You don't quarantine chicks, do you?

[buckabucka]

I know if I purchase adult birds I should quarantine them and make sure they are free of disease before I integrate them with my flock.

In April, I am planning my first hatch of chicks from my existing flock. I am also picking up a few chicks at a feed store around the hatch date, and there is a possibility I may be getting a few chicks from a breeder within that same week.
I planned to put all these chicks together in the brooder.

Is it okay to mix all these chicks from different sources?

 

[paddock36]

That's a good question. I have already had chicks

and put other new chicks in with them, but I've never really thought about it.

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

If you are getting day olds, then by the time you have brooded them, you have essentially quarantined them as well. I wouldn't worry to much unless they have been taken from a broody hen. It would be the contact with adult chicken poop that you would be most concerned with.

 

[gryeyes]

There shouldn't be any problem with mixing chicks from different sources, as they haven't lived long enough to build up immunities to much of anything and be carriers. If they were under a broody hen, they MIGHT have mites, but that's easy enough to check and treat.

 

[speckledhen]

It depends. Just ask someone here on BYC whose son was given a week-old chick that caused her entire flock to come down with Coryza. If they came direct from the hatchery to the feed store and that store cleans their brooders between batches, I think quarantine might be skipped, but if the store gets the birds from local folks, quarantine is essential. If you are brooding them away from adults, then they are, in effect, quarantined.

Things like Mycoplasmosis/CRD can be passed down through the egg to the chick so they can be born carriers, essentially.