. If I don't know, this is where I go. Okay.

Carey Blackmon:

What's really funny to me is like when you read through and you see some of the questions that people have asked and you see the ones that are way off and then, you'll type in personally, I think it's this is what I've seen in the past. This is what I've seen where, and people start chastising you like you're an idiot. And then I'll go here, find the link that my information came from, and I'll just drop it in the comments, yeah. Like, where did you pull your crap from? I actually pullet from a veterinarian manual. Yeah. I don't just, I don't blow smoke about everything. I don't mess around about my chicken. Yeah. Laura wants to know if peacocks can get blackhead.

Jeff Mattocks:

Everything that I've read says yes they can. They're closely enough related to turkeys and other types of large game foul that they can be affected by blackhead. Yes, it is possible.

Carey Blackmon:

And this comment, look, I'm right there with you. Hi. I sometimes when I really see 10 million things wrong, I will like just drop a little one liner and if that person replies and asks questions, then I'll engage with them, but. I wanna engage with nonsense. I used to, and it was stressful cause stupid people get on my nerves, so I quit as much as I can. And so yeah, but most people don't want to hear the truth. And that is a month or so ago.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, they don't. But a month or so ago, Laura messaged me and it is everybody on the duck groups think that niacin is gonna fix everything for their ducks, right? Because niacin's important for ducks. Yeah, but too much niacin is not a good

Carey Blackmon:

thing, is a set'em on fire, not a good thing.

Jeff Mattocks:

So I'm not trying to get Laura going on niacin, but the right amount of niacin is great. A deficiency can be a problem, but not everything in a duck is an niacin deficiency and running to your local grocery store to get niacin supplements is not the right answer. But anyway, that stuff, we're not going down that road.

Carey Blackmon:

Okay, so I just got one question.

Jeff Mattocks:

All right.

Carey Blackmon:

Is everything being a nice and deficiency for ducks? Kinda like everything being cocc acidosis for chickens,

Jeff Mattocks:

pretty much. Pretty much. And then, all the Turkey people automatically jumped to his blackhead. It's blackhead. I knew a lady out in Iowa who had gorgeous standard bred bronze turkeys, right? And. They had a bad wave of mosquitoes and they all got foul ps. Yeah. Okay. So their heads all started turning really dark and bumpy and all this, and before we could, before she could get us pictures to help her diagnose. Everybody said it was blackhead. She went in optimal. And she cut all their heads off and Yeah. Processed them. Why? And yeah. All right. And look, the woman was a veterinarian.

Carey Blackmon:

Okay. I have met some doctors that I just, all right, we're gonna leave it there.

Alex:

That concludes this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. We hope you'll join us next week when we start a session on poultry coop design. So until then, keep learning, keep improving and keep enjoying the birds that you love.

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