Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Ponypoor]

Mine are snobby. Show them a mouse and they will squeal and run away, show them cabbage and they shake their heads. Isbe is the most picky of all, poor girl can’t even stomach a mealworm. They utterly disgust her, she tries so hard to understand why they are so popular among the rest!

I think it was RC who had a video or photo of one of her chooks with a mouse, trying to keep it from the rest hahaha.

My Fluffy killed and ate a snake when she was just 7 months old! I thought it was a piece of hay baling twine at first hahaha!

 

[Ponypoor]

Yes. I wasn't very clear, sorry, thinking too vaguely and I was mixing issues together. I know that about viruses and antibiotics. It was more about the commercial practices in general having any affect or not.

The last thing was an association in my mind between measles/shingles and Marek's and Newcastle, viruses that affect nerves, and are very separate from any bacterial diseases.

Chicken pox & Shingles - the same virus causes both. AND did you know that someone with Shingles can give someone chicken pox if they have never had chicken pox?!

I find viruses far more interesting than bacterium. Viruses are just so darn insidious! And I find that fact that living organisms like chickens, humans, horses..... have all evolved in step with viruses, bacterium, and fungi is just amazing! There was this documentary on The Nature Of Things regarding Fungi and their evolving along with forests that was extremely interesting. I can't look at deadfall with those huge fungi on them and not think back to that episode.

I often wonder what would happen to someone from 200 yrs ago, that could be brought to the present day - would they keel over dead from some viral attack?! I would think so; they would be just like North American aboriginal persons being exposed for the first time to European diseases.

And this is why sometimes I think that keeping a closed herd with my horses and chickens (and children in schools, people, etc) is a bad thing; sometimes I feel that we need our immune systems challenged by all these pathogens. Reminds me of another Nature of Things episode on Allergies and other respiratory ailments in children, they did a study on who had more issues with allergies and Asthma - developed countries or 3rd world countries.

Of course I said to myself '3rd world countries'. NOPE! Developed countries! The hypothesis is that very young children in 3rd world countries are exposed to all sorts of pathogens which reinforce the immune system for allergies and asthma - they correlated this with Mennonite families - their children also have an extraordinary low incidence of asthma and allergies!

Of course that still doesn't explain why someone my age develops allergies and asthma in older years.... ?

OK enough postulating on things more beyond my ken....

Amazing World Tax
My amazing stash of eggs

 

[Ponypoor]

The virus that causes Marek’s is the same family of viruses as the one that causes Shingles (and chickenpox) in people.
They are both herpes viruses.
Herpes viruses can hang around in the body for forever and cause issues later. In people that is shingles rashes in chickens it is the tumors of Marek’s.
Sorry you aren’t in a good mood Alex - generally spring is something to feel good about even if you do have a too biting your ankles.

Ouch! Shingles and too biting your ankles

(bad kelly I know you meant Roo; must go and see if my kiddos want any tears before bedtime..... )

 

[featherhead007]

I think it was RC who had a video or photo of one of her chooks with a mouse, trying to keep it from the rest hahaha.

My Fluffy killed and ate a snake when she was just 7 months old! I thought it was a piece of hay baling twine at first hahaha!

Snake breath

 

[featherhead007]

Ouch! Shingles and too biting your ankles

(bad kelly I know you meant Roo; must go and see if my kiddos want any tears before bedtime..... )

Bad Kelly!

 

[featherhead007]

Ouch! Shingles and too biting your ankles

(bad kelly I know you meant Roo; must go and see if my kiddos want any tears before bedtime..... )

Bob, are you going to let her get away with this?

 

[RoyalChick]

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.

So I looked into this while sitting in the sun in the chicken yard.
I should caveat this by saying we are right at the edge of my ability to understand the science and the statistics involved.
The original article that was reported on in the pbs article - the one that got everyone in a stew - simply asserted that Marek’s had become more virulent since vaccination began without citing any evidence.
But I dug up an NIH paper where they did phylogenetic modeling.
They basically look at mutations in the virus and built a mathematical model to work backwards in time for when those happened.
Clever stuff - I might need a nap to recover!
They were looking at intensive farming and vaccination timelines - so basically ran their model back to the 1950s.
Although, like the other paper, their paper started with the assertion that the disease had got more virulent, they did cite numerous sources for that observation.
Basically what has happened over the last 50 years is the emergence of some strains of Marek’s that kill unvaccinated birds extremely fast and at a young age. This is in contrast to the more classical Marek’s, that I am sure we have all read about, where tumors develop in slightly older birds causing paralysis and other issues including tumors in the lymphatic system, reduced immunity etc.
I couldn’t get a handle on this exactly but it seems this more virulent disease is particularly marked in broiler intense farming operations.
The conclusion of these phylogenetic modeling wonks was that the use of vaccines has impacted the evolution of the virus such that these more virulent strains have emerged.
There is no discussion about how widespread the more virulent strains are, but a lot of discussion in the references is about broiler operations.
The authors do point out that their work is a model and it is looking at only the last 50 years of what could be a thousand year history of co-evolution of chicken and Marek’s virus, and that the genetic complexity of the Marek’s virus made it impossible to actually match specific mutations with virulence.
So they conclude that their work is supportive of the view that vaccine use has, over a 50 year timeframe, impacted the evolution of the virus towards more virulent strains, but is not conclusive proof that it is the case.

Here is the NIH article if anyone wants to dive in: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5680632/

And for geeky Marek’s posting here is my tax payment. Eli preening at my feet while i trawled through all that.

 

[featherhead007]

The virus that causes Marek’s is the same family of viruses as the one that causes Shingles (and chickenpox) in people.
They are both herpes viruses.
Herpes viruses can hang around in the body for forever and cause issues later. In people that is shingles rashes in chickens it is the tumors of Marek’s.
Sorry you aren’t in a good mood Alex - generally spring is something to feel good about even if you do have a too biting your ankles.

Could I be giving my chooks Marek’s RC? Or maybe I got it from them?

 

[RoyalChick]

Could I be giving my chooks Marek’s RC? Or maybe I got it from them?

Nope. Marek’s doesn’t live in people. You can only transmit Marek’s if you visit chickens with the disease and don’t change your clothes etc. before sitting with you chooks.

 

[featherhead007]

Nope. Marek’s doesn’t live in people. You can only transmit Marek’s if you visit chickens with the disease and don’t change your clothes etc. before sitting with you chooks.

Can I catch insanity from PoonyPoor, possibly?