Brahma sneezes

[Nanili]

My two week old brahma chick is lightly sneezing from time to time. What should I do?

 

[Relynn]

Do you have pine shavings in your box? If you have the ones from tractor supply that are not kiln dried, it can be having an allergic reaction. My first set of 6 would sniffle, and the smell was just too strong when I changed it to some nice kiln dried stuff from my local feed store the sniffles stopped.

 

[ticketism]

^^ This can happen with straw/hay as well if it's a smaller area and/or it doesn't get changed enough. Bedding breaks down, gets scratched at, pooped on, dirt brought up into it from your birds, etc, and it can start getting quite dusty which will irritate the birds' respiratory systems, which can be the cause of the sneezing. Also if there's any strong smells it's probably going to be irritating to them as well. You could try giving the coop a good clean out, changing their bedding to something else, checking the coop is made of the right kind of material (as some woods and treatments have oils/vapours/chemicals that aren't good for them), or making sure no one is smoking near the flock. Or, they could've just found a particularly dusty spot to dig in and dustbathed up some sniffles, hehe.

 

[Nanili]

Do you have pine shavings in your box? If you have the ones from tractor supply that are not kiln dried, it can be having an allergic reaction. My first set of 6 would sniffle, and the smell was just too strong when I changed it to some nice kiln dried stuff from my local feed store the sniffles stopped.

Pine shavings are from our local feed store. Not sure if they are kiln dried... It seems like only one of my nine chicks is affected. She doesn't have any symptoms other than a light sneeze sporadically. We did put some wood ash in the brooder, to allow them to dust bathe, but it was too dusty, so now we are just using untreated sod from outside for them to peck and bathe in.

 

[Nanili]

^^ This can happen with straw/hay as well if it's a smaller area and/or it doesn't get changed enough. Bedding breaks down, gets scratched at, pooped on, dirt brought up into it from your birds, etc, and it can start getting quite dusty which will irritate the birds' respiratory systems, which can be the cause of the sneezing. Also if there's any strong smells it's probably going to be irritating to them as well. You could try giving the coop a good clean out, changing their bedding to something else, checking the coop is made of the right kind of material (as some woods and treatments have oils/vapours/chemicals that aren't good for them), or making sure no one is smoking near the flock. Or, they could've just found a particularly dusty spot to dig in and dustbathed up some sniffles, hehe.

Thanks! Yes, I think she may have gotten the fine particle wood ash in her beak, before we realized it wasn't right and now we use sod from outside.