Almost no eggs...Marek's the cause?

[762]

I am not good at brevity, but I will try my best. Bottom line is that I am reaching out to others who may have Marek's in their flock whose birds aren't displaying any symptoms of being "sick" but have extremely poor or non-existent egg production. Is this a thing?

• New to chickens in Sept of 2022, got 29 chicks, a combo of Wyandottes and Orpingtons (procured from quality local breeders). By January I had 6 dead via sickness but varying in external presentation of symptoms. Two were sent for necropsy, both came back with similar diagnosis, "The masses in multiple tissues in a 24-week-old chicken is most suggestive of lymphoma which is commonly caused by Marek’s disease or avian leukosis. In this case, Marek’s disease is favored based on the nerve involvement." One thing to note is that there is no way to confirm Marek's unless you have an expensive $3-400 PCR test done.
• Many of our chicks ended up being roosters, who all went to freezer camp except Larry the SP Wyandotte and 6 surviving hens. I guess they were the lucky 7. Anyway, they started laying in mid February. And we had good production, about 4 eggs per day on average. I'm not sure 100% when it happened, but egg production started dwindling dramatically, sometime in May. I'll caveat that with the fact that we had an EXTREMELY MILD June, so heat wasn't a factor. Our mid July and August were hot as usual, but things have really cooled off in Sept. I just got my first two eggs this morning after a 5-day lull. Currently no-one is broody, either.
• Side note: we had a broody and she successfully raised 6 of our own chicks which are about 22 weeks now (3 cockerels, 3 pullets). All 6 of those birds are healthy as far as we can tell, and we would expect the pullets to start laying soon. In addition, we had two broody that we could not break, so we bought hatching eggs for them to sit on (since we did not have enough eggs of our own), and they co-raised 7 sex-link cockerels that are now 14 weeks old and also completely healthy (mommas abandoned them about 3 or 4 weeks ago, so they should be laying again).
• We feed top quality feed (https://www.hhfeeds.com/non-gmo-all-flock) and hens have free access to oyster shells.
• There are six nesting boxes in our 12x12 coop...coop is huge and they have six nesting boxes to choose from.
• They all free range. We have checked everywhere for hidden eggs; there are none.

I'm feeling about done. If Marek's can do this, there is no point as there's no getting rid of Marek's. Why am I spending more on feed than eggs cost, and having to buy eggs to boot? My goal was to produce a self-sustaining flock. Invested heavily. Getting no eggs. I can't even find the motivation to paint my seemingly useless chicken palace before it gets cold. Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[Stravager]

Maybe this article will help you? Mareks definitely can make chickens stop laying, but it's not always the case.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/the-great-big-giant-mareks-disease-faq.66077/
I think there are also some breeds of chickens, like the Egyptian Fayoumi, that are Mareks resistant. And if you had hatched your own eggs under an incubator and had them set up in a very different area you might have better success?

 

[762]

Maybe this article will help you? Mareks definitely can make chickens stop laying, but it's not always the case.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/the-great-big-giant-mareks-disease-faq.66077/
I think there are also some breeds of chickens, like the Egyptian Fayoumi, that are Mareks resistant. And if you had hatched your own eggs under an incubator and had them set up in a very different area you might have better success?

Thanks. I've read the article before. It doesn't talk about its effect on laying. I am seeing if there's any folks here dealing with Marek's that might have the same issues as I am. Also, its possible that my chickens DON'T have it.

Our chickens free range. There is no other area to set them up in that hasn't been thoroughly exposed. Marek's can live in the soil for 7 years.

 

[Stravager]

Thanks. I've read the article before. It doesn't talk about its effect on laying. I am seeing if there's any folks here dealing with Marek's that might have the same issues as I am. Also, its possible that my chickens DON'T have it.

Our chickens free range. There is no other area to set them up in that hasn't been thoroughly exposed. Marek's can live in the soil for 7 years.

I know that certain Mareks strains can stop egg production because of the amount of tumors in their organs. But that one would be hard to check unless you euthanized one or more and did a necropsy...
This one might be an absolutely wild spin, but if you still wanted eggs you could get some quail and have them in an elevated cage system which would keep them from contact with the contaminated soil... there would still be a chance they could catch Mareks but it would be lower than introducing more chickens.
@Eggcessive do you know anyone with a little more insight?

 

[Wyorp Rock]

"The masses in multiple tissues in a 24-week-old chicken is most suggestive of lymphoma which is commonly caused by Marek’s disease or avian leukosis. In this case, Marek’s disease is favored based on the nerve involvement."

Perhaps @azygous can chime in with some tips, thoughts about how to proceed.

I'm very sorry you're having to deal with this, I can't imagine how disappointing and overwhelming it all must be.

New to chickens in Sept of 2022

I'm feeling about done. If Marek's can do this, there is no point as there's no getting rid of Marek's. Why am I spending more on feed than eggs cost, and having to buy eggs to boot? My goal was to produce a self-sustaining flock. Invested heavily. Getting no eggs. I can't even find the motivation to paint my seemingly useless chicken palace before it gets cold. Any insight would be appreciated.

I might would suggest that you find a feed that is not a loose type feed, sometimes birds will pick out the things they like best and leave the rest, which can lead to some nutritional deficiencies, not saying this will fix a lot of things, but worth a try to see if there's any improvement.
If you still want to use the feed you are feeding, then try fermenting it.

I also notice you had a thread back in June. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/what-in-the-blazes-is-in-this-egg.1583115/
You never did really get a specific answer, but it would have also been nice to have seen what the object looked like if it was cut apart.
I suspect that was lash material (Salpingitis) but could be wrong. This could be part of the reason why production is down as well.

Do you notice any hens that are just off? Hard to say whether or not giving a round of antibiotics may be helpful or not.
You are entering fall now, so the hens are a year old = they may be naturally losing production in preparations for molt.

A bonus is you were able to successfully hatch chicks from your hens, the chicks are thriving at this point. They are still young, so it may be possible that you see some symptoms arise, but there's always hope that you are moving in the right direction to having healthier offspring.

 

[762]

Perhaps @azygous can chime in with some tips, thoughts about how to proceed.

I'm very sorry you're having to deal with this, I can't imagine how disappointing and overwhelming it all must be.



I might would suggest that you find a feed that is not a loose type feed, sometimes birds will pick out the things they like best and leave the rest, which can lead to some nutritional deficiencies, not saying this will fix a lot of things, but worth a try to see if there's any improvement.
If you still want to use the feed you are feeding, then try fermenting it.

I also notice you had a thread back in June. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/what-in-the-blazes-is-in-this-egg.1583115/
You never did really get a specific answer, but it would have also been nice to have seen what the object looked like if it was cut apart.
I suspect that was lash material (Salpingitis) but could be wrong. This could be part of the reason why production is down as well.

Do you notice any hens that are just off? Hard to say whether or not giving a round of antibiotics may be helpful or not.
You are entering fall now, so the hens are a year old = they may be naturally losing production in preparations for molt.

A bonus is you were able to successfully hatch chicks from your hens, the chicks are thriving at this point. They are still young, so it may be possible that you see some symptoms arise, but there's always hope that you are moving in the right direction to having healthier offspring.

Yes, I do notice some stuff gets tossed on the ground, and when the feeders are empty and there is still feed on the ground, I'm hoping they'll eat what they've spilled but they really don't. We do ferment grain. We give the entire flock about 3-4 cups in the morning in several small piles and most of it gets eaten.

I have tried using Nutrena pellets but they won't eat it...they love the grain! Also I understand that roosters and cockerels can get too much calcium from layer feed...I guess I could just feed everyone all-flock pellets. For some reason I don't like the idea of pellets anyway...and it's funny because I've been reading so much about lack of laying because of big corporate feed, and I feel like I've avoided that with this brand. Maybe a compromise is to give them their morning ration of fermented grain and keep pellets or crumbles in the feeders. If they want to eat during the day, they know where to go. And though I do have a dedicated feeder for oyster shells, I'm not sure they really eat them. I noticed when I gave layer feed (same brand) there were a lot of oyster shells left behind.

I hear what you are saying about daylight hours...maybe a bad coincidence of two mommas coming off chicks and daylight shrinking. But this did start happening in May. All of the Wyandottes seem to be in great health. We have two Lavendar Orps I don't care for, mostly because their fluffy butts are always nasty. They don't have diarrhea (one did at one time and I dewormed her), it just seems to be the way it is with them. I THINK they both lay, and I'm fairly certain that alien-carrying egg came from an Orp. One has a bright comb, the other's is fairly pale. One of them produces a very oblong egg. I wouldn't be surprised if they have issues. I'm considering culling them with the sex links in a few weeks. We did get a beautiful black split orp from our hatch (wild that we had two roosters at the time and all 6 chicks were pure bread...5 Wyandottes, 1 Orp). She doesn't have a poopy butt though, which makes me wonder more about the Lav Orps.

 

[estephan03]

I can't help but say, "Amen!" to this thread. I'm going through a lot of the same things, and almost the exact timeline. I obviously found your post while searching for reasons to explain what's going on with my birds. I've gone through the same thought process and tried all the same things. No results, and still no idea what I'm dealing with...