Introducing a lot of chickens to a few hens

[Mrs. K]

If you raised your year old hens from chicks, and seldom visit your neighbors chickens, never walking through their coops. I would not expect the bird to be dead of Mareks disease.

Now if you got those birds from an auction, well, then all bets are off. Or if you have close neighbors with flocks less than 300 yards away, then maybe.

I think more than likely it was just the heat.

 

[NwChickOwner]

If you raised your year old hens from chicks, and seldom visit your neighbors chickens, never walking through their coops. I would not expect the bird to be dead of Mareks disease.

Now if you got those birds from an auction, well, then all bets are off. Or if you have close neighbors with flocks less than 300 yards away, then maybe.

I think more than likely it was just the heat.

Okay, thank you. I went and looked at other Mareks pictures and she didn’t have two legs out so it wasn’t as similar as I originally thought. She also had no mobility issues. I think you’re right about genetics because it was almost like she was suddenly elderly. This was just one bird and the shipping to the lab is about $100 so I don’t think that would make sense.

 

[Mrs. K]

Years ago, and I have no idea who she was and wish I did, a woman who had kept chickens for years commented on a post complaining about how expensive keeping chickens was. She said, that it is expensive as you make it. She culled sick birds, quickly, kept the flock healthy. But she seldom had sick birds.

Feed them, enough water, as good of protection as you can, and enough space. She kept them more like a garden, she fed her family with them by keeping a flock. A lot of people struggle with death as being a guilt, when it really is a fact of life.