My red ranger chicks are sick, I think bronchitis, need advice.

[coloradoalice]

I have 25 Red Rangers, straight run, 2.5 weeks old. I believe they have bronchitis, or at least the start of it. Unfortunately two of my layers had it, I'm not sure where they picked it up but I didn't realize the danger of respiratory illness in chickens so I did not cull them soon enough, it honestly did not occur to me this could spread to where the chicks are brooding, there was no contact between the layers and these chicks except indirectly through me giving care. I feel terrible now, upon observation at least 8 chicks are sneezing and shaking their heads and from what I've read there is no way to keep them from all getting it. I am supporting them with warmth and electrolytes/vitamins and VetRX.

I guess my main question is what are the chances any of these birds will be healthy for slaughter? From what I've read I can expect to lose anywhere from 20-60 percent of my flock. Should birds that had bronchitis be consumed? I've also read that this can hang on for quite a long time, so it seems there is a fairly good chance they will still be sick when it is time to be processed and obviously I cannot bring sick birds to the processor.

Should we call this a loss? I just feel sick about the whole thing.

 

[mnferalkitty]

geez sorry your chickens are sick, I went through a similar thing last year. The most important thing I learned was that chickens don't just get what we think of as colds but they get diseases, theres no such thing as a chicken cold so it is a disease. your state should have a poultry testing place where they can do a necropsy and tell you what it is

 

[coloradoalice]

I'm 99% sure it's infecteous bronchitis which is one of the more common respiratory diseases in chickens. I had 2 adult layers that I am convinced had it, they both had long term sneezing, wheezing, congested breathing and then their egg shells got weird. We culled them this week but obviously it was too late, the rest of my laying flock has been exposed which I'm not as worried about because they are younger healthier birds, it was my two oldest layers that were ill. Once I am sure everyone is healthy and it has passed I will vaccinate for it but it's probably pointless now as my entire flock is most likely carriers.

Mostly now I'm just trying to figure out how to handle the red rangers as they are being raised for meat and honestly I don't want to put anymore into them if they are not going to be healthy to slaughter. I was really hoping someone would have experience with IB in a meat flock.

I did find a post on another thread here where chickens had IB and supposedly the vet in that situation said they were ok to eat. I'm just hoping some more people will chime in who have experienced this and can share how they handled it and what their outcome was with meat birds.

 

[Folly's place]

I think that getting a necropsy at the state lab or the university, where ever you can get expert help in your state, would be a really good idea. I'm a small animal veterinarian, and have discussed problems with Dr. Fulton, the expert at Michigan State, several times. Then the actual pathology results from the PM aren't at all what we expected! I've felt that the money was well spent. When you have a diagnosis, you can have a plan. Mary

 

[coloradoalice]

The chicks are still just sneezy. Not ill acting at all. Eating ok, drinking fine, growing fine. We are taking a wait and see approach at the moment. No one has died yet, or even seems like they are going to. I'm just concerned that the sneezing will escalate into what my laying hens had which was very chesty and caused very loud breathing and lots of sneezing. One of my younger laying hens is also sneezing and honking a bit but given her age I'm not going to cull her unless she gets as bad as the other two got. Honestly though, my laying hens that were sick also didn't act very ill. They sneezed and coughed but they also ran around like normal, ate fine, and laid eggs regularly. We mainly culled them because we knew they are older and I was hoping to stop the spread of whatever they had.

This whole situation has caused me a lot of worry, I will be just sick if it ends up we start losing the rangers after putting a few more weeks of feed and work into them. Time will tell though. They are awfully cute little chickies.

 

[Erica]

Hi coloradoalice,

I hope you don't mind if I say that it doesn't sound completely like IB. I had IB confirmed in my flock a few years ago, and while there are similarities to your description, the main thing to note is that IB goes through the flock very quickly, and is also fairly quick to pass (my whole flock had got it and recovered within 2 weeks). By contrast mycoplasma gallisepticum (for instance) can be very slow moving and will tend to linger a long time (e.g. 4-6 weeks). Wrinkly eggshells are common with IB but are also possible with other conditions, so they're not necessarily diagnostic. Watery albumin is something else to put on the IB side of things, but as others have suggested, nothing is squared away until you have a necropsy.

I can't recommend that you eat diseased birds, but I follow a general rule of thumb: if it looks healthy, and the organs don't look damaged, the meat is probably fine. Proper cautions (gloves, mask) apply with some diseases so aren't a bad idea if you're unsure. I've had to destroy two flocks; one for carrying IB and one for carrying mycoplasma gallisepticum. Both times I took reasonable precautions while dispatching, did a loose unofficial post mortem (that is, as a layperson with reasonable familiarity I had a good look at the meat/organs), and anything dubious I buried deeply and didn't use.

best wishes
Erica

 

[coloradoalice]

Thank you Erica! I'm actually wondering if it's IB too. It's so hard to tell without getting a vet involved and since outcome doesn't change with a diagnosis I'm not really wanting to put a bunch of vetting into 25 birds.

I do wonder what my two older girls had, they sounded terrible by their last day. And the sneezing chicks have me concerned but they are running around and scratching and I haven't lost once chick, none of them are even ill looking. I still have one layer who is sneezing and honking but the other adults seem fine. I also have 9 pullets and they are totally fine, no sneezing among them.

At this point we'll just see where it goes. The day I posted this the chicks were a bit slow, a lot of them were sneezing and they were a bit off their feed. As of today they are all very well, running around like little nuts and they have definitely upped their feed consumption. I think adding back in the vitamin electrolyte in their water was a very good decision, they have only improved since i did that. I'm not sure if the VetRX has helped but since they are doing better I'm going to keep dosing them with that too.

I'll keep this updated. They are 3 weeks tomorrow so we have about 6-8 more weeks til we will slaughter them. Hopefully they will all be good and healthy and this will have just been a silly panic on my part.

 

[coloradoalice]

Well everything is still fine. There is still some sneezing but they are all still eating and drinking and acting normal. I think it's safe to say they do not have whatever my laying hens had which is a relief. So we keep waiting. I'm really hoping to get these guy outside this weekend, they are getting to be such stinky birds. They were 3 weeks yesterday and have a lot of feathers but it gets cold at night here (6500 in Colorado) so I don't know if they could take it quite yet, especially if they do have some sort of bug. I guess we'll just wait and see.

 

[coloradoalice]

As of this morning we have bloody water poo. I've done a total change over of bedding and have them on Corrid which the feed store recommended. I don't think this is related to the sneezing at all, just my bad luck.

This first batch of meaties is definitely giving me a run for my money. This is way more stressful than any of my egg chickens.

 

[coloradoalice]

One died last night.