Consolidated Kansas

[maidenwolfx80]

Josie thank you for the info
Danz I suggested that to the person because that is what I would do. I dont cull unless, like you said, there is nothing more I can do and the bird is suffering.

 

[Hawkeye95]

I just lost an entire post on Mareks. UGH!

Anyway, I will just retype it all here. I had mareks in my cochin flock a few years ago. I have no surviving unvaccinated birds in my flock. They have all died of classic mareks symptoms. It was devastating.

1. The mareks vaccine is very safe and does not cause a bird to be a carrier. That is a myth, I don't know where it came from or why it perpetuates but it is not true. The vaccine is like the chicken pox vaccine in children, it doesn't cause children to be carriers or shedders of chicken pox virus.

2. I vaccinate all day old chicks upon hatch or arrival. If I order from a hatchery I request Mareks vaccine. I vaccinate older birds upon their arrival but it is not considered useful in older birds because they have probably been exposed to the disease already.

3. Mareks disease is everywhere in the environment. Migratory birds carry it and shed the virus. It is impossible to prevent contact unless your birds are all known to be free of mareks and in a concrete building with no ventilation system which we all know wouldn't work well and nobody can afford a closed ventilation system!

4. All birds exhibiting classic Mareks disease should be culled and incinerated or removed from the property by your trash service. DO NOT bury birds who exhibit any type of disease process on your property as it puts your other birds at risk.(I know it is hard to cull a bird but it is best for your flock. while you are treating a bird with mareks it is actively shedding virus and unless you are taking strict measures such as changing clothes, wearing shoe covers, disinfecting yourself and all equipment you risk exposing your healthy birds to large amounts of the virus) Some birds can temporarily recover from symptoms with treatment but they will eventually relapse and succumb to the disease.

5. Most feed store birds are not vaccinated (costs money for the hatchery and the feed store and they want to make as much money as possible on a chick sale)

6. ALL birds coming into a flock that has had Mareks should be vaccinated and quarantined prior to exposure to the original flock. Keep in mind that an older vaccinated bird could still be a carrier and could still become ill. It is best to buy day old chicks and vaccinate.

7. The vaccine is expensive and is mean't for commercial use so it is a 1000 doses. It must be used and thrown away within an hour of mixing so you will throw away a huge amount of unused vaccine. The protection is priceless. I have had no vaccinated birds exhibit signs of mareks disease and I have birds that are almost 3 years old.

8. Spraying your coop with oxine on a regular basis helps control "floating dander" the number one way Mareks disease is spread. Bleach will not kill it to my understanding. Keeping your birds healthy and in a well ventilated area will control outbreaks. This is the number one reason I am moving to open air coops. Mareks and other common chicken diseases do not thrive well in ventilated areas. Still, stagnant, damp air is the best environment for Mareks disease to infect birds.


I hope this is helpful. I hope everyone knows I am just trying to help and offer all the advice that I wish someone would have given me a few years ago. It was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever been through with my birds and I hope nobody else has to go through it to the extent that I did. There is so much misinformation about Mareks disease out there it can be hard to find the truth.

Awesome! But then what is this new vaccine that everyone is vaccinating their ADULT birds with?? Curious about that, because they have been talking about it non stop lately. I've been listening to them and just passed on what they've said! ha!

Jeffers carries the Marek's vaccine for super cheap! It's $17.00 and will treat 1,000 poultry. So, entirely reasonable.
http://www.jefferspet.com/md-vac-cfl/camid/LIV/cp/F7-J7/cn/3501/

I've seen it listed on other poultry sales for around that price, too. I've been looking since I have been on the fence and have nearly bought it a few times. Question-- is the Josie silkie I got from you vaccinated? There is also a YouTube tutorial on how to inject them in the neck, it looks fairly easy to do. Also... once you vaccinate, do you have to continue to do so? The point of my question is-- can you have non-vaccinated adults and vaccinated grow outs together?

 

[chicken danz]

Thanks Josie for jumping in. You posted while I was writing.
One question. Do you use oxine activated or non activated? I have been spraying my brooder with non-activiated oxine on a regular basis, more for mold and germ control than anything. Maybe you can share what happened to your birds (although I am sure it is painful) so people have an idea what to look for.
Most of my hatchery birds have been vaccinated but my fancies I hatched myself from eggs have not. Maybe I should begin vaccinating this spring as well. Do you have to use the entire bottle of vaccine at one time or do you just mix up a small portion at a time?

 

[Hawkeye95]

Thanks Josie for jumping in. You posted while I was writing.
One question. Do you use oxine activated or non activated? I have been spraying my brooder with non-activiated oxine on a regular basis, more for mold and germ control than anything. Maybe you can share what happened to your birds (although I am sure it is painful) so people have an idea what to look for.
Most of my hatchery birds have been vaccinated but my fancies I hatched myself from eggs have not. Maybe I should begin vaccinating this spring as well. Do you have to use the entire bottle of vaccine at one time or do you just mix up a small portion at a time?

One of the sites where you can buy the vaccine suggests that if you are doing a small group of birds, that you can cut the freeze-dried wafer into 4th's and then add a 4th of the liquid into a cup (shot glass) and mix and administer. Then the rest of the vaccine can be used at a later date. I just checked to see if anyone had done that and saw a few threads on BYC of people saying they had done the same thing-- cut the wafer into 4th's and storing the vaccine in the fridge for another hatch.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Here is what someone wrote:

I just got mine yesterday and vaccinated 18 chicks. They were 13 days old but the guy from First State Vet Supply, Peter Brown aka The chicken Doctor said it's best to do day old chicks but you could do it any time and the info he sent said it should be done before 2 weeks old so I just made it.
I used 1/4 of the wafer. You will find the wafer is bigger than the opening in the bottle so you can't just dump it out so I used a clean needle and was able to score the wafer with the needle (attached to syringe so I could reach into the bottle). Then I just poked the needle into the piece I was going to use and lifted it out of the bottle.
Very easy to vaccinate but definately needed two people on chicks this age. I don'tknow how day old would be.
My chicks were a bit lethargic an hour or so after the vaccine but perked up later in the day and are fine today. I feel so much better now that that is done. Hopefully they didn't pick up anything before the vaccine. I guess it takes 2 weeks for the vaccine to provide the protection they need.

Hope everyone that is looking for the vaccine can get some. It is a very important precaution that could spare our beautiful birds from a very painful and prevenatable death.

 

[JosieChick]

Awesome! But then what is this new vaccine that everyone is vaccinating their ADULT birds with?? Curious about that, because they have been talking about it non stop lately. I've been listening to them and just passed on what they've said! ha!

I have no idea what the new vaccine is but I buy the pfizer vaccine from Jeffers. It used to be made by Fort dodge but it is the same vaccine it has just been bought by pfizer. Let me know if you find out there is a new vaccine for adult birds that is more effective. It may just be some confusion about the change in vaccine company but it is the same vaccine.

Jeffers carries the Marek's vaccine for super cheap! It's $17.00 and will treat 1,000 poultry. So, entirely reasonable.
http://www.jefferspet.com/md-vac-cfl/camid/LIV/cp/F7-J7/cn/3501/
It is pretty cheap but you have to reconstitute the entire bottle and use within an hour. I keep it on ice while I vaccinate. If I plan a hatch and an order of chicks at the same time I try to arrange for them all to "arrive" at the same time so I can vaccinate the entire bunch.

I've seen it listed on other poultry sales for around that price, too. I've been looking since I have been on the fence and have nearly bought it a few times. Question-- is the Josie silkie I got from you vaccinated? Yes maam. Every bird that comes out of my bator gets vaccinated and put into the brooder. Every effort is made to prevent contact with adult birds until at least 4 weeks of age to give time for immunity to build. There is also a YouTube tutorial on how to inject them in the neck, it looks fairly easy to do. It is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Day old chicks are tough, especially bantams because they are so tiny and fuzzy. I use a small dab of alcohol if I am having trouble seeing their skin. The first few I did I poked myself once because I couldn't figure out how to hold the chick effectively but there are some really good instructional videos out there! Also... once you vaccinate, do you have to continue to do so? I only vaccinate day olds at hatch and incoming adult birds upon their arrival. I do not re vaccinate. According to the manufacturer "boostering" is not necessary but that may change with birds being kept as pets and show birds for longer periods of time. The point of my question is-- can you have non-vaccinated adults and vaccinated grow outs together? Absolutely safe. The vaccinated juveniles will be protected and the adults are in no way in danger from sharing an environment with vaccinated juveniles. The only thing you should be concerned about is allowing the vaccinated juveniles time to build immunity from the vaccine. They say a minimum of ten days after vaccination to limit exposure to the outdoors and adult non vaccinated birds. Chicks are usually in brooders for much longer than that anyway so it just works out but I aim for at least 3-4 weeks of clean time indoors to allow immunity to build to the vaccine. I have never had any issues with chicks and vaccination, they have always done really well. Mareks if horrific. I lost my first mille fleur cochin hen to mareks and it was heart breaking to watch because they slowly starve due to paralysis. We finally culled her and it was devastating. She was my girl and I loved her to pieces. I LOVE the mareks vaccine! Let me know if you have anymore questions. Mareks is a sticky issue and people don't want to talk about it and some of those who do have wildly differing opinions on vaccination. A lot of it is misinformation about the way the vaccine functions.

 

[maidenwolfx80]

I really want to be able to vaccinate but if you have to use it all at once I only have 41 birds at the moment and would just waste the rest, unless, I suppose, someone wanted to buy the rest??? If you vaccinate all your adult birds, would it be a waste since they are outdoors?

 

[Hawkeye95]

THANK YOU!! Ahhh, well, I'm totally convinced!! Okay, so should I be vaccinating my adult birds that are already a couple years old? What about the birds that are 5 months+ old? But aren't quite adults yet? I have about 11 under a year old and the rest are all adults. What do I do with them? I'm pretty sure they (adults) have not been vaccinated at the people I bought them from never said anything about it. Are they okay by that age? (I know my babies haven't been vaccinated)

 

[Hawkeye95]

I really want to be able to vaccinate but if you have to use it all at once I only have 41 birds at the moment and would just waste the rest, unless, I suppose, someone wanted to buy the rest??? If you vaccinate all your adult birds, would it be a waste since they are outdoors?

read back--- a few posts, you don't have to use it all at once! You can cut the wafer into 4th's and I quoted a person who did just that and they explained how they did it. Go back to the bottom back a page.

 

[JosieChick]

If you are going to vaccinate a batch of chicks I would just go ahead and vaccinate everyone. It isn't going to hurt them but it may or may not do anything for them. Most likely they have already been exposed and hopefully developed immunity but if they haven't the vaccine may provide some protection when/if they are exposed. I wouldn't rush out and buy vaccine for your older birds or your five month olds because most likely they have already developed immunity on their own.

THANK YOU!! Ahhh, well, I'm totally convinced!! Okay, so should I be vaccinating my adult birds that are already a couple years old? What about the birds that are 5 months+ old? But aren't quite adults yet? I have about 11 under a year old and the rest are all adults. What do I do with them? I'm pretty sure they (adults) have not been vaccinated at the people I bought them from never said anything about it. Are they okay by that age? (I know my babies haven't been vaccinated)

40 some odd birds is a lot of birds. I will take you almost an hour to vax that many birds. I would focus on vaccinating any chicks you hatch or purchase from here on out. Most likely your adults have already been exposed and hopefully developed immunity. You can cut the wafer in 4ths but keep in mind that you are then "messing" with the standardization the vaccine company has created for the concentration of vaccine in dosing. SO if your cut isn't perfect which it won't be because that is impossible to do you will be giving some birds a higher dose with a slightly larger wafer and some birds a lower dose with a smaller wafer. I tried this once for anyone interested and the wafer was so fluffy and powdery that it just crumbled in the container. I ended up just using the whole wafer because I had no idea what 1/4 was anymore!

SO, bottom line:
-vax all chicks at day old/hatch
-vax adult birds if you are vaccinating chicks and have extra vaccine.
-keep track of vaccinated birds by flock or band numbers so you know who is vaccinated and who is not
-assume a bird is unvaccinated until proven otherwise

read back--- a few posts, you don't have to use it all at once! You can cut the wafer into 4th's and I quoted a person who did just that and they explained how they did it. Go back to the bottom back a page.