Break out new arrival equals a few sick chickens!

 A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the Bothell Feed Center. Now this was a particular nice day, the sun was beaming and the breeze was scarse. Not a great day for an animal to be traped outside in a box. That being said, the great people at the Feed center informed me that they had come across a rooster of some sort out in thier parking lot, packaged in a dark green tote and a wire mesh lid. They had no idea how long this poor guy had been out there. But he also had a note taped to the box with him that read; "My name is Charley, please help me find a new home". Well I ran right over to collect said rooster, see some of the workers there have chickens but are eather not aloud to have a rooster or do not want one. I had no problem having him untill I could find him a home.

But first I wanted to quarentine him as we had no clue were he came from. Regardless it is always a good idea to quarentine a new addition untill you know they are not sick from the previouse home or even because the stress of travel to a new home and new exposures can weeken their system temperarely and they can become sick. A good amount of time to keep them seperate is 2-3 weeks.

 I put him into his temperary encloser were he could see the flock but not come into contact with them. Apparently he had other plans. The next morning when I went out to check on everyone he was our frolicking with the ladies. I made the decistion to let him be out with everyone, which I have come to realize was a bad idea. I now have a few girls that have come down with a respitory issue. With the generouse help from some very knolegable people on the Where am I? Where are you? Washington thread of http://www.backyardchickens.com/ I now know what I need to correct this problem and am on my way back to healthy chickens.

 Here is a picture of the culpret who got me chickens sick:

One of these days I will tell you a bit about this interesting little guy, but that is a story for another day!

Do you always quarentien your new chickens or just throw them in and hope for the best?

On a side note, I am sorry for my bad spelling. I tried useing the spell check, but don't think it worked as there were not highlighted words. There is no possible way I spelled everything correctly, not even a chance!