Is it too late to vaccinate my Chickens

[Limpin Nugget]

Good day,

I didn't vaccinate my chickens, some are less than a year old some are 2 years of age, though moringga and oregano is included in their diet. Lately, there are cases of sudden death, I think it's Marek's, of chickens in the neighborhood. What should I do and is it too late to vaccinate my flock?


Thank you..

 

[rosemarythyme]

If they've already been exposed it's too late to vaccinate. Are the possible Marek's deaths in your flock? Do you live somewhere where you can send the bird(s) in for autopsy? It's the only way to know for sure.

 

[Mvan42]

I think (I am not 100%sure) that Marek Vax has to be done within the first day after hatch.

Someone correct me if I am wrong

 

[aldarita]

Mareks vaccine has to be applied on the day they hatch and chicks have to be in complete quarantine for at least 2 weeks until the antibodies form. Even then there is still a chance for them to get infected with the virus since vaccines are not 100% efficient. Some chickens are infected and don't show signs of illness but become carriers.
Vaccinating an adult chicken is not a good idea, eventhough they might not show signs, it is futile because the virus is in the air and there is not certainty of it haven't been exposed already.

 

[Tankueray]

Right now, cases (plural) of sudden death would have me more interested in AI than Marek's. Or possibly if you've had a recent short term weather change to some extreme, that can also trigger some unexplained deaths.

While the Marek's vaccine won't actually hurt them if given later than day one, it's generally not worth the cost and effort to do it at the point you're at. If they're all already laying, you stand a good chance of avoiding any issues. Although they are good supplements, Moringa and oregano will not prevent Marek's. I did a 4 year project on Moringa and while it does have some interesting chemical compounds and the seeds and roots are worth more scientific exploration, most of what you've heard is more hype than anything. It's a nutritious food, that's about it. (Also, don't eat the root, it can be toxic.)

If you think the other birds' deaths are due to disease, the best thing you can do is strict biosecurity. You going to a restaurant with one of the neighbors could pass a piece of dander from their clothing to yours, and you'd bring it home and could infect your birds. Or a microscopic piece of dander from their house could float on the wind to your house and you're in the same boat. (Dander is a Marek's thing, not all avian diseases travel that way or live that long outside the body.) Keep your birds in the cleanest and lowest stress condition you possibly can, don't allow things or people to move in and out of your exclusion zone, and use a footbath (properly) and disinfection, and you've got a chance of not getting it if it's Marek's. And you have to do this forever, because if it's not Marek's now, it's just a matter of time before it is.

The test for Marek's doesn't require any death or necropsy. It can be done with a blood sample or cloacal swab. It's basically just like the (three day send off) PCR testing we all went through for COVID, except for where they stick the swab, of course.

Speaking of, I was just reading a study where they found that "boosting" the Rispens Marek's vaccine at 7 or 14 days with one of the other two showed an increased resistance to infection with the vv+ variant. And that waiting until day 4 or 7 for the initial vaccine allowed for the maternal antibodies to clear so as not to interfere with the immune response triggered by the vaccine (that was potentially a good thing to learn). The sad part is that they didn't decide to rethink the actual vaccine timeline, but recommended that periodic boosters should be explored instead....without any actual evidence that any of the experiment conveyed any advantage past day 35, after they infected all the chicks then killed them to see if they had Marek's. (Sorry folks, that's how almost all animal research works.) They actually don't care about Marek's vaccine efficacy past 8 weeks when most broilers are harvested, also the reason why it's cool that the vaccine doesn't cause tumors but doesn't do much else. "They" being Big Ag, who puts up most of the funding for research, not the scientists.

Which is why chickens (and vaccines in general) are in kind of a predicament because they just want to create more vaccines without testing them long enough to see if they actually work, and instead we're just feeding new hors d'oeuvres to the diseases so that they can overcome them faster. Remember how the Borg adapt after three phaser hits? Up until now, we've just been lucky that first generation vaccines generally work with most diseases without triggering evolution of the disease. But just like MRSA, viruses and bacteria can be vaccinated too, by giving them small amounts of the things we use to fight them so that they can adapt, and we (scientists) totally know better (Seriously - it only takes 11 days to create super bacteria:

). We could have mostly eradicated Marek's even 20 years ago, but money talks, and Nature finds a way. (Note that the vaccine that we can buy, the non-cryogenic one, is the original vaccine. Any vaccine resistance was initiated by the commercial vaccines and/or natural mutation.)