Quarantining New Birds on Your Farm

Can the new ones go in with the old ones tonight?

Every hatch season someone asks us this on the phone. The birds are in a sack, the light is going, and the farmer wants to put them in the house before the night. The answer is no, not tonight, and not until they have been kept on their own for a while.

The reason is not that the new birds are bad. Most of them are fine. The reason is that you cannot see what they carry. A bird can pick up an infection in a crate, a lorry or a market pen and show nothing for days. By the time it looks ill, the others in the house have been breathing the same air and eating from the same trough for a day or two.

We think of quarantine as the cheapest insurance on the farm. It costs you a little space, some extra time with a bucket and a notebook, and a few weeks of waiting. It does not cost you a whole flock.

Where a new bird picks up disease before it reaches you

Think about the journey a bird makes before it reaches your gate. Each stop is a chance to pick something up.

• The motor park or the market. Birds from many sellers are crowded into one place, often in the same baskets, with droppings below them. This is where we see the most trouble, especially in the weeks before Christmas and Eid, when demand pulls in birds from far away. How birds should travel, and what they lose on the way, is covered in our article on transporting live birds to market.
• The crate or sack. A crate used for another farm's birds still carries their dust and droppings, however quickly it was swept.
• The vehicle. A bus roof, the back of a pickup or a motorbike box holds the smell and the germs of every bird that rode there before.
• The person. The seller who handled the birds, the boy who carried the crate, and the visitor who walked through the other farm all bring something on their shoes and clothes.
• Returning birds. A bird that went to a show, a neighbour's yard or a relative's farm and came back is a new bird again, whatever it was before it left.

Even birds bought from a clean source carry risk. Chicks from our hatchery arrive vaccinated and with a batch record, which covers the main diseases we vaccinate for. It does not cover everything, and it does not protect a farm from the birds already living on it. Keep every new batch in its own house from the first day, and in our view that is the most important habit in this whole article. The wider idea of filling and emptying a house as one group is in our article on all-in all-out poultry farming.

Why a few weeks apart makes such a difference

Quarantine works on two timings. The first is the incubation period, which is the time between a bird catching an infection and showing signs. For many respiratory and intestinal diseases, that period runs from a few days to about two weeks. Keep birds apart through that window, and anything they carry has a chance to show itself while they are still isolated.

The second is stress. Moving birds, changing their feed, and putting them in a new house all push their immunity down. A bird that was quietly carrying a problem can become ill during the first week in the new place. Most farmers see this as a flock that seems to be doing well, then drops a few birds after the move.

Quarantine cannot make a bird healthy, and it does not replace vaccination or a good vet. It gives you time to see what the bird brought with it, and a chance to deal with that before it reaches the flock you have spent months building.

How long to keep them apart, by where the bird came from

There is no single number that suits every bird. The longer the journey and the more mixed the source, the longer the wait. Use the table as a starting point, and change it with your vet's advice if they know something about the birds or the area.

Chicks have their own risks on the road too, which we cover in our article on why day-old chicks die in transit. The clock starts when the birds arrive, not when you agreed the deal. If a bird gets sick or dies during the period, the count begins again from the day you removed the last sick bird. This catches many farmers out, because the birds look well by the second week and the temptation to mix them is strong.

A separate space that really keeps them apart

A pen on the other side of the same wall is not separate. Air, dust and droppings move through gaps, through nets and under doors. Look at the setup the way a germ would.

• Use a different house or pen, with a solid wall or a clear gap between it and the flock. Wire netting between the two is not enough on its own.
• Give it its own entrance, so you do not walk through the flock house to reach it.
• Keep it as far from the feed store and the main drinkers as your land allows. Do not keep it next to a route the flock uses to go to the feeder.
• Keep its own feeders, drinkers, buckets, rake, shovel and crate. Nothing should move between the two areas without being washed and disinfected first.
• Keep a pair of boots at the quarantine door that stays there. Your own boots go on after you have finished with the quarantine birds, not before.

Good separation sits inside a wider plan for the whole farm. Our biosecurity guide and the notes on disinfectants and footbaths cover the routine that should sit around the quarantine pen.

On a small farm with one shed, use a partition and a separate door. Keep the quarantine side fed and watered first in the morning, and last in the evening, so that the flock side is never the one you finish with before going back to the sick birds. If you can only manage a few birds, a sturdy crate in a corner of a well-ventilated shelter can work, provided it is kept away from the flock and cleaned every day.

Set up the pen before the birds arrive, not after

The worst time to find a missing bucket is when the birds are standing in the dust in front of you. Get everything ready the day before.

1. Clean and disinfect the pen if it was used before. Let it dry fully in the sun for a day where you can.
2. Lay fresh, dry litter. In the rainy season, use a thicker layer and check it daily, because wet litter is where many problems start. Our notes on rainy-season management explain how to keep litter dry when the rain will not stop.
3. Put out a feeder and a drinker for the number of birds, plus one spare.
4. Check the roof and the wall gaps. In harmattan, the dust will come in, so cover the most open side with a light net or cloth that you can keep clean. Our article on caring for poultry in the harmattan covers the dust and cold in more detail.
5. Set out a sick box, a dish of water and a bucket of disinfectant at the door.
6. Write the date of arrival on the wall or in the notebook, with the source of the birds.

If your pen has any shared equipment, take it out for the quarantine period. A catching net that has been used on the flock should not go into the quarantine house, and the other way round.

Arrival day: count, check and feed them lightly

Birds that have been on the road need time to settle before they need a full meal. Do the checks first, then the feed.

1. Count the birds as they come out of the crate. Write the number down, and note any that are dead, weak or unable to stand.
2. Take a photo of any dead bird on arrival and send it to the seller or supplier the same day. For chicks from us, count on arrival and send the photo on WhatsApp to +233 24 915 1503. Dead on arrival birds are replaced free in the next hatch.
3. Put the birds into the quarantine pen and close the door behind you.
4. Give water first, in shallow dishes, with a little sugar or a rehydration mix if your vet has advised one. Then give a small amount of feed in a clean dish.
5. Check that every bird has a crop that fills and a pair of eyes that are open and bright. Note any that look dull or are standing apart.
6. Wash your hands and change your footwear before you leave the pen.

Do not handle the birds more than you must on day one. Stress on arrival is the moment that a hidden problem is most likely to show, and too much handling makes it worse.

What to watch for every day, and what to write down

Quarantine only works if somebody looks. Choose one person to do the daily checks, and make the same person do them when possible. Two checks a day, morning and evening, are the minimum.

Keep the daily notes in the same book as the rest of the flock records, so you can compare them later. Our guide to poultry record keeping shows a layout that works for a small farm.

Watch the birds at dusk as well. Many respiratory problems are easier to hear at night, when the house is quiet and the birds are roosting. A bird that is breathing with its beak open at dusk is not resting. Write it down, and take it out of the pen the same day if you can.

When the birds are ready to join the flock

The date on the calendar is only part of the answer. Move the birds into the main flock when all of these are true.

• The full period has passed for that source, with no bird off feed, breathing badly, or showing discharge or swelling.
• No bird has died in the last full week, and any sick bird was dealt with by your vet.
• Your vet has seen the records and has no concerns about the birds going in.
• The birds have been vaccinated under your vet's plan, where the source did not already cover the disease.
• The quarantine pen has been cleaned and dried, ready for the next group.

Plan the move alongside your vaccination calendar, so that no bird goes in with a gap in its protection. Our typical schedule examples are in the poultry vaccination schedule for Ghana, and your vet's plan always comes first.

Introduce the birds to the flock slowly if you can. A line of wire between the two groups for a few days lets them see and smell each other before they mix, and the flock is less likely to pick on newcomers. Watch the mixed house closely for the next week.

When a bird in quarantine gets sick

Sickness in quarantine is what the pen is for. It is a warning, not a failure. The job now is to keep it from spreading to the flock and to find out what it is.

1. Move the sick bird into a sick box at the far end of the pen. Keep it in sight, not in the middle of the group.
2. Stop the clock. Start the count again from the day you removed the last sick bird.
3. Call your vet the same day, with the age, the number affected, the signs and the time they started. Our article on what to do with a sick chicken lists the questions your vet will ask.
4. If a bird dies, do not carry it through the flock house. Bag it and follow the steps in our article on a simple poultry post-mortem, but stop and call the vet first if more than one bird is down.

Do not treat the pen with medicine on your own because the birds are not yet in the flock. Let your vet decide what, if anything, is needed. A sick bird in quarantine that is not reported is how a quarantine pen becomes the start of an outbreak.

Mistakes we see most often

Most farms that lose birds after a new batch are not careless. They are busy, and they make one of the same few mistakes.

• One wall, one trough. The quarantine pen shares a feeder or a drinker with the flock, or the wire between them lets dust and droppings through.
• The same hands. One person feeds both groups in the same boots, and goes straight back to the flock with the bucket.
• The early release. The birds look well after five days, so they go in. Three weeks later the flock is coughing.
• The bird that looked fine. One bird was a bit off on Monday and was ignored. On Thursday it is down in the corner, and it has been carrying the problem since it arrived.
• Dead birds left in the pen. A dead bird left for a day in a warm pen becomes a source for the rest of the group.
• Shared crates. The crate the birds came in goes straight back to the vehicle, or onto the flock side of the farm, without washing.

Pick the mistake that your farm is most likely to make, and fix that one first. For most farmers, it is the shared feeder and the same boots.

What skipping quarantine can cost you in a single batch

Quarantine looks like extra work when the birds are cheap and the weather is good. Here is a worked example from the price list, so you can see the sums for yourself.

Say you buy a box of 50 Sasso birds at GH₵13 each. That is GH₵650 for the box. You put them straight into the flock house, because you are busy and the pen is not ready. Three weeks later, a respiratory problem moves through the whole house, and you lose 10 birds. At the purchase price alone, that is GH₵130 gone, before you count the feed those birds ate, the labour, the weeks of growth, or the sales you could not make.

Now take the same box and put it in a quarantine pen for three weeks. You spend an hour setting up the pen, a few minutes a day on checks and a little more on feed and litter. Those are costs you can see. The loss you avoided is harder to see, and it is usually bigger.

The sums get worse for farms that buy from markets. Birds picked up cheaply from a motor park may have cost less per bird, but the risk is higher, and the cheap birds are often the ones that bring a problem with them.

If you are planning a new house, check the current prices on our day-old chicks prices page and look at the Sasso page if that is the breed you want. Minimum order is one box of 50. When you are ready, place the order through the order form, and plan the quarantine pen before the birds leave the hatchery, not after they arrive.

Questions farmers ask