adding to a flock with a history of marek's

[poonam]

Thanks ReikiStar, that's an interesting (and encouraging) perspective.

I've heard opposite info on whether or not exposed asymptomatic chickens are carriers or not — some say yes, others say no. The one remaining pullet in my flock is not showing symptoms, or atleast recognizable symptoms of the disease at all. in my experience, the symptoms were not that straightforward. i had to get a necropsy to know for sure.

It would be so great to know if she is a carrier or not... but that's wishful thinking. if anyone has info on that, it would be great. i'd rather not cull the sweet thing if the chances of her being a carrier without symptoms are negligible.

I try not to get attached to them, but this little one comes into my apartment every night through a crack in the door and insists on sleeping on top of the fridge until i evict her. its so sad to lose a flock to marek's, but i'm looking towards a stronger more well-informed shot at chicken keeping.

Poonam

 

[seminolewind]

I'm dealing with Marek's currently. I am not culling my older flock because they are all carriers, but not dying. I am trying to contain this the best I can.

Whether you cull or not, chances are it will still be on your property. And the interesting thing I've noticed is that my silkies hatched and raised eggs from someone else. The chicks died one by one, or were culled for symptoms. I lost 10 in 10 weeks.

Now, the silkies have been highly resistant to Marek's. The chicks they hatched all got symptomac and died. You would think that the resistant silkies would not be affected by their own virus. However, I believe that the concentration of virus was created by the affected chicks.

So my strategy right now is to remove the dirty shavings more frequently, and spray everything down with Oxine on cleaning days. And bleach the waterer. That will reduce the amount of virus available.

 

[Sunce14]

thank you for your responses.

i do prefer to stay away from this overly devastating view of marek's, just for the sake of being realistic, and also because it's not accurate to people's real life experiences with the disease. As mentioned, marek's does show up in chickens even after the vaccination occasionally. so very many of us probably have marek's in the flock even if there are no symptoms.

which makes the idea of culling and starting over everytime, a very unrealistic thing to do. If you're raising 20 vaccinated chickens, and one of them starts showing signs (and the signs are not always immediately apparent, as is my personal real life experience with them), and all the rest of your chickens are exposed and now carriers (With no symptoms, say) you probably won't cull them all and start from scratch again. You'll probably just find ways to deal with the issue.

As mentioned, Mareks spreads through the air as well as the soil. There's no fool proof way of making sure that the air is clean, and free of marek's. wild birds and rodents carry the disease. It is *EVERYWHERE*, to say the least. Letting the land rest is a good idea to reduce the load, which is my understanding. But, I understand that we can never get rid of the virus (or atleast not for a long long time). If it stays in your soil for years, there's just no way that it's realistic for folks to wait that long before having chickens again.

Strong hardy breeds of chickens that are Vaccinated for Marek's have a good chance of not being affected by it. The way i understand it, once you have marek's you'll probably have to get used to having some losses in the flock, but there will be many many that will be just fine.

I have a small backyard flock so i'm not planning to sell any chicks or pullets. but the fact remains that there are chickens in my neighborhood who may/may not have marek's and there's not a whole lot i can do to control the sharing of air that happens in between our buildings which are very close together.

so, on a positive note, the way i prefer to think of it, is that once it hits, we just need to learn ways to manage it and deal with it. i just don't think that culling and starting over is the solution if you want to add chickens, atleast not everytime.

still love to hear from folks who have advice to manage the disease.

thanks!

Thank you for your response! I absolutely agree with you as I'm dealing with Marek's in my flock.