Introducing new chicks to the flock? Will it be harmful?

[Cryss]

Day old chicks from a hatchery are usually fine. There is no need to bother with quarantine (housing them far away, changing clothes, etc.)

Thank You

 

[raingarden]

Using hatching eggs provide one additional layer of protection. If hatcheries never transmitted a disease then diseases would seldom be transmitted.

 

[NatJ]

My bad. I was reading a portion of an article on the google page that said 100% of all chicks were vaccinated against mareks. What I didn’t notice was that if you clicked to read it you had to register. I have no idea now why or who said that. View attachment 3270919

That may be true for commercial layer chicks, the ones that produce eggs for grocery stores. I don't know for sure.

But hatcheries that sell chicks to individuals (layers, meat birds, rare breeds, etc.) usually have an option to choose Mareks vaccination at checkout, for an extra fee. I can't see any reason they would give this choice if they were actually vaccinating every chick anyway.

And the hatcheries often say that Mareks vaccination is not available for Cornish Cross chicks, presumably because those are intended to only live about 2 months before they are butchered. If the whole point of the vaccine is to reduce or avoid symptoms, and if symptoms usually take longer than 2 months to develop, it would be pointless to vaccinate such chickens.

Especially if you are discussing Cornish Cross chicks (a few posts ago), I really do not think a hatchery is going to be vaccinating them all for Mareks by default.

 

[Ridgerunner]

My bad. I was reading a portion of an article on the google page that said 100% of all chicks were vaccinated against mareks. What I didn’t notice was that if you clicked to read it you had to register. I have no idea now why or who said that.

Pretty sure they are talking about the commercial egg laying hatcheries, where they may hatch 1,000,000 chicks each week in different hatcheries for the commercial industry, not the hatcheries we get our chicks from. That kind of thing happens a lot on here, people read stuff that applies to the commercial industry and think it applies to us. We can learn a lot by reading about what they do but we don't manage them that way, that's not the world we live in. It does create a lot of confusion on here.

 

[Cryss]

Using hatching eggs provide one additional layer of protection. If hatcheries never transmitted a disease then diseases would seldom be transmitted.

Thank You