Urgent Reminder-PLEASE Quarantine Newly Acquired Birds!

speckledhen

Intentional Solitude
Premium Feather Member
17 Years
Feb 3, 2007
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Blue Ridge Mtns. of North Georgia
I've seen so many people who have bought new birds and because they seem healthy, immediately throw them in with their flock or put them in a pen where there can be some contact. You MUST quarantine newly purchased birds unless you have bought chicks directly from a hatchery. Disease can take up to a month to show up in a seemingly healthy chicken. Many, many of these common diseases make a chicken a carrier for life and if your flock gets it, they become carriers for life. Some are even reportable to the state and the birds must be destroyed in some cases.
Some sellers are not aware their birds are ill and some are just plain unscrupulous and don't care. I have only purchased ONE grown bird and he was in quarantine for over a month, while I consulted experts about various things. At the very least, he did have favus, a fungal infection on his comb and face and lice. I treated both and he had neither by the time he joined my flock, but it was very stressful and I'll probably never buy adult birds again. This can cause such pain and devastation, that I really wanted to reiterate this point to all my BYC family.
 
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I may be getting 18 adult chickens, mixed breeds, pullets and roos. My cousin told me that she has been the Chicken Care Giver for 4 years and is ready for someone else to take over. She said 4 years ago, it was a family project, that has long since worn off and now she can't get anyone to even go collect the eggs.

I'm not ready for that many just yet, but we are starting to build a larger coop and will probably be ready in late August.

She has never had any problems with her flock - What should I look for as far as contagious illness etc... We don't have the money to have a vet check them out, we will have to be the ones watching them while they are quarantined from my other 9 chickens.
 
The main things to look for are lice, mites, breathing problems, discharges from eyes or nares(nostrils), fungus type patches on the combs and wattles, raised scales on the legs, indicating scaly leg mites, etc. I certainly understand not having money for them to be vet-checked, and truthfully, most vets know nothing about chickens anyway, in my experience and that of others on this forum.
This is so critical, this quarantine period. It will save you having to possibly cull your entire flock due to infectious disease being brought in. And you may ask what to do if you see any symptoms in the quarantined birds after the month is over? I can only tell you what I would have done with Hawkeye if he had had anything contagious other than a fungus that could be fixed. I would have put him down. He came very close, too. What I thought at first glance to be canker in his throat turned out to be just a wad of feed on the wall of the throat. He got a clean bill of health and has been a wonderful addition to my flock, but it could just as easily gone the other way. It's harsh, but it's reality. Keeping that one bird would never have been worth risking my entire healthy flock.
 
We're looking into getting a few adult birds to add to our flock, and I really appreciate this reminder. Once it's called to mind, it seems pretty obvious, but I'm sure it's an easy thing to forget- until your flock comes down with a disease, that is.

Thanks for the reminder!
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I am going to be getting 10 chicks next week from a hatchery, so are they okay to put with my chicks i hatched? I may be also buying some chicks from a farm here in Oregon, they haven't hatched yet, will these chicks need to be quarntined
 
Well, you shouldn't have any problems with the chicks from the hatchery and as long as the chicks you get from the farmer were incubator hatched, they should be fine. There is a much lower risk from egg born diseases than from chicks exposed to adults. I once got a pair of chicks from under a broody and they were INFESTED with lice.... Poultry dust, poultry dust, poultry dust... took forever to get rid of the problem since I gave the two chicks to a broody and she got them too!
 
Thank you SpeckledHen for the reminder. I would appreciate it if the mods would take notice and sticky this to the appropriate forum as a reminder to us "older" but not yet wiser chickholicks but especially for newbies to see everytime that forum comes up. These are words of wisdom we all need to be reminded of.

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