Do I change bedding with deep litter if the chickens catch a cold?

It's me again... I'm really confused because whenever there is some sort of illness, even diarrhea, all the recommendations are to change bedding and disinfect. But is that true for deep litter as well?

Right now, I am dealing with three out of three chickens who caught a cold and I am unsure whether to change bedding now. They have only been in there for about 10 days, so there probably isn't much of a microbial life in there right now.

First week of chicken keeping... several sorts of diarrhea, turned out to be infested with mites, and now caught a cold, making noises that scare me and let me fear for them. This is NOT what I imagined when I got chickens!

I'm interested to read what experienced keepers respond with, but I'm (slowly) building a deep-litter system so I can start a flock and I wouldn't consider changing out what could be three feet of bedding. I think the deep-litter equivalent precaution is tossing in some extra bedding to give pathogens below, time to neutralize.

Sorry you're having some bad luck getting started.

I have a new chicken keeper, so if someone with more experience says otherwise please disregard but here is my two cents.

Deep Litter Method is a method to handle 'normal' waste from chickens. While the litter can handle diseased or infected waste because microbial life does not differentiate, your fowl can not. If you suspect the sick chicken can spread it's illness, you need to isolate that chicken in order to minimize spread.

It sounds like all your birds are sick, you need to help control their environment to help them get better. This is frequent litter changes, this is supplementing your chickens with medicines. Whatever you can do to minimize bacterial/viral/fungal load and create an environment for healing. I would encourage you to try and find the root to what is going on with the chickens. I have a few books on chicken health but there are plenty of free resources online to help identify what might be going on.

Best of luck.

Hi Tomke,
It sounds like your chickens are having a rough start. I'm sorry to hear that. I have had things like that happen before and most of my chickens recovered fine.  

Let me see if I can clarify the deep litter method some, as I was a little confused when I started, and it might help others.

Using deep litter, at the minimum, will allow the carbon source (woodchips, shavings, straw, etc) to soak up the extra nitrogen and moisture like a diaper, and keep the place from smelling up. Ideally deep litter goes further and there are microbes that grow and flourish in the layers of manure and carbon, that break down the manure and carbon and begin producing a good compost. What I was confused about was how often I would need to add more carbon. I thought, that if I started with a thick enough layer, I could go for quite a while. This was not the case for me. I had to add a little more daily in my case. By starting with only, say... 6 inches, and adding daily, you may end up with litter that is a couple feet thick, depending on the circumstances. Adding another layer is the equivalent of "cleaning it out" with a traditional style of raising chickens. This method is never meant to be mixed with sterilizing an area. When you do this, you kill all the good bacteria as well as the bad bacteria, and trust me the bad stuff grows back faster. Which means you have to clean it out more frequently.

I would suggest just covering it with a good layer of whatever you are using for carbon. Make sure all the old stuff is covered well.

Stress can really effect how easily a chicken can become sick. So double check your environment to reduce any causes of stress. Is the heat source a good distance? Is there a warm side and a cool side of their pen? Is their water kept clean? I am a big fan of poultry nipples as a way to keep the water clean. I would also suggest looking up Justin Rhodes recipe for "magic water". He using garlic, apple cider vinegar, honey and water as a sort of jump start for his chicks. I started using it and they did seem to do better afterwards. I would suggest making up a batch and giving it to them. Gives them some energy as well as immune boosting goodies.

Keep us posted on how they are doing.

**Edit for clarity

Thanks everyone, that clears things up a bit.

Matt, I am still confused about this because my chickens scratch around in it like crazy. They turn their own compost heap several times daily I think. They're not coming out all day yet, they're still a bit shy, so that's what they do while sitting inside. If I add more carbon, that will definitely not keep them from coming into contact with whatever they have to battle with right now. Is that still a good idea?

Hi Tomke,
When you talked about the first week or chicken keeping... I was imagining you had chicks in a brooder. Now that I have re-read your post it seems like these might be full grown adults chickens? Which would certainly scratch much more.

Please keep in mind there are different ways of raising chickens, but I still wouldn't do anything different even with full grown adult chickens. If I was worried maybe I could keep the chickens away for an hour or so to give things time to soak in... but I doubt I would even do that. If the chickens already caught cold and were around the other chickens, they have already been exposed. You can try, and never be totally successful to kill every bad germ in the area... or you can rely on, and build up, the chicken's immune system to do its job. I tend towards this second version with my own health as well as chickens.

I've read the books. I still try to read every book on raising chickens I can find.
I've hit the internet and read everything I can find there. There's a lot of information and a lot of it is counter-intuitive, doesn't seem to come from a place of happy chickens (some self-appointed chicken experts don't have an active flock), and some information cancels itself out in other places. Sometimes within the same article or chapter.
There's a lot of foolishness out there and people get caught up in odd things.

Your flock is sick. Okay. No need to isolate anyone from anything. All of the birds have the same issue. You can either look at it as all of your birds are in the sickroom together, or that all of your flock is doing flock things.

Are you sure it's a cold?
Not challenging you on this, but it's easy to mistake illness for something else or something else for illness.

Is your deep litter system full of active and healthy microbes or are you just getting going? If you're just getting started and haven't had your chickens for more than a couple of weeks, you're in a stage of "Could be deep bed, Could be "I haven't cleaned the coop"". It's not an "active" deep bed, yet, so you wouldn't lose anything by cleaning it out.

If your deep bed system isn't active, it might actually be causing the problem. A non-functioning deep bed system, or one that is in the "setting up phase" can run into a bunch of problems, most of which can be solved by adding more bedding. If the ammonia or other easily aerosolized content of the bedding is too high, that could be irritating the chickens' respiratory system and causing symptoms of another problem. If that's what happening, adding bedding and tossing some kind of treat (seeds, dried mealworms) onto the bedding so the chickens will mix things up will solve the problem.
If adding bedding doesn't help, there's something else going on and you need to solve *that* problem before you can fix things.

If your deep bed is moist, there's something wrong with the deep bed. If it stinks - smells bad - there's something wrong with the deep bed.

If your chickens have caught a cold or illness, they need good quality food, supplemental vitamins and minerals (Rooster Booster, Vet RX, garlic in their water, yarrow, whatever you are going to use to treat illness), and lots of clean water. They need to be out in the open air and sunshine as much as you can let them and they seem to want to go.

I seem to be late into this conversation, but you are getting good advice on how to manage things. I don't think any proponent of deep bedding would ever suggest you "clean out" and keep cleaning out your deep bedding, for any reason short of a problem with your deep bedding. It'd be like suggesting your get rid of your bed (the one you sleep on) because you're really sick. Yeah, there are cases where your bed might be exacerbating the problem and replacing it could help, but those things aren't really common.

No, I think Matt has the right of it and is giving you some amazing advice. What he said, and I second that. All of it.

At the risk of starting a mutual admiration society with Kristine... she is adding some really good information!

Kristine has some fantastic points about what could be happening with the bedding. The first year I had my chickens in the greenhouse for winter, I did not have enough carbon or ventilation and I had several of my chickens get sick. I hadn't even thought of that here. Fresh air is so important. And I didn't think to add in about the mineral supplements and quality food. It sounds simple, but chickens need quality food just like people. Excellent stuff from Kristine.