Just a little sneeze

It had to happen eventually.  If raising livestock was simple and nothing ever went wrong, everyone would do it.

Last night I was flipping the litter in the run where the meat birds, the 8 week old pullets, and the one random rare chick were living.  With 29 birds in one place, maintenance was a twice daily affair.  But it was almost over, the meat coop was done and the birds were going to move into their luxurious new home.  I heard a weird noise.  Took me a couple seconds to figure it out.  A chick sneezed.  Then I heard it from another spot.  Two chicks were sneezing.  They were both fine, running around with the rest, so I didn't think too much about it.  I was tossing hay and straw around, poor things probably got a beak full of dust.

This morning I had to catch all 25 meat birds to get them moved.  This meant that I got a chance to give every bird a hands on check.  Two of them sounded congested when I was carrying them.  A third sneezed.  After the meat birds were moved, I heard the rare chick sneeze.  Since the pullets had rejected him and he was standing all alone with the night closing in, he got scooped up and moved in with the meat birds.  He sounded congested once I put my ear up to him.

I went online, looking to see how to treat a head cold in a chicken.  Turns out chickens don't get head colds.  They get very dangerous viral infections that are contagious as hell.  Like, 100% contagious in the case of infectious bronchitis, which is the one that is most common and matches our symptoms.

Damn it all to hell.

I'm trying to not panic, but the information isn't very reassuring.  Viruses have this funny way of not really going away, making the chickens 'carriers' for life.  That means a closed flock at the very best, having to cull and start over at the worst.  I'm still crossing my fingers that this is bacterial or environmental.  They're no longer on hay or straw, so that should decrease the dust.  But congested breathing doesn't come from dust . . .

If they sound worse in the morning, one of them is going in for a blood test to get an ID on what we're dealing with.  Then I can see if we've got a case of fall colds or some very ugly decisions to make.