Do you have to quarantine newly acquired chickens before adding them to your flock?

One year in late fall, a couple of wild dogs ran through our property. They decided they would play and have a hay day with our flock. We lost half of our hens, and our rooster (he was the best rooster!) 🐓

With winter coming I wanted to make sure we would have eggs for the winter. I went to my normal guy who I have gotten hens from before. Never quarantined, and never had any issues ever!! Unfortunately he didn’t have any… I looked and looked and finally found some on marketplace.

We had 10 Hens left from our original flock, we went and bought 10 hens ($110) we got them caught and loaded up, took them home, stuck them with our ladies.. and seriously 2 days later hens were sneezing, watery eyes, and a few days later they were dropping dead.

The new hens, my hens, most were dead in a weeks time. There were 4 who seemed to not be affected but unfortunately, with what they had it was very contagious, it could live on surfaces and the ground for quite a while and those chickens could be carriers and pass around to new chickens. Jim and I decided it was best to put them down, to allow ourselves time to heal our property.

We went without chickens that whole winter, in the spring we bought new pullets and had to start over ☹️

We went a whole year without eggs on the farm, and that’s when I decided I had to learned to water glass eggs 🥚

Sooo lesson learned, always quarantine any new animals!!