Flock is sneezing and coughing

[CedarRanch]

Hi everyone. This is my first post here. A couple of months ago I picked up new hens from a local farm. After showing no signs during the quarantine period I introduced them to my original, healthy flock. It was a 2 week quarantine and those hens still have no symptoms. However now my original flock is dealing with a long term cough and sneeze. Symptoms first showed up in my rooster who is about 6 months old. Then the other hens started showing symptoms. Symptoms are a cough/sneeze, some head shaking, and during the first week there was some gurgling/crackling noises. When symptoms first appeared about a month ago, we had been getting substantial amounts of rain, air quality was poor, and mold was up. I chalked it to the environment. But the cough is still happening in a few hens. There is no facial swelling, no facial leaking, no sores. Food and water input have remained unchanged. They’re all still foraging, mating, and laying eggs as well. Energy levels don’t seem to be down at all. They all seem happy and healthy expect for the cough and head shaking.
Also, I do have wood shavings in my coop, it doesn’t seem to dusty, but when I put a camera in the coop in the morning you could see quite a bit of dust floating around.
Any advice? Suggestions? Thoughts on what this could be?

 

[Eggcessive]

It would be hard to know unless you lose a chicken and could have one tested and a necropsy done. Infectious bronchitis is a virus that could sneezing and spread through the flock from a carrier. It is the most common of respiratory diseases in chickens. Chicken remain carriers from 5 months up to a year. I think my chickens once got it from wild birds. They all eventually got it, and got well in about 3 weeks. But my new pullets got it a few months later after all recovered. I stopped hatching or adding chicks for a year, and never had a case again.

It is good that the new chickens are not getting sick, but they might have been non-symptomatic carriers. Hard to know. If you ever lose a chicken, your state vet can do a necropsy with testing for respiratory diseases, so that is a good way to know what is going through the flock. What state are you in? Here is a list of state vets to contact for details about a necropsy:
https://www.metzerfarms.com/poultry-labs.html