gosh you sure are right, the birds do hide symptoms so we need to be extra watchful all the time, my parrot did get sick here in monsoon season a few times many years ago with a cold like thing , he was never sick for all the 42 years i had him , but during monsoon a few time he got this cold thing , so i called the local zoo in Douglas, they sold me an antibiotic, , and told me that all their birds & reptiles were all coming down this this cold like thing to..? , but that antibiotic only worked that year and it came back , so since i dont like drugs , i decided to feed my BURT raw garlic , he loves it any way & i also gave him some raw ginger root , and that has kept him well for the last 5 years , and thank goodness for that since we dont have any bird vets around here.! so that took care of that.Many years of "bird herding" here . . . They would rather die than look sick. When they look sick, they are almost dead, it is an emergency! The punishment of going in the house might make a hen hide symptoms even more, I suspect. Even a tame, talking bird such as my African Grey will not tell me she is sick! My hens, handled (but not as much as my parrots), usually ran a little before I could pick them up. If a bird is sick sometimes the first symptom you notice is that they are dead. That you notice the symptoms and that they last a while mean they are not fatal. Difficulty breathing, slow movement, sound like heart problems -- especially in a heavy breed in the heat. Think of a big bulldog in the summer in Phoenix.
