My new girls are sneezing...

[speckledegg]

How do birds get a respiratory infection in the first place? Besides from introduction from other poultry. Say I never brought a new bird on my property besides hatching my own or getting day old hatchery chicks. Is it possible for my birds to still get a respiratory infection?

 

[speckledegg]

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I'm so sorry that happened! How horrible!

 

[onthespot]

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I have read on here that there are more than 180 different viruses that affect poultry, and not all of them are a death sentence. If you want to know for sure what your birds have, take one to the state lab for a necropsy. That is the only way to know for sure. Anthing other than that is no more than a guess. The state lab, which does it for a living, cannot guess and tell you what is wrong with your bird, so how can someone else a thosand miles from you guess from just a few lines of vague description? They can't.

How can they get it? Some of the diseases are passed from generation to generation, from other birds that were infected, got over it and are carriers, or are actively sneezing at the time the eggs were laid. The chicks that hatch can be infected/carriers from hatch and it not show up until they are stressed, which being moved to a new home is very stressful for chickens. I hope it is nothing serious, but the only way to know will be to test. After that, what you do is up to you. Some keep their birds forever, some cull everything, some medicate and hope for the best. If statistics online are to be believed, some 90% of backyard flocks are infected/carriers of these various diseases. Good luck with your birds.

 

[The Sheriff]

There is a test that can be done to determine if they have any of the 7 respiratory diseases that cause a carrier state in exposed birds. The information about the test can be found here: http://zoologix.com/avian/Datasheets/PoultryRespiratoryPanel.htm

Your vet obtains a throat swab sample from one of the birds and sends it to the lab for testing. It is not cheap, about $150.00 but if you have valuable birds or ones you are emotional attached to it can give you the answer. I would advise you to keep those new birds well away from the others. I don't know how many birds you are referring to, but it would seem odd for it to be an allergen or irritant and be causing sneezing in all of them. I sneeze when I use pepper and hubby does not. That is what I am getting at. If they do have a respiratory illness that causes a carrier state, they may survive and look perfectly healthy. You won't know that they are carrying the disease until you put them in with the others and they get sick. You may have to plan in advance to either cull all your birds at that point or just close your flock to incoming or outgoing birds and deal with the illness as it surfaces.

I am sorry if I sound blunt. I hope everything works out for you.