Infectious bronchitis

[CT chicken lover]

Ok. After reading posts about wrinkled eggs and infectious bronchitis I have concluded that this must be what is causing my wrinkled egg problem. It seems to be only one of the 6 hens (possibly two). So now what do I do. Can I vaccinate them to prevent it from spreading? Will it get better if I vaccinate the affected hen? Can I vaccinate them myself and if so, where can I get the vaccine? Help! I'm new to this backyard chicken thing. We've only had them for about a year.

 

[Camelot Farms]

Giving this a bump in hopes that someone more knowledgeable than me comes along with some info.

 

[kathyinmo]

Here are a few articles about IB....

http://www.afn.org/~poultry/flkman3.htm

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/206500.htm

http://www.helium.com/items/1346434-poultry-disease-infectious-bronchitis

 

[BetterHensandGardens]

I recently concluded our chickens had IB too, you can read about what I learned here: http://www.betterhensandgardens.com/2010/05/11/painful-chicken-lesson/

In our case, egg production has dropped so badly we have to start over

I'm interested in learning about vaccinating too, in our case the Golden Buffs were vaccinated as pullets but still ended up with IB.

 

[Siler]

All mine were vaccinated as well and I'm learning that my girls have this now. One 3 of them have their eggs affected and this has been happening in the past week. I've noticed every symptom. The wrinkled eggs, the sandy eggs, hole in eggs, flat egg, egg without shell, etc. All 3 hens are sexlinks from TSC, but we have 4 sexlinks. One of them is solid white and her eggs are unaffected. I have so many questions as I'm sure others do as well. Has anyone has success in getting past this without culling the flock?

 

[CT chicken lover]

After my initial post I contacted my supplier. He assured me that my chickens had been vaccinated. His suggestion was to examine anything that we had done differently. The only difference was that we had expanded their pen to include a grassy area and they had been eating fresh grass for about a week. We closed off the area for one week and waited. The "bad" eggs disappeared. We slowly re-introduced them to the grass. One hour a day, then 2 hours, etc. Have no idea why this worked, but the eggs are all fine. 6 hens -- 6 perfect eggs. Go figure.

 

[Siler]

Could it possibly be snails? After my last post too I noticed that the effected eggs seemed normal again but then 2 days ago one of the previously affected eggs is back to having the calcium bumps on them and now 1 that wasn't affected is now showing these signs. They're all healthy as can be so nothing makes sense. I noticed them eating lots of snails and boy do we have plenty. I read on here that snails give them diarrhea.