By Sharon Biggs Waller
For most of us, our chicken coops are a point of pride and are as much a part of our landscape as the barn or garden.
Innovative coop designs, roofs topped with weather vanes, comfy nest boxes and colorful decorations add to the fun of keeping chickens. But it’s easy to forget about the less-than-lovely reality: The same organisms that cause diseases in large-scale commercial poultry houses and hatcheries can inhabit our coops, too. No matter how charming our henhouses are, diseases can lurk right under the surface.