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ETA: Wegotchickens beat me to some of this.
Yeah, sorry for having this all on the d'uccle thread, everyone... though it is about our d'uccles, so... are we forgiven?
You're totally right about diseases being so hard to diagnose. The only reason I have any confidence with this is because I have worked with my vet extensively.
Marek's is a tricky one... I found that some seem to be more resistant than others so not everyone is affected, but I would recommend immediately separating out the ones that show symptoms and putting them in quarantine (preferably as far away from the other birds as possible, like, in a different building or part of the building - as I understand it can be transmitted by feather dander from the sick ones). In my experience, all of my young birds that got it died (though one apparently had a slow-working form and I thought he was going to pull through for over a month). I have one adult bird (bantam cochin) that seems to have had an episode and hasn't been able to stand since September, but after initially being really sick, he's now eating and drinking well, and I'm doing PT to get his leg strength back up (yes, I'm doing PT with my chicken - and he does it himself half the time!).
Here's the other frustrating part: you can't medicate against it, and you shouldn't medicate unless you know what you're medicating for anyway (that is how we get resistant diseases). It's a virus, so antibiotics won't do any good anyway (unless you have secondary infections, which usually don't have time to develop with something this quick). There's a vaccine that you can give to day-old chicks to decrease the chance of them developing the disease (not anyone older... the vaccine just doesn't work that way), and most hatcheries offer the option to have chicks vaccinated. So really all you can do is quarantine them, make sure they're as comfortable as possible and getting food and water, and hope.
As for showing and future contagiousness. You're right... everyone has different opinions. Here's my thought on it (and I realize some of you may feel differently): From what I've learned, Marek's is common... it's in the general environment, can be transmitted by wild birds, and doesn't really go away over time unless there are absolutely no birds there for multiple years which doesn't happen as long as you still have wild birds there. All of this leads me to believe that MOST poultry has probably been exposed to it at some point, which is why it seems to affect chicks more strongly (i.e. most of the adults have already encountered it). Combine that with the knowledge that you can only diagnose it with a necropsy, which very few poultry owners can pay for, and that many poultry owners, understandably, will simply cull (kill, not give away) any bird that shows signs of illness without trying to diagnose the illness, and you end up with a LOT of birds that have at least been exposed to it or are carriers of it without their owners knowing. Which means it's already AT the shows.
Conclusion: if everyone who has ever had a confirmed case of Marek's in their flock, much less everyone who thought they might have had it at some point, avoided ever going to shows or swaps, then the only people left at the public events would be the ones who were either ignorant that they have it or just didn't care and are going to go anyway.
The question of whether or not people who know they have had Marek's at some point should be branded with a scarlett letter or the like (I see a potential analogy here to HIV/Aids as well), is a sociological question that may need to be addressed by the poultry keeping culture as a whole. But then where do you draw the line? Will we all need to eventually list all of the diseases that we *think* we may have had at some point on our entry forms? Note: I haven't talked with that many long-time breeders and exhibitors about this. The ones I have spoken with seemed to have an attitude that it's really no different from any other disease you may have had: healthy birds generally aren't contagious, so as long as you only bring healthy birds to a show it's fine.
So I do what I can do, and this is the level of responsibility I expect of others: I keep my birds' housing clean, I feed them good food and clean water, I observe them daily for any signs of malady and immediately quarantine anyone who seems sick, I work with my vet to ensure that I know what I'm dealing with as much as possible (expensive, yes, and I have very little money, but I chose to keep these pets and vet care goes along with it), and yes, I still go to swaps and shows with absolutely healthy birds. I think that yes, because it's likely that my birds have been exposed to it (including my chicks), the birds I have left are the more resistant ones, so maybe I am increasing resistance in the breed overall.
Lastly, I have thought a lot about partnering with my vet (Countryside Vet Hospital in N. Chelmsford, MA - AAHA's Accredited Practice of the Year!) or others to instigate some small-flock research into diseases like Marek's. Currently nearly all of the poultry disease research that has been done has been for the poultry industry, where preventing disease for a short lifespan in fundamentally unhealthy conditions is their focus. Which I think is part of why, for example, there are only methods to diagnose Marek's in dead birds (I imagine sick birds are generally culled because it's not worthwhile to quarantine/treat individual birds) and we don't know much else about it. Hopefully with the increase in small-flock owners and as poultry become more like average pets then cheap livestock, more people will be willing to fund research that will help us better understand and treat diseases like this.
Okay... end strong opinion, begin strong responses...
