A little help here please!

[bycjohn]

I'm an avid hobbyist of backyard poultry - chickens & turkeys raised in two different coops in my backyard.

I kept 4 of my turkey eggs under a brooding hen & got 4 turkey babies. They were growing along fine in a separate cage for about 1.5 months, when suddenly one after another just tumbled on their backs and died kicking their legs in the air, in subsequent days.
Prior to this, they were normal healthy chicks running about, eating & drinking as usual.
The hen I kept it under is an excellent mother as it teaches the young ones under her care how to dig around for food & all other stuff like being safe from predators etc so I don't know what gives!

Having had such bad luck, I've again gone ahead with another 4 eggs this time under the same hen yesterday.

So any help here on what could be the problem or how to make sure such things do not happen or how to take care of baby turkeys under such circumstances, would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

P.S: I was asked to post it here rather than the Turkey subforum so I may get much better responses.

 

[Latestarter]

I have never witnessed this nor experienced it directly but from what you describe it sounds like you are dealing with blackhead disease. It is carried by chickens but doesn't affect them. It however is deadly to turkeys and pea fowl. There are things you can look for in a necropsy of the dead birds to try and determine if blackhead is the issue. If it IS blackhead, then it is there on your property, anywhere the chickens have been. I'm not sure of the time required for it to die out, or even if it will, but you would need to raise your turkeys away from any past/present chicken areas and keep them separated ongoing.

Hope you can find the issue and correct for it. Best wishes with your poults going fwd.

 

[bycjohn]

In my search online I came across someone discussing about BH disease being transferred from hens to turkeys in BYC forums. The symptoms sounded kinda similar to my issue here.
Another article talked about breeding disease resistance.
https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/viewhtml.php?id=343#prevention

My question is
Since these eggs are from my adult birds which didn't catch the BH disease (having been raised from month old chicks along with chickens & hens), why did the young poults catch the disease?

Also, unfortunately I don't have the dead poults,as this happened few months back, so necropsy is out of the question.

Guess I'll have to take precautionary methods going forward.
Thanks for your reply.

 

[Eggcessive]

Have you looked into possible coccidiosis as a problem? Also AE or avian encephalomyelitis can cause similar symptoms along with tremors, and it usually presents in the first month of age. Here is some reading about it:
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/avian-encephalomyelitis/overview-of-avian-encephalomyelitis

 

[bycjohn]

Thanks for your pointer.

The article says "the episode is usually over by the time the flock is ~4 wk old." -- My poults were in the 7th week, so is it still possible?

"After 4 wk of age, chickens are resistant to disease but not infection." - will this infection lead to death?

I didn't quite follow the Prevention part
"Immunization of breeder pullets at 10–15 wk of age with a commercial live vaccine prevents vertical transmission of the virus and provides progeny with maternal immunity."
Are they referring to the normal vaccination or any specific vaccine? Maternal immunity is transferred from mother to poults - natural immunity. If so my adults have been vaccinated. I was waiting for 3rd month for the poults to be vaccinated.

 

[Eggcessive]

They are referring to the AE vaccine, which is found in combination with some fowl pox and ILT vaccine combinations available commercially, and found online. I have never dealt with vaccines, but there is a lot of info about them. Here is one such article:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ps030