Very well put @orrpeople.
I do the best I can by my birds. They get good high quality feed, scratch, boss, fresh fruit, veggies, left overs, how oatmeal laced with cinnamon and all the bugs they can catch. I keep them safe in a netted run and their coop is probably better insulated than our house. For awhile I was going nuts reading everything I could find about Marek's and what people were using to treat their birds. One day I stopped reading as it dawned on me that I needed to take a lesson from raising kids. With the first kid, mothers go by the book, second kid, they throw the book away.
I'm now trying to establish a more relaxed attitude about my flock. Yes, we have Marek''s on our property. We bought our farm from a young Amish couple and knowing about how he took care of his animals, we probably have every agricultural bacteria known to mankind on our property besides Marek's. I'd love to have goats. Nope. Know for a fact the prior owner had goats and they were not taken care of any better than his other livestock were. Johne's Disease? Yeah, you betcha. Will bet real money that it's here. And yes, there are Amish out there who get the award for being the worst animal husbandry practitioners on the planet.
But knowing that Marek's is here is just going to make keeping chickens more of a challenge. I have accepted that from time to time, one or 10 are going to curl their little toes up fall over on their backs and fly off to that rainbow bridge in heaven. And accepting that, not liking it, but accepting it, means that I'm now in a better state of mind to enjoy my chickens TODAY. BTW. No body died today. YAY!
But tomorrow morning, I'll go into the coop to open the pop door. Two or three of the bantam youngsters are going to fly up and mob me because they know I have 4 slices of bread in my pocket for them, the roosters are going to be fussing at me, the hens pecking me on the head if I happen to walk under the roost and I will greet them with the same greeting that I've been using for the past 8 months since I found out I have Marek's in my flock.
"Morning gang! Who died overnight?"
Morbid humor? Hey, you gotta hang on to something when you are dealing with this disease. It might as well be a sense of humor.
I have several pictures of my birds with ocular Marek's that I'm going to try to get posted tomorrow. Just so everyone has an idea what to look for. DH promised he'd get them ran through the photo processor and posted so I can download them. I'll do my best to get them uploaded tomorrow.
I do the best I can by my birds. They get good high quality feed, scratch, boss, fresh fruit, veggies, left overs, how oatmeal laced with cinnamon and all the bugs they can catch. I keep them safe in a netted run and their coop is probably better insulated than our house. For awhile I was going nuts reading everything I could find about Marek's and what people were using to treat their birds. One day I stopped reading as it dawned on me that I needed to take a lesson from raising kids. With the first kid, mothers go by the book, second kid, they throw the book away.
I'm now trying to establish a more relaxed attitude about my flock. Yes, we have Marek''s on our property. We bought our farm from a young Amish couple and knowing about how he took care of his animals, we probably have every agricultural bacteria known to mankind on our property besides Marek's. I'd love to have goats. Nope. Know for a fact the prior owner had goats and they were not taken care of any better than his other livestock were. Johne's Disease? Yeah, you betcha. Will bet real money that it's here. And yes, there are Amish out there who get the award for being the worst animal husbandry practitioners on the planet.
But knowing that Marek's is here is just going to make keeping chickens more of a challenge. I have accepted that from time to time, one or 10 are going to curl their little toes up fall over on their backs and fly off to that rainbow bridge in heaven. And accepting that, not liking it, but accepting it, means that I'm now in a better state of mind to enjoy my chickens TODAY. BTW. No body died today. YAY!
But tomorrow morning, I'll go into the coop to open the pop door. Two or three of the bantam youngsters are going to fly up and mob me because they know I have 4 slices of bread in my pocket for them, the roosters are going to be fussing at me, the hens pecking me on the head if I happen to walk under the roost and I will greet them with the same greeting that I've been using for the past 8 months since I found out I have Marek's in my flock.
"Morning gang! Who died overnight?"
Morbid humor? Hey, you gotta hang on to something when you are dealing with this disease. It might as well be a sense of humor.
I have several pictures of my birds with ocular Marek's that I'm going to try to get posted tomorrow. Just so everyone has an idea what to look for. DH promised he'd get them ran through the photo processor and posted so I can download them. I'll do my best to get them uploaded tomorrow.
