Hen keeps coughing or sneezing.

[aoxa]

"Studies of laboratory animals have shown fairly dramatic changes in liver enzymes on animals housed on cedar bedding."


I once did an extensive lit search on the effects of cedar on animals housed on cedar shavings.  There are 3 issues: 1. the inhalation of volatile compounds emitted from the wood, and 2. the inhalation of actual wood particles. 3. Ingestion of wood particles.


The study showing changes in liver enzymes involved putting a plastic container over the animal (mice were used) to be sure it inhaled as much of the volatile compounds as possible.  This would be  a much higher level of exposure that a chicken would get when housed under normal conditions, in a coop with decent ventilation.  Further, if the chicken has access to a run or yard without cedar shavings, they are not spending all their time on the cedar shavings.


Inhalation of large amounts of actual wood particles from any tree species is a known occupation hazard for sawmill workers, who work in clouds of sawdust.  It can cause asthma and cancer.  Western red cedar is the worst, because it has more plicatic acid, a known lung irritant, than other woods.  But a chicken isn't exposed to quite so much dust as a mill worker, and no one has actually done a controlled study on whether housing chickens on cedar shavings can give them asthma or cancer.  We do know that lots of people do house them on it, and report no ill effects.


Ingestion of cedar:  This study was done by force feeding large quantities of concentrated cedar oils to pregnant mice, and showed an increased risk of various deformities and maybe cancers in their offspring.  It's extremely unlikely that a chicken housed on cedar shavings would ever ingest enough cedar to cause these problems.


Bottom line: An animal needs to ingest or inhale lots of cedar to get sick.  Unless your chickens are housed on cedar shavings 24 hrs a day, with poor ventilation, I doubt that's the cause of the problems.  They do get a lot of contagious upper respiratory illness, just like people do, and I'd put my money on that.  Hopefully, this too shall pass.

I was trying to find these studies, but didn't come up with much.

I do find a difference between large chips and small chips. I once got shavings from a mill - and they were so dusty they created a lot of sneezing amongst my chicks. Changing it out proved helpful.

Dust can really cause issues.

 

[janinepeters]

You have to have access to an academic search engine to find the actual studies. Abstracts of some might come up on google scholar, and on plain old google, all you get is predigested summaries, and perfunctory referencing of other people's summaires...i.e., 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th...hand information. The results of the studies have therefore been incredibly misinterpreted.

 

[Suzierd]

I would get rid of that cedar, straw and hay will mold easy when it gets wet which can also cause problems.

 

[Stef82]

Sorry, It's Pine. I thought I was using cedar, but in fact I'm using Pine. I checked on her today, and she seems to be much better. She just sneezes every now and then instead of every 5 minutes.