Not an Emergency...Marek's in the Flock

[lalaland]

you know, the first decade or so of chicken keeping was pretty easy. healthy chickens, life was easy. this isn't!

I hate the ignorance I find myself stuck with now that there are so many problems in the last few years.

If I don't see improvement in a few days with the corid, I'll have to consider the sulfa and tylan. dang.

 

[seminolewind]

you know, the first decade or so of chicken keeping was pretty easy. healthy chickens, life was easy. this isn't!

I hate the ignorance I find myself stuck with now that there are so many problems in the last few years.

If I don't see improvement in a few days with the corid, I'll have to consider the sulfa and tylan. dang.

The sulfaDImethoxine works just like Corid. I use it for cocci and sometimes for a bacterial illness. It is an antibiotic as well.
Yes, I know the first few years was so easy. I think the more we learn, the more complicated it becomes.

For 7 years I thought I was worming my flock well and regular only to find that a silkie died from a capillaria load. Most of all this Marek's thing has complicated things. I even feel guilty that I brought the darn Typhoid mary home .

I'd also like to find out if a well-vaccinated for Marek's chicken has a better immune system.

 

[lalaland]

The sulfaDImethoxine works just like Corid. I use it for cocci and sometimes for a bacterial illness. It is an antibiotic as well.
Yes, I know the first few years was so easy. I think the more we learn, the more complicated it becomes.

For 7 years I thought I was worming my flock well and regular only to find that a silkie died from a capillaria load. Most of all this Marek's thing has complicated things. I even feel guilty that I brought the darn Typhoid mary home .

I'd also like to find out if a well-vaccinated for Marek's chicken has a better immune system.

Interesting that is is a sulphur drug. wonder if plain sulphur would help, I've used it in feed for mite issues.

I looked for it sulfadimethoxine on the web, mcmurrays has it but it says not to give to hens older than 16 weeks! wonder what that is about. still looking....

 

[seminolewind]

Many times there are warnings about not giving a particular medication to a chicken because there has not been completed research on it.

Such as Amprolium in medicated feed .

Sulfa drugs have been used on humans for many years (UTI's for one). It works just as well on cocci as Corid. In my way of thinking , many adult chickens have illnesses that we guess at and I try to treat generally covering as many bacteria as I can, including cocci. Especially now when my older exposed chickens seem to waste and I'm trying to figure out how to not let them die.

One of my roosters months ago had wasted down to skin and bones to the point he was napping all the time. He also got dry pox a month before that had affecting him bad. Loss of appetite, multiple pox, lethargy. Last thing was in his skin and bones was he started to get multiple bumbles on his feet that caused him to limp badly and after treating 2 of them - opening them up, I didn't have it in me to continue to torture a chicken that was skin and bones. I had the vet euthanize him. I will always wonder if multi antibiotics and sulfadi. would have saved him long before he got really wasted and weak.

I have gotten sulfadi. from Twincitiespoultry, and probably Valleyvet. I've heard that Tractor Supply carries it, they call it something like DiMeth. Someone here know what's it's called, I'm sure

 

[jgoldy2]

you know, the first decade or so of chicken keeping was pretty easy. healthy chickens, life was easy. this isn't!

I hate the ignorance I find myself stuck with now that there are so many problems in the last few years.

If I don't see improvement in a few days with the corid, I'll have to consider the sulfa and tylan. dang.

I would agree there was a corn seed infecting a polish's leg, a broken leg, and an egg bound. But that was it for 10 years, of couse there was a chicken or two that was lost each summer, but nothing real major, now in 1 year there is a rye neck, a suffocation, a unknown disease, and 12 chickens lost in 1 year, and of couse that super impressive day I trained a showmanship chicken was wasted, so now I have to spend two months training another. I dont know if it is a good thing or not, but it is starting to feel like my life is being taken up by my flock

 

[LolaChick]

just got the necropsy back on our 13 week old pullet who died last week following six days of paralysis. as expected, marek's. sigh. now, i'm just holding my breath. her sister still looks good. but she's only 15 weeks old, we are two weeks after the first one first got ill. so i'm nowhere near out of the woods. not exactly sure when i can stop holding my breath on her. ughhhhh, she's my favorite in my entire flock. our four one and a half year old girls all still look good, but i'm hoping for/expecting a little bit more resistance in them because age. fingers crossed...

 

[jgoldy2]

just got the necropsy back on our 13 week old pullet who died last week following six days of paralysis. as expected, marek's. sigh. now, i'm just holding my breath. her sister still looks good. but she's only 15 weeks old, we are two weeks after the first one first got ill. so i'm nowhere near out of the woods. not exactly sure when i can stop holding my breath on her. ughhhhh, she's my favorite in my entire flock. our four one and a half year old girls all still look good, but i'm hoping for/expecting a little bit more resistance in them because age. fingers crossed...

I will keep mine crossed too good luck as your flock battles maraks, who will win, I want the flock sadley I know that it mite be maraks, inorder for our faverite team to win they need extra vitamins good luck!!

 

[seminolewind]

just got the necropsy back on our 13 week old pullet who died last week following six days of paralysis. as expected, marek's. sigh. now, i'm just holding my breath. her sister still looks good. but she's only 15 weeks old, we are two weeks after the first one first got ill. so i'm nowhere near out of the woods. not exactly sure when i can stop holding my breath on her. ughhhhh, she's my favorite in my entire flock. our four one and a half year old girls all still look good, but i'm hoping for/expecting a little bit more resistance in them because age. fingers crossed...

I am sorry. I am not one to give my chickens additives. But lately I've been changing my mind. There are foods that cause an increase in T cells, the one I remember is garlic. I'll be giving my Marek's exposed chickens some t cell pump up. It seems that the older a Marek's exposed gets, the more they get sick from opportunistic bacteria like cocci, e. coli, c. perfergens (sp), aspergillium. So for a while here I've been treating my flock with Sulfadimethoxine and Tylan when they look like they're wasting away because Marek's causes immune suppression. A lot of times these bacteria and cocci cause subclinical illness (chronic unthriftiness) but not death.

I have no real proof just 8 skinny chickens who are now putting on weight and my feed is disappearing. But it had got me thinking.

 

[LolaChick]

i think this is a really valid point. if you think about herpes infections in humans, they of course remain present and dormant and recur in times of stress or immune compromise. it would seem reasonable that immune boosters and any stress minimizers could only help with the marek's exposed chickens who are fighting a chronic virus. so besides the tylan and sulfadimethoxine to treat the subclinical illnesses, are you adding any additional components to immune boost? you mentioned the t cell booster and i wasn't sure if you meant something specific (garlic, probiotics, cranberry, etc.). i also see that tylan causes localized intestinal immune support, which is interesting in this case.

 

[lalaland]

I am going to invest in some sort of scale to be able to weigh the chickens. What are you guys using?

Since the mareks diagnosis, I've been doing a lot of tumeric (by a lot, I mean a spice jar in the 12 cups of feed, so maybe that isn't "alot") and garlic weekly. They finishe the 5 day course of corid today, so tomorrow I'll be adding buttermilk, yougurt, and brewers yeast.

Haven't done the cranberries yet....

Seminole, why both sulfid and tylan? thank you for mentioning Jeffers..I think I will order some to have on hand.