Any ideas what my chickens could have had?

[Mamatomany123]

About a year or so ago I posted about my chickens having some sort of respiratory thing going on. I had just got new chicks and when I reached out to the breeder I bought from she informed me her flock was MG positive. So I, along with some others here, decided my girls had MG based off of what the breeder said and off of the symptoms my girls had. Well,none of my birds died so I never sent one off to be tested. Have had a closed flock and been very strict to be sure bot to spread it. A few weeks ago a hen died. She was older and a production bird so not surprising. No symptoms of being sick. Just didn't wake up the next morning. I decided to send her off to be tested just to be sure we were dealing with MG. My vet sent her off and we got the results. She had nothing. No MG or any other respiratory illness. Absolutely nothing wrong. So any idea what they had? They havent been sick since then but every symptom fit MG

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Here's a link to your original thread.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/respiratory-infection.1448126/

It's good that the test results came back normal and no signs of MG.
Hard to know what your flock had back a year ago. Maybe it was Infectious Bronchitis which can make birds carriers for up to a year.
Speculation on my part about the IB. In the other thread, I would have though it was MG though.

 

[Mamatomany123]

@Wyorp Rock if it was IB then it wouldn't show up because it's been over a year? We also ended up with 4 chicks(had another thread on that) and they are now laying and have never shown any symptoms of MG. I know it's possible for new chickens to not show symptoms but with how bad my girls got I was expecting something.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

IB is a virus. My understanding is that it doesn't make birds carriers for life. It might or might not be detected in testing depending on how long ago the birds had it.

I'm trying to glance back at your other thread, you treated with Tylan and they improved, so that would indicate they had some type of bacterial infection instead of a virus...
What a puzzle!

Let's tag in @Eggcessive she helped with your other thread too.

It's possible they had IB with secondary bacterial infection.

 

[Mamatomany123]

@Wyorp Rock at the time I was feeding fermented feed. Could they possibly have gotten a bacterial infection if I did something wrong with the feed? That's the only new thing I could think of (other than the new chicks) that I did at the time. I stopped feeding fermented feed when they got sick because I was having to force feed them and it was just easier to make a quick mash.after I wastreating so many ch8ckens so often I was just too tired to ferment more feed and never went back.

 

[dawg53]

It doesnt necessarily have to be a respiratory disease to kill a chicken. It couldve been heart failure/heart valve gone bad or some other organ failure.
Probable cause of death shouldve been noted in the necropsy results.

 

[Mamatomany123]

@dawg53 it may have. My vet is going to email me the results but he knew I was Mainly wondering about if my flock was a carrier for MG so he just shot me a quick text that no respiratory diseases showed up. Se had a huge snow storm coming in so everyone was pretty busy. I'm not too worried about how she died. She was a red sexlink that was over 8 yrs old. I probably got more time with her than I should have.

 

[Eggcessive]

It is good news that the hen that was necropsied did not test positive for mycoplasma. IB can look similar to MG and there are other viruses as well. IB testing would be negative on the hen at this point a year later even if she had that. I would probably just relax and not worry anymore about MG, unless you see symptoms again.

 

[Mamatomany123]

@Eggcessive they have not had any symptoms since the first outbreak. I am pretty relieved that it's not MG.