Mixing birds

[onpoint]

I am looking for information from you experts out there about combining flight birds from two different batches or flocks. Here's the scenario; mature birds from farm A that have never appeared sick in any way, are transferred to and put in with mature birds on farm B. About 4 days later, birds in the combined flock start dying until almost all birds are dead. What might have caused this? Is there something that farm A or B should have done? Should the birds at farm A have been medicated before the transfer? Should the birds from farm A have been isolated at farm B and medicated before they were mixed with the birds at farmB or maybe not mixed at all? Is this a common thing to happen in this type of situation? Both batches of birds were healthy before the mix. There are more birds still at farm A and they are still perfectly healthy. Please let me know what you think, I am very upset about the outcome of this. Thanks for your help.

[alan12]

learn like i did, and dont bring in any new birds from other farms...alan

[derk1]

wow Alan,
you must like to in-breed those birds.
Dont you ever introduce new genetics?
Sorry I thought your post was a waste, I have an attitude and if you cant help with the problem just dont say anything.
You have to get birds for hunting preserves when you run out.

[alan12]

i bring in new birds every year, but i buy eggs or chicks. i am sorry that i did not leave a longer post and therfore you thought it was a waste.
the breeders i have for next year i hatched from eggs that came from two different farms. 1 in ga and the other in miss.
as far as bringing in grown birds, if i was to, but i wont, i would keep them seperate from the rest of the birds for at least a month. i would try to put them up wind from the other birds and i would take some of the new birds to the poultry lab. when you bring in new grown birds they may not look sick at the other farm, but their immune system is use to the old farm and not the new farm. the same for your birds at you farm.

example; last year i bought some grown breeders that looked great,
but i found out they had never been wormed. once a quail gets worms and they form in the ceca, it then turns into blackhead,,,by the time you get rid of the worms and slow down the blackhead you have lost half of your breeders..
another farm did the same thing but brought in ulcerative enteritis,
after he lost a good number of his breeders. the rest never did get up to a reasonable egg production. he raises 30,000 a year.

now i only raise 8,000 to 10,000 a year. that is why i dont bring in new grown birds.

i hope this dont waste any ones time.....   alan

[derk1]

Alan,
Thank you for that information. I did learn something from it.
I have not had a good couple of weeks and sometimes people seem to make smart remarks on here that dont really help anyone, I thought that is what you had done. Now I see you do know what you are doing and you are a benifit to everyone on here. How do you recommend( or any one for that matter) discenfecting after ulcerative enteritis had gotten into a pen?

Thank You
Derrick

[bird288]

Hey,Alan12.I am like derk1 on the ulcerative enterites,How do you get rid
of it .One of my pens is half open with chicken wire and the other half has
tin over it any help would be appreciate.Thanks ,,,,God Bless,,,,Jay
   :?

[alan12]

if you can get it up there, i would use Poultry Guard, or Poultry Litter Treatment. it comes in a 50 lb bag and is kind of like salt, 1 bag will do 1000 SF. spread it out and wet it lightly. that is after you have cleaned out the pen as good as you can..

derrick, i see your point on my first post.

onpoint what kind of symptoms did the birds have when they started dieing.
4 days is allfully quick.  was they sneezing, diarrhea,  was the dead ones scattered out over the area or all in one corner,,

alan

[derk1]

The dead are at my place, that is why I posted.
1. they are scattered and piled. any where from 1 to groups of 50 dead.
2.They look like puff balls, droopy wings and dont weigh anything after they die. they go off feed and water and die very, very quick. Some die within hours of first symptoms, some live for a couple days. It is hard to medicate when they will not eat or drink.
It got into pens that do not even touch or are in the same building. I had to have carried it on my person when feeding from one pen to the next before I noticed the first pen was sick.
So far the Tennessee reds seem immune to it. It looks and sounds like ulcerative enteritis to me, what do you think?

[alan12]

dying that fast i would guess (GUESS) Necrototic Enteritis.
1. what medication do you have them on.
2. what kind of waters are you useing.
3. did you open any of the dead to see what their intestins looked like.
4. does the pen stink from diarrhea.
5 do they have diarrhea, and what color.
6. if you open a dead bird; look at the liver, look for any yellow spots or discoloration.
look in the stomach, ceca, intestins for worms
look for small pin holes. free blood, solid like chesse cores

buy Growers Reference on Gamebird Health book. the best money you can spend.

alan

[EdenFarm]

I have The Growers reference on Gamebird Health and I agree. Watch e-bay I picked it up for five dollars.

  As for the other issues at hand, my market is greater than my ability to produce bobwhites. I have to look for outside birds to keep up with demand. I almost always pick up birds when I buy them. Now I think that this will become the law at my farm. If you pick up your birds you can see firsthand how they are being raised and can cancell the deal before you bring a problem back to your farm. I was picking them up before because it was easier for the seller and I got a better price, now it's so I protect my flock.

  As a member of NAGA I have access to a wealth of information to correctly raise gamebirds. I have seen many different ways being used to raise quail. IMO they must be raised on wire and they must be weathered off in an outside flightpen if they are used for hunting or release. IMO the small hobby farms are fine in their own element raising a few birds in a barn for eating or just for fun, but this is a business to me. There is a fine line between making money and going broke. If what happened to Derrick happened to me it would be devastating. Bio-security is a word I am seeing more and more. Protect your flock, know where your birds are coming from. Protect your customers, bad news travels very fast in this business and a bad reputation is very slow to heal. Protect yourself, sell only your best and most healthy birds.     Jack

[stewaw]

More on biosecurity.  The importance of protecting your flock and the flocks of other breeders cannot be overstated.  Buy a couple of pairs of cheap rubber boots and keep them handy.  REQUIRE all visitors to your pens to put them on.  If I visit your place you will know it's me because before I hit the ground, I'm putting on rubber boots (yours if you got em, mine if you don't).  All it takes to wipe out your flock is someone who visited grandma's house up to six weeks ago and walked around in her chicken pen or yard to bring something in to your place.  The same thing can happen to members of a hunting club who are shopping for bargain birds.  If they have conducted some on site shopping at other growers to buy the best flight birds, you have no control over what they might track in on their boots.  Once the rubber boots have been used, rinse them off in a small bucket of hydrogen peroxide water and hang them up for the next time.  Some might be frightened of such precautions but by demonstrating that you are serious about your birds health would make me more likely to buy from you.

My 2 cents,
David

[derk1]

BIOSECURITY.
New Laws at my place:
1. Nobody needs to enter my barn or pens but me and the kid who feeds for me in the summer. No exceptions
2. Eggs I buy for flock maintenance and growth will only come from 2 pre-selected breeders at this time. I will tell you who if you e-mail me. They are the best and safest in the country.
3 No birds of any size will be mixed in with any birds I currently have "IF" I ever bring in birds again. I feel now that eggs are a safer bet, quaranteen and medication for 30 days if I do.
4.NPIP and AI clean certified birds and eggs only, no exceptions. NAGA members ONLY, why? because I say so...
 I have raised birds for a while and we run a hunting preserve. I have never had sickness or disease in my place to the level that I lost more than a few birds here and there. I would lose birds due to weather and cold or putting them outside too soon but not to disease. Never had a need to keep BMD on hand, I start all my chicks on turkey starter and I use terramycin for general ills.
Now what happened next I can blame no one but myself for,  I got lazy and I thought  "that would never happen to me" . I brought in some strange birds and mixed them right in with my flight birds. In a few days they started to die, "I thought normal from movement and change" within 10 days almost the entire flight pen was dead. within 3 weeks I have lost  just over 800 bobwhites and around 50 reds. I lost all my breeders also. I have about 50 bobs left and 50 reds left. They are now on BMD.
Last winter a fellow told me about having someone in his barn for 15 minutes. He lost his entire flock to quail pox. You cant be too serious folks. It is not a joke and it is one hell of a mess to clean up 800 dead birds and disenfect and shovel and disenfect and clean and bury and burn and disenfect and clean some more and you get madder and madder so take my word for it, be careful. Prevention is better than what I have done for the past month, let alone the money I tossed out the door.
I sold over 8,000 birds this year before this happened..