Meat Birds..making a sneezing,coughing noise!!!

[Valley Girl]

This is our third year raising meat birds and this is the first time that we've heard them doing this.Is it possible that the strong smell can cause this? We just cleaned the brooder out on Saturday and it is strong already......
They are two weeks old.

 

[4-H chicken mom]

How many do you have and how big is the area they are in? It is possible that a high ammonia smell can cause respiratory problems. Meat chickens produced a lot of waste. All they do is eat and poop, eat and poop. If there are too many meat birds in a small space, it can create a big mess. They do require more cleaning.

 

[Valley Girl]

Hi 4-H chicken mom,
We have 197 meat birds and the brooder is 9 feet by 7 feet.....and it was extended to that just after one week.We had 172 last year and we didn't have any problems I guess 25 more birds is making a difference!!

 

[willheveland]

I never have raised that many at one time.But I think I know the sound you are talking about.I feed a grower mash and when they really get into it I think they almost gag themselves they gorge so much.I would guess it is not a sickness unless it worstens.Are they in the flappy wing stage and what do you use for bedding?Is there alot of dust in there? Will

 

[ronshoney]

From what I read they recommended 1/2 sq. ft. per meat bird in the brooder. Your brooder is 63 sq. ft. and for the amount of birds you have it should be at least 98.5 sq. ft.

 

[Valley Girl]

Thanks so much for your responses!We have the allowable amount which is 200 we grow them for ourselves and the rest are spoken for.Hubby set a waterer on one and the other two just died.Will,it seems to be after they eat that this happens,we just bumped them up to a grower crumble that is a bit more coarse,what a relief that would be if it's the feed.
This has never happened before.After I posted last night,I went out and my hubby had the brooder extended out,I don't know the exact measurements but he added at least another 6 feet to it ronshoney,by this time next week it will be twice that size.......they seemed a lot more content this morning
I wish I had known about this forum the first two years we were growing!!!

 

[MammaHen]

Hi Valleygirl. Not that I have the slightest clue what I'm talking about, but how's your ventilation and what sort of climate are you in? Why I'm asking is that mine were also doing the sneezing thing and although it wasn't a huge problem I had severe odour problems too. I put in fans facing the ceilings and this brought the warm air down to absorb the moisture from the litter and also get the air moving and hopefully the ammonia out. The sneezing has stopped, the chickens smell like hugo boss and mommy is a happy camper....oh and I changed my litter - its now small chips of pine bark. Good adsorbancy. Good luck.

 

[Valley Girl]

Hi Mammahen,Thanks for your input,the ventilations isn't all that great right now but it is better.I think it was a combination of a few things but making the brooder bigger helped a lot.........there's a lot of pooping going on!!!
We just need to clean it more often.They aren't making that noise anymore and we went back to the finer feed for a bit.
I can't believe how much they have grown in this last week!! They'll be using the whole coop by next week.........and soon be going outside!! Our nights are still a bit cool but the daytime is warming up nicely.