Urgent Reminder-PLEASE Quarantine Newly Acquired Birds!

[Fancie]

so how far away from my other chickens should the quarantine pen be? Someone said not in the same air space?? The only place left would be my garage.. and can't imagine building a large chicken cage keeping adult chickens in the garage!! How big should this pen be?? If outdoors no problem building another coop on the other side of the yard.


Should I put birds in quarantine after a bird show??

 

[speckledhen]

I used a dog kennel/crate in my bsmt to quarantine the first bird and only bird I've ever bought. And you need to practice good biosecurity in washing hands, not wearing the same clothes to deal with the quarantined birds that you wear to your flock.

Yes, quarantine is a good practice after a show.

 

[AHappychick]

dont know if you have an answer for this but I cant find it anywhere. If you have forced air heat wouldnt that be sharing the same air space? even if the quarentine chicken was in the basement and other chicks were in a brooder in a different room the same home?

 

[speckledhen]

Well, I never thought about it. I sort of doubt it would be a big issue, but I dont have heat in my bsmt, so it wasn't an issue for me personally. You have to do the best you can with your situation.

 

[MoodyChicken]

I once had the pleasure of purchasing a bird from a breeder. It got sick shortly after I brought it home and it turns out that it had an UNKNOWN disease (as in it's never been encountered before!). Fortunately I did isolate the bird so the mystery illness could not enter my flock. But what a terrible situation. Isolating new birds is so important!

 

[asher]

Cyn ~ do you still have a closed or mostly closed flock now? I am considering doing this, to some extent. No grown/started birds, at least. We've done this for months now, unintentionally and our birds have been so healthy for longer than I remember. It HAS TO BE from not bringing in various birds and germs from other homes. It's too coincidental otherwise.

Thankfully, I can just hatch what I need/want from our birds for a while and do just fine with adding to the flock that way, but curious how you add more lines once you've bred all the lines you can without cross breeding in your own flock.

Did anyone of this make sense?

 

[sweet_peeps]

How would you know if your chickens were carriers of something?

And if your chickens were carriers of something and they hatched out a couple eggs of their own, would the chicks get sick or be carriers of whatever themselves?

What about buying a couple hatchery chicks from the feed store.
Would they eventually become sick or carriers?

This is a very interesting thread.

 

[MoodyChicken]

Quote:
Blood test or wait and see if apparently healthy birds suddenly become sick. Most carrier disease do not transmit through the egg, but a few do, Lymphoid Leukosis to name one.

If you introduce any new birds into a carrier flock, they will either become sick or carriers too.

 

[speckledhen]

Cindy, to answer your question, I do have what I consider a closed flock. Even with hatching eggs, I have only gotten those from some of our very established, long time members and breeders I am very certain of and only on a few occasions.

Only Hawkeye and one gift pullet from a good friend (hatched from a breeder's eggs) have ever been added as more than day old chicks. I've gotten chicks from Ideal but not in a long time. I do not buy birds at all. And people must disinfect when they come here. Nothing is perfect, but I am much more cautious than most and I hope it serves me well. It has so far, anyway. I plan to never buy started birds, ever, no matter who they're from.

 

[newtothecoop]

Quote:
We are new to raising chickens and just got three hens and a rooster from someone who had too many. He did tell us when he gave them to us that they had a little fungus infection that could be treated. Since these are the first chickens we got, we did not have to worry about them infecting any other chickens. You will have to excuse my language as I don't know all the lingo for chickens yet. We believe the infection to be favus. However, the more I read about what they have I am wondering if we made a mistake. The rooster is the worst with about a dime size patch on each side of his face on the wattles. The hens just have a small dot on theirs but they don't have much bare skin to begin with. Do you think we should treat this with something like lotrimine? There really isn't much out there to read on it. Other than to scare my husband to want to give them back. We have a 5 year old daughter and he is afraid it will affect her or the eggs will be affected. We have not allowed her to touch the chickens or rooster yet. Partly because they are just getting settled into their new home and partly until we find out exactly what we are dealing with. We are taking the normal sanitary precautions with shoes and boots. They haven't layed any eggs yet, probably from teh stress of the move, plus they are still kind of young. You mentioned that you had a rooster that you treated for favus. How did you do it and is it worth it or should we just get rid of them, bleach the coop and wait to get more chickens or hatch our own eggs? We have only had them for a week but they are kind of growing on me, they are starting to come over when we go out and call for them.