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I"ve had my chickens get a respiratory illness beofre. They snuffle and sneeze for a few days then they get over it. They don't look or act sick, just sneeze and then it clears up.

About 6 weeks ago one of my very young Light Sussex started sneezing. No discharge, no ruffled feathers or hunched stance, not off its food. Running around with its buddies happy as a clam, sneezing and gasping and wheezing. I thought, okay, this will either clear up, get worse and I will either have to chop a head or the bird will die. Nope. It didn't get better, it didn't get worse. That poor bird just sneezes and sneezes and sneezes every few seconds. It makes a rattling almost whistling sound when it breathes. I suspect that there is a physical blockage of the airway, probably a feather.

This is what I have done
- dug around in its nose with a tweezer to see if there was something stuck up there I could grab and remove. No.
- looked down its throat as far as I could, which wasn't far, to see if something was obvious. Nothing
- squirted warm watr down its throat in quantity and massaged the crop then tipped the bird upside down and let it drain, just incase the crop was impacted or otherwise bothering the bird. This did not help at all.
- put a suction bulb thing down its throat as far as I could and suctioned to attempt to suck out the wayward feather or seed or fir needle. No luck.
- I shone a flashlight into its neck and crop in a dark room to see if any foreign bodies were obvious in a bird that was lit up like a Christmas tree bulb. No.
- I dosed them all with homeopathics. No help
- I dosed them all with antibiotics, for several days, enough to treat 100 pounds of horse. Bird is still sneezing relentlessly.
- I gave it a squirt of Eprinex in the vain hope that it was gapeworm. No improvement.

I have to believe that if this was an actual illness, it would have either resolved or worsened or been fatal by now. The bird just runs around happily, sneezing and wheezing. Suggestions?

I had a White leghorn like that. I eventually bumped it off when it began to fail and did a necropsy on it. What I found was that it had a fold in its windpipe that looked rather like what a plastic drinking straw would look like if folded firmly in half and then released, so that there were two sharpish points either side of the fold and then a narrow aperture for breathing.
Don't know if it was a birth defect, or the result of it trying to gather frequent flyer air points that eventually undid it.