I have a question and didn't really know what category to put it in, so here it is: My wife and I are divorcing and have been fighting for custody of our two boys, ages 5 and 8. Today I let my wife pack some of her things in my house while we left her alone for 3 hours. When she was finished, she complained of a strong odor of chicken dander in the house, and advised me to increase my air filtration system's output. She said chicken dander can spread diseases. When we got home I noted no chicken odor in the house, and neither did the boys. Our coop and run is under the deck on the SE (normally downwind) corner of the house. The wall of the coop is about 4' from the wall of the house. My house is conventional wood-frame construction with a daylight basement, which the coop is next to. We have good windows, although I usually open some of the upstairs windows at night. The bottom of the upstairs windows are at least 3' above the top of the coop, which is under a wood deck with approximately 1/8" spacings between the boards. We have 12 pullets and one rooster. The pullets just started laying about 3 weeks ago. Our climate is very hot and dry right now - their droppings usually are bone dry in a day. Their run is 220 SF and the coop is 48 SF. I run one or to large air purifiers with UV and ozone in the house nearly continuously. My question is: is my wife trying to pull a red herring here to try to limit my future custody, based on poor air quality, or does she have a valid concern? If her concern is valid is there anything I can do besides moving the coop and run or getting rid of the chickens to negate her argument?
