Re: Pullets Sneeze/cough

From: Unicorn (SomeOne_at_Somewhere.net)
Date: 07/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:19:41 GMT

"Tapper" <OldNO-SPAMGods@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:867Oc.18964$iK.14111@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Hello all! It's nice to be back. I've had endless ISP problems. Hope
all
> are well. Here's my latest news:
>
> So... I was down to 2 hens and 7 ducks and suffering from "empty coop"
> syndrome, but because of my work schedule I couldn't buy chicks and brood
> them properly: I needed older birds. I saw an ad in the paper from a
local
> horse farm who was raising poultry for auction. It was just a few hours
> before the auction, so I zipped over and bought 10 pullets, a cockrel and
> three slightly older hens. I didn't have time to disinfect my coop
before
> I brought them home, but I did a bit of a clean out while they were in
the
> car, and disinfected all waterers, feeders, nests, etc. Today is bright
> and sunny and I'm about to do a thourough hose out/disinfect of
everything.
> A friend of mine from Ireland said that her mother always spread garden
lime
> on the floors and in the nestboxes. Is this OK?
>
> The horse farm was relatively clean; there were 200+ birds (about 3 months
> old) in each stable. They were climbing all over each other, but no
> pecking. Their combs were so pale! I don't think they had ever been in
the
> sun. He also had some older birds, maybe 7 months old. The older ones
> were raised for a petting zoo and had just been returned to him. All of
the
> birds I took seemed healthy, except one of the older birds had scaly legs.
> I felt sorry for her; she'd had the tip of her beak removed (not too much,
> just the hook), so I took her. All of the birds that I rejected from the
> petting zoo were missing one or more toes.
>
> I segregated the new birds for two weeks to make sure they were healthy.
> Everyone seemed fine.
>
> One irritating thing was that they seemed to be a family of egg-eaters.
> Once they were integrated they cleaned out one of my nesting duck's nests!
> And they'd lay and eat the egg right then. I bought some eggs, boiled
them
> and fed it to them, and the egg eating slowed down, so I decided it was a
> nutrition issue. I put out oyster shells, fed them cottage cheese and
> switched to a different brand of feed, and now the egg eating seems to
have
> stopped.
>
>
> Anyhoo, now it's been about 5 weeks and some of them have developed a wet
> cough and sneeze. How worried should I be about this rattling cough?
> Maybe they have an allergy or something, or they're just still adjusting
to
> a free range environment. I've been giving them extra fruit and greens
and
> otherwise they are happy and healthy.

Could be anything. Or nothing.
If they have never been with mature birds, there is a good chance that their
imunity is deficient. Chicks get their immunity through eating the other
older birds poo.

I might also pay to give them a vitamin D supplement, although after 5 weeks
in the sun, a deficiency is less likely than when you got them.

>
> Sorry this was so long!
>
> --Pat
>
>