Afraid I did a dumb thing...

[rcentner]

Quote:
That is why quarantine has limited utility - IMHO. Often, the new birds are carriers and will look just great. Illness comes later. I believe that you should get the new birds as far away from your existing flock - ASAP. If I was in your shoes, I would try to beg or borrow a shed of some sort and house these newbies on the other side of the property.

I have been on BYC for awhile now and I am seeing a pattern: People get all excited about chickens & want more, more, more. Then, months after a new, enthusiastic BYCer appears on the forum, said Enthuser brings sad report of illness obtained at swapmeet or from Craigslist birds. It is sad. I am not writing this in order to rip on the OP. I am just saying that as a group, **WE** do this!!!! We do this and it is not too smart. We are like a bunch of kids that took the sex ed class and decide to do it w/o protection anyway.

so true, beware of craigslist! I have seen way too many adds, gone to look at chickens and turned around the minute I saw what the property looked like. You can often tell how the chickens are kept before you even step foot in the persons yard. If you turn away before seeing the uncared for chickens you will save yourself the guilt of not "rescuing" them. On the other hand, there are some real decent people who love their chickens on craigslist too.

 

[Rosechuk]

Thanks for all the information and advice everyone. Jeez, I know I screwed up and I am guilty of EXACTLY the behavior that ChickenMaven is talking about. I was just too excited! I have been telling myself to take things slowly, especially with winter coming on, but these birds seemed like a good plan. If I screw up, I guess this is all part of my learning experience so that I can give the same advice you all are giving me to others down the road.

My plan with these new birds was to replace the layers of my old flock with these, hopefully by spring so that we have young layers. I was thinking that I would keep the older ones around as long as they were producing well enough, and then I would save them for the stew pot.

I am going to watch the old birds closely. See what happens. I do have another barn that I could put the chickens in if that is really necessary, but it is not really set up for chickens or anything, and there is a lot of junk to clear out of there!

I like the idea of the necropsy...if this happens again, I will definitely do that. I think that I heard that it is free at Penn State, but of course that is a bit of a drive.

As for the LT, I don't think that is the problem. I read that they symptoms are:

conjunctivitis, watery eyes and swollen orbital sinuses.
coughing, sneezing, extended neck, laboured, breathing, wheezing and head shaking.
bloody exudate on the walls of cages or pens from severe cases.

This hen didn't really have any of that. I never saw her cough over the couple weeks she was acting "slow". She just was slow and mopey and hunched down. I never saw any watery eyes or sinuse problems or coughing. All the nasty stuff just happened all at once yesterday. I don't know, but I will keep and eye out for these symptoms in the other birds.

 

[Rosechuk]

From reading on this site, it sounds to me like the closest thing fitting the symptoms of what I saw was an impacted crop. If so, I am glad about that it was not something contagious brought in from the new chickens.