Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[ChicoryBlue]

Photos while I can get them posted….

Forgot how terrible my internet is, amazing what millions of dollars get you in the wilds of the Boreal Forest!

A mix of mugs and two fors, and three golden girls for good measure!
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That second to last pic is quite glamorous, wonderful and mysterious lighting, she's a movie star

What is her name?
Def a POW-worthy pic!

 

[featherhead007]

Nice afternoon. Not raining today. Me and my rooster are having a steak dinner.
Jaffar has the best table manners ever!
I have to feed him away from the girls because he tidbits all his treats to them.
(And a man’s gotta eat sometime too)
I told him about the scarf and showed him the picture of it.

 

[knoturavggrl]

And I thank you for doing that post.

Your welcome its fun to do.

 

[knoturavggrl]

Well the drs office called said they cant do much there and want me to go to the ER so Im going in the morning when its not busy. They said they could do tests stat and they could figure out whats wrong. And they can give me IV fluids.
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Beautiful Rooster

I am sorry your going through this. Being sick and the not knowing why is so stressful. I hope they are able to provide some answers for you soon.

 

[knoturavggrl]

Poor girls. It is so hard. Eli laid her egg this morning (though there may be another to come as she skipped a few days). I haven't collected it yet but on the camera it looks large relative to Bernie's egg and the ceramic egg but not huge.
She is looking OK but when I go out to give her a bit of beef as a reward I will check for prolapse.
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I am heartened to hear Eli laid a fairly normal egg today. Fingers and toes crossed it stays that in the normal range.

 

[rural mouse]

From this angle, I can't really tell if it is notched or not...but now I'll know what to look for (if I remember this!)

Mera

Nox of the notched comb

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Happy Fluffy Butt Friday. I took these yesterday as it is been a icky rainy day today.

I need time on a really warm day and a bucket of soapy water. I have several girls in need of a booty wash.

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Everyone except poor Bolt View attachment 3432665
Oh, but her beak is really bothering me. I don't want to spend a million dollars on the vet, but they may know what to do....
She hated it when I filed her beak, but I feel like I should try more.
I have a dremel, but I worry that I will hurt her.
If I stop at the quick, can I trim her beak with dog nail clippers?
I just worry that her beak is getting worse and that she is not as comfortable as she could/should be.

I found Shadrach's post about clippers
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1166494/

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Here goes. Sorry for long post - I am going to take a swing at the Marek's vaccine issue.
I am going to put it all in a spoiler - not because it is icky, but because it is long and nerdy and that will make it easier for folk to just skip over it if they don't want to engage in it.

Spoiler: Long nerdy post

The basic issue being debated is whether the vaccination of birds against Marek's has allowed the virus to become more virulent and therefore make the disease more serious when caught by unvaccinated birds.
This is the view that is held by Andrew Read who is the author of the paper that was cited in the pbs piece that has already been posted. That study is from 2015.
The other major study is from the Roslin Institute in 2020 and shows the opposite. I will link that study at the end.
The theory that leaky vaccines can allow the virus they protect against to become more virulent has been around for forever and has its proponents in the viral and vaccine community. I don't think any study in any species has yet found it to be the case apart from the Read paper everyone saw in the pbs article.
That doesn't mean it isn't true, and Marek's and chickens have some unique characteristics that may make it true here. But it does mean you shouldn't jump and immediately believe the pbs conclusions.

I will try and describe the theory and why it may not be super relevant to us as backyard flock keepers, but first a few basics that I think get overlooked in the general worry about Marek's.

None of the studies are about a vaccinated chicken giving Marek's to an unvaccinated chicken. I have not read that anybody involved in the science of this believes that to be an issue.
In both studies the vaccinated chickens have to be given Marek's disease for the experiment. They don't have it just because they are vaccinated, they are purposely infected with it by the researchers.
The vaccine is described as 'leaky', but that does not mean that a vaccinated chicken is infecting other chickens.
What leaky means in this situation is that the vaccinated individual can still catch the disease.

Typically, when a vaccinated chicken catches Marek's - for example by meeting an infected chicken or moving to a location with Marek's in the coop - they will not show any symptoms or only have mild symptoms.
However, when that vaccinated, and now also diseased, chicken encounters an unvaccinated chicken who is not already infected, it could give that unvaccinated chicken the disease.
That would not likely be a dynamic within an existing flock, because the vaccinated chicken had to catch the disease from somewhere, and their unvaccinated flock-mates would be exposed to the same source.

But it is why you need to be careful about introducing new adult birds who might have been exposed to Marek's (even if they are vaccinated) to a flock that are not all vaccinated.
An example of the kind of thing backyard folk could worry about would be:
- Vaccinated chicken goes to a show and is exposed to Marek's
- The vaccinated show-chicken comes home from the show and is put back in the flock which includes unvaccinated individuals
- The vaccinated chicken then infects their unvaccinated flock mates
Now to the issue of increasing virulence. The basic theory that Andrew Read is supporting goes like this:
- Unmanaged the most virulent virus would wipe out the entire flock very rapidly. The virus would then have to go dormant in the soil because it killed all the chickens so it can't keep replicating as it needs the chicken to replicate.
- However, a vaccinated chicken allows the virus to keep on living because they don't die so they allow the virus to stay alive and replicating.
- Every time the virus replicates the possibility that a mistake gets made in its replication occurs and some of those mistakes might cause the virus to become more virulent. This is exactly like all the variants of Covid that kept emerging - they were all new versions resulting from replication mistakes and some were more virulent.
- Over millions and billions of replications it becomes possible that the newer, possibly more virulent strain takes over from the prior strain.
- And so, according to the theory, that is why Marek's has become more virulent over time.

One issue with the theory is that there is no reason why the mistakes in replication should make it more rather than less virulent. The mistakes are random, and evolutionary theory would suggest it should become less virulent over time.
Who knows? We have two studies one suggests that it gets more virulent and one that suggests the opposite.

In the classic words of all research papers (and why I decided not to be a research scientist!) "More research is needed"!

Now why I think this is not a huge worry for backyard flocks. We are talking about evolution of the virus. Even in viruses evolution requires lots and lots of replications. The commercial chicken industry provides a perfect environment for that to happen - massive numbers of birds in close quarters allowing the virus to replicate over and over and move between hosts possibly swapping DNA with different strains etc. I don't have any paper to back this up, but I don't see this happening in a few generations of flocks with tens of birds (vs hundreds of thousands, even millions of birds).

Hopefully that addresses some of the issues, and here is a link to the Roslin Institute paper from 2020: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2020/leaky-vaccines-part-in-marek-s-disease-management

Great post, thank you. An assumption here, and in the studies? - or a fact stated in the studies? - is that Marek's has become more virulent over time (meaning more severe disease). Thus the search for why that is so and various theories to explain it. But I was stumbling over that first posit - that it has become more virulent. I had not heard that. Not that I have researched this greatly at all, just not come across that assertion. Is this true and how is this been found to be true? Sorry, is this something you can answer without a lot of trouble? Thanks.

Maybe this throws a big wrench into things but I also wondered if the coinciding increase and size of commercial flocks, and/or the preventive antibiotic use has played a role in any of these things, or if it is coincidental? It is occurring in the same time frame (say the last 50 years) as the said increase in virulence. Maybe the super-size farms and their other practices in chicken-keeping have played a role.

But I've always thought of Marek's - and Newcastle - as a kind of a stand-alone disease, apart from any antibiotic-responsive one.

 

[Ponypoor]

Well the drs office called said they cant do much there and want me to go to the ER so Im going in the morning when its not busy. They said they could do tests stat and they could figure out whats wrong. And they can give me IV fluids.
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Sure hope you’re feeling better soon.

Wow look at those wattles and that lovely comb

Oh hey! How are the eggs??