Chicken diarrhea and vent problem!!

[Caddyman]

Do you think it is possible this is one of the birds in your flock that also had Mareks?

To be honest I have no idea?

The Chocolate Orpington that I started this topic with was the first of three that were culled or died. She never had any of the same symptoms as the last two did. I feel like the Orpington died from a sever case of vent gleet that went too long before it being noticed by us but she was never wasn't able to stand or walk. The other two, Sizzle wasn't able to stand or walk or anything and Polish was kind of the same way and died on her own that same night we noticed her. When I say notice her it's really only a couple of hours between visits, my wife spends a lot of time with the chickens (too much if you ask me). The rest of our flock seems really strong and are producing lots of eggs. With only learning about having a Neocropsy done after the last chicken (Polish) died. With being able to drive to drop the chicken off and it only costing $20 I would have had all three of them tested. Knowledge is power!

I know the rest of our flock are carriers of Marek's and it will always be with them. All we can do is try and keep them as healthy as possible and cull them at first signs of the disease, replace with vaccinated chicks in the future.

This is a ongoing learning experience for us with being new to backyard chickens. I know it sounds harsh because chickens are dying while we are learning but we are trying to make the best with the mess we got ourselves into. We did thinks wrong from the beginning. Mostly because we got bad advise from the first local breeder we talked to.

If I could do things over-
1) Build my own coop or buy a new one. I bought a used one and modified it but used some of the same boards. We did clean it three times with a vinegar solution but it might not have been good enough? We'll never know.
2) Stick with one source for getting our chickens, I think we got from 4 or 5 different local breeders because we wanted a diverse flock. Could have come from any of them. I believe the Polish was the only one that we got that was vaccinated for Marek's.......go figure!
3)More overall research! The problem was I thought I did but at the time I didn't know what I needed to know in the future like I know now!

Hope this helps someone in the future.

 

[Kiki]

Thank you for the update.
I am glad you are still learning...don't ever quit learning.


We all will never know enough.