Black Head

[UluLaté]

Anyone have experience with Black Head (Histomoniasis casued by the protozoa Histomonas meleagridis)?

I put my 7 turkey chicks in with my 50 meat chicks and swiftly lost all but two turkey. A friend said, "It's black head. Cant keep young turkeys and chickens together. It wont affect the chicken chicks, but it will kill all your turkey chicks. 100% fatality rate." Sure enough, I separated them and the rest of the remaining two turkeys survived. The chickens get it, but aren't negatively impacted by it like turkeys are.

The literature says there is no current treatment. The previous treatment was pulled by the FDA. It was basically arsenic laced?

Have you experienced it? Have you treated it? If so, what was your experience?

I'm looking into getting a grant and doing a study of a treatment as the foundation for a masters. Any information you can provide will be helpful.

Thank you!

 

[puddle_drinker]

Anyone have experience with Black Head (Histomoniasis casued by the protozoa Histomonas meleagridis)?

I put my 7 turkey chicks in with my 50 meat chicks and swiftly lost all but two turkey. A friend said, "It's black head. Cant keep young turkeys and chickens together. It wont affect the chicken chicks, but it will kill all your turkey chicks. 100% fatality rate." Sure enough, I separated them and the rest of the remaining two turkeys survived. The chickens get it, but aren't negatively impacted by it like turkeys are.

The literature says there is no current treatment. The previous treatment was pulled by the FDA. It was basically arsenic laced?

Have you experienced it? Have you treated it? If so, what was your experience?

I'm looking into getting a grant and doing a study of a treatment as the foundation for a masters. Any information you can provide will be helpful.

Thank you!

I lost two turkey's to Blackhead a few years ago. From what I've researched, you can have turkeys and chicken living together if you don't have Histomonas meleagridis protozoa in your environment, but if you have the protozoa in your environment having chickens and turkey together greatly increases the risk for the turkeys getting Blackhead.

Did you check the livers of your dead turkeys to be certain it was blackhead? There are other things that can kill a turkey living with chickens. With blackhead the liver will have circular bullseye patterns all over it.

 

[coach723]

This link has an image of the lesions that blackhead causes on the liver.
Chickens can get it and sometimes die of it also, but it's not nearly as deadly to them as it is to turkeys, they will often be asymptomatic and resistant to it. Commonly caused by them being infected with cecal worms which carry the protozoa, and then continue to spread it in their droppings. Earthworms can also be a vector of the cecal worm carrying the protozoa. If that is what you have, then you may need to move any turkeys to new ground that has not had any chickens on it, to prevent exposure.
https://tvmdl.tamu.edu/2020/02/24/histomoniasis-blackhead-in-birds/

 

[UluLaté]

I lost two turkey's to Blackhead a few years ago. From what I've researched, you can have turkeys and chicken living together if you don't have Histomonas meleagridis protozoa in your environment, but if you have the protozoa in your environment having chickens and turkey together greatly increases the risk for the turkeys getting Blackhead.

Did you check the livers of your dead turkeys to be certain it was blackhead? There are other things that can kill a turkey living with chickens. With blackhead the liver will have circular bullseye patterns all over it.

I did not check the livers of the dead ones. They were dead before I was aware of the disease. So, yes, it's entirely possible that it was something else.