Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

We recently retired to the country with the intent of a small hobby farm. We have started with chickens which my wife has raised before while living in South Africa and again in Canada upon immigrating with her family in the 70's. We wanted to focus on heritage breeds but had trouble finding Marans, Wyandottes and a couple of other breeds. After some suggestions locally that there was a heritage breeder in Shawvill QC we checked them out online and found they were pushing a five star rating and the website looked professional when I did my back ground checks.

After a few phone calls to the farm in Shawville QC and several emails I drove up there and bought 40 day olds of Wyandottes and Marans with a few Orpingtons they suggested would suit us. One Orpington did not appear very well (lethargic, swollen eyes, pasty butt big time and would always just stand there hanging its head) but they said it had "star gazing disease" which was a vitamin B deficiency and could be rectified with a couple of drops of adult multivitamins over two days.

It is two weeks since I have been home with these birds which by the way DC Heritage would ship by air or mail but I chose to drive half a day so I could ensure the birds were not stressed in a shipping situation. Since being home we lose a bird every second day with 8 confirmed deaths and more looking like it every day. Some look like they are coughing another has discharge hanging off its beak.

Correspondence with DC Heritage about this issue resulted in their determination the drive home stressed the birds but it had nothing to do with them despite one bird obviously sick when I left there and all of them showing the same symptoms since prior to dying. Currently DC Heritage is not responding at all to me. I started digging and found another poultry forum where one post mentioned this DC Heritage specifically warning people to stay away and that she got Mycoplasma (sp?) in her flock from them as she had testing done. Another post referenced this farm was raided by the Humane Society under a different company name Paws R Us. They were convicted in 2016 after 607 dogs were seized in what I read in the news was alleged to be one of the largest puppy mills the society had investigated. The picture of the convicted animal cruelty accused in that online article reporting the puppy mill conviction was the woman who I bought these birds from two weeks ago.

This morning after calling our local vet it appears that for us to test and treat these remaining chicks it will be vastly more than it would cost to just start over. Testing is looking like $300 to start and new day olds from Freys in St Jacobs can be had here for $200 (New Hampshire Reds). On top of that this virus will always be on this property as surviving birds are carriers. This seriously is very disappointing and it is beyond me how people can make a living doing this kind of business practice. It appears I now have to cull the flock and order from someone else once we've sterilized this coop (which I have no idea how to do). They are not out in the yard as yet so to keep them to fall just expands the area I'd have to treat later and increases the cost to rid the disease off our property. Not only that the meat birds will have reduced weight and the layers likely won't produce much so what the heck is the point of prolonging this is how I see it.

Anyone know where we can get healthy Wyandottes and Marans please? Also if you may have had to deal with this before how do we clean the coop to ensure no new birds get this please? If it is an upper respiratory infection usually treated with antibiotics I assume a good javex bath in there should do the trick with the coop being empty for a few weeks to a month.

Oh boy, I am so sorry you are going through this. Where are you located? We have both Wyandotte (which types do you want? and Marans breeders on the site. Some of the others will be able to help with disinfection protocols. Sadly it would be better to cull all the chicks and start over. Unfortunately this place has quite the bad reputation.
Anyway, welcome to the site.

Yikes, you could try and treat the group with Super Booster and see if you can save a few of the birds. Not sure you'd like to go through that trouble. I got hatching eggs from them and was lucky enough to have 1 beautiful Salmon faverolles. KB has some beautiful birds. I have Silkies some in the incubator at the moment.

Welcome.....

@Ontario Chick has lovely wyandottes too usually adults only which is a good way to start. Not sure if @JimW and @WaupoosCowgirl have marans and also a few others on the site. Personally (and it is your decision) I would cull them and start over.
OC and I both process excess roosters and they dress out to around 3 1/2lb for me. They take longer to grow than a white meat bird but run around free ranging and foraging well and yield a great flavourful bird.

Welcome to the forum.
It's a shame to have such an unfortunate start with poultry, you were very unlucky, but don't give up.
Many good breeders with healthy poultry here, also http://www.performancepoultry.com/index.php hatchery is a good source of healthy birds.
I personally would depopulate, disinfect and start all over again.
Even if you treat the birds and they don't show symptoms, they can still be carriers and you will be fighting the same problems indefinitely.

Welcome to the forum. I'm sorry you've had such a horrible start. There's folks on here with far more experience than I to offer advice so I will just say best wishes with whatever you decide.

Welcome to PTO, you've come to the right place!
I'm so sorry to hear about this experience, what a shame.
Stress doesn't cause infections, it just reveals hidden ones already lurking. Yes, bleach will kill mycoplasma, but it denatures in the presence of organic material such as , feather dust, etc...so you'll have to give everything a good wash first. Bleach also gasses off quickly in hot weather or diluted with hot water, so use cold water if you dilute, and make sure there's lots of ventilation. 70% Alcohol also kills myco if in contact for several minutes, but may evaporate too quickly to be properly effective. Lye does the job excellently. Any lye. Do you happen to be friends with a soap maker?
Whitewash will also work, and make coop surfaces inhospitable to other nasties in the near future. If you whitewash, wear a good mask and gloves when pouring and mixing the quicklime.
If you choose to treat the birds, rather than depopulate, they will need long courses of at least two different antibiotics to even make a dent, and no guarantees
I hope you find what you are looking for, there are quite a few Wyandotte and Marans breeders on the board!

I have been to Performance Poultry a few times; Jason has good chicks. If you'd like a little more variety check out Josh Haisma and Kevin Seward they have lovely birds. I've gotten birds from all of them.

@windwalkingwolf has some good advise! Another option would be to divide up the remaining chicks into smaller groups and treat each batch separately. I don't know if I'd have the heart to Start over....
Best of luck in which ever direction you choose.

Cheers,

That is so distressing.

The other disinfectant that should work is Virkon, it’s a commercial grade disinfectant but you should be able to find small packages of it at your local feed store, just follow the instructions carefully its pretty toxic but that’s why it works well.

I’ve gotten chicks from Performance and had good results but they start taking orders in January and are usually finished selling by now so you may have to wait until next year. But as others have said there are people on the forum here who may be able to help you find new birds.

First off, welcome to the forum! second, looks like others have already chipped in some great advice.

There are many people here that have good birds, and performance poultry also has a wonderful reputation. You have a bit of elbow grease coming up with all the washing and cleaning, but it's soooo worth it. then put in place a good quarantine protocol-all birds are quarantined for 3 weeks or so, until you know they are healthy.

lye can be gotten at some feed/farm stores in a quantity big enough to disinfect areas-us soap makers tend to have smaller amounts because we don't use that much at a time....bleach will require washing first, and then of course everything that's used for the washing needs to be bleached too! i would simply burn all your bedding if you can. if you choose to use ethanol/alcohol PLEASE WEAR A RESPIRATOR!!!!!! you can give yourself alcohol poisoning very easily by breathing it when you are spraying. not a bad idea to use a respirator (not a mask) for the spraying of bleach as well, even with good ventilation.....you don't want to do in your lungs.

Virkon is great to work with, you load up a sprayer, soak everything and let sit and rinse with a hose. again, a respirator for large areas if you are spraying you don't want to breath the droplets. i find virkon pretty expensive compared to bleach though, although i do have a bottle of virkon for precisely what we are discussing here LOL. you can find it at most animal supply or feed stores....

good luck. it sucks, but sometimes just starting over fresh is way easier and less heartache in the end. The next time you pick up chicks if you have any inkling that they aren't looking okay in some way, just don't even bring them home....hard to leave them where you know they have it bad, but better than wiping out your entire flock. again.

if you do decide to treat, make sure you get a vet on board, because mycoplasm can go dormant for a period where you think you nuked it, and you really didn't....if it's a virus they will carry for life and you will need to close your flock-no birds out to anywhere, and some viruses will also transmit in the eggs so even hatching eggs shouldn't be sold if you don't want to spread it. and you will have periodic flare ups, like if the weather changes abruptly or the birds get stressed.....a vet can really help in the diagnosis and long term treatment if you choose to go that route.

again, welcome to the forum, no question is too small or too big!!!! i'm sorry you have had a bad beginning!!! hopefully we can help you along the way!!!!