Lavender patterned Isabel duckwing barred - lavender brown cuckoo barred - project and genetic dis

[Kiki]

Look at this:
https://tvmdl.tamu.edu/?s=Mycoplasma&species=avian&post_type=tests&test-submit=Search+Tests
looks like you can swab and send it to TVMDL for analysis -- for 35.00 for general mycoplasma and 40.00 for specific (if I read that rightly) -- less that the cost I had thought -- and something to bear in mind.

To me that reads that you need to swap some "respiratory tissue"..is that possible on a live chicken?

Two down..the "plate test"..is that the blood test I am thinking about for $12.50?

 

[ChicKat]

Maybe I've misunderstood---but I think that you can take trachael swabs and that would pick up any of the little microscopic bad guys.

You would need the swabs...like a Q-tip wouldn't cut it -- and then the containers to send them etc.etc. --
http://www.poultryimprovement.org/documents/nvslUpdate2.pdf

Looks like you can draw blood too-- but I would think that could be a bit trickier -- and wouldn't want to open a wound - however small if you could find a different way -- because you could open the door to some infection.

Thinking it could be tissue, it could be blood or it could be swabs.
It would be something that I would discuss with the vet at A&M's TMVDL before I did it, I think so that you would be on the same page as they are.

 

[ChicKat]

I had to re read about MS last night. I read something somewhere about maybe a blood test to test for MS in a live chicken.
Let me see if I can find what I read again.
But IMO if your birds aren't "sickly" then why test, especially if you are planning on breeding for resistance.

It's a tough call...One reason that I wanted to test them - was that I was going to probably put quite a few birds up for sale in the auction - and I wanted to be sure that they were 100% healthy. That was my expectation.
Ethically, since ones tested positive for MS - IMO, I just need to close my flock. If I were to keep on the same path, in a year, let's say -- before the fall auction (It's just down the street from me at an auction barn that once auctioned cattle) -- If I were to test and the test came up clean, then I wouldn't feel remiss to sell birds there.
Does that make sense?
In the UK, Denagard in their literature says that Mycoplasma is curable....as I understand what they are saying. Here in the USA Denagard is approved for swine but not for chickens (go figure...) -- So you go to a restaurant and have bacon and eggs and the piggie had Denagard to treat him but the chicken didn't --
I'll see if I can find a link to the literature I researched about 3 years ago or so...
Here's the link:
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/focus/contents/novartis/novartis_poultry1.pdf

ETA - 'cure' may be the wrong word.... according to this site in Athens (Greece?) it "reduces the severity"
http://www.premier.com.gr/?product=denagard-12-5-solution-2

 

[ChicKat]

Here are the POL pullets that were going to go - a few other crested females could go, and one smarty-pants cockerel who never got the barring gene:

Loved the way they lined up for the snapshot.
The one out of line has some nice pink color:

Someone phoned me today to say his pullet produced her first egg -- and he's really happy and proud.

Despite the MS in mine (he got his quite some time ago -- and they could be MS free....& There's another place where a testing swab could be a good thing) He wants to try for chicks....with full awareness - but he doesn't have an incubator and the likelihood of broodiness is slim IMO. His have...similar gene pool, earlier departure from the premises - it could be a starting point if I were to decide to depopulate and wait the 2-weeks for the pathogens to all be dead for certain if his swabbed 'clean'. Mycoplasma organisms have thin cell walls and aren't very robust. Or do they have no cell walls...seems I read about it somewhere. IF they didn't have cell walls they would be just blobs right?
An option I'm choosing not to follow, I'll work with the ones here.

 

[BantyChooks]

Here are the POL pullets that were going to go - a few other crested females could go, and one smarty-pants cockerel who never got the barring gene:
View attachment 1141856
Loved the way they lined up for the snapshot.
The one out of line has some nice pink color:
View attachment 1141853
Someone phoned me today to say his pullet produced her first egg -- and he's really happy and proud.

Despite the MS in mine (he got his quite some time ago -- and they could be MS free....& There's another place where a testing swab could be a good thing) He wants to try for chicks....with full awareness - but he doesn't have an incubator and the likelihood of broodiness is slim IMO. His have...similar gene pool, earlier departure from the premises - it could be a starting point if I were to decide to depopulate and wait the 2-weeks for the pathogens to all be dead for certain if his swabbed 'clean'. Mycoplasma organisms have thin cell walls and aren't very robust. Or do they have no cell walls...seems I read about it somewhere. IF they didn't have cell walls they would be just blobs right?
An option I'm choosing not to follow, I'll work with the ones here.

No cell walls. They're in phylum Tenericutes.

They don't really have a set shape, but the cell membrane keeps them intact.

 

[ChicKat]

ahhh thanks for that. I guess I would kind of consider the membrane a wall of sorts...but I realize that technically it isn't.

 

[BantyChooks]

ahhh thanks for that. I guess I would kind of consider the membrane a wall of sorts...but I realize that technically it isn't.

If you get too far into the technically bits you'll scream and hurl the book across the wall. It gets really complicated.

 

[Kiki]

If you get too far into the technically bits you'll scream and hurl the book across the wall. It gets really complicated.

What is a book?

 

[BantyChooks]

What is a book?

The book you're reading about Mycoplasma in, silly.

 

[Kiki]

The book you're reading about Mycoplasma in, silly.

You mean the one I had to use as toilet paper during the hurricane?