Marek Vaccine

[CHICKENX2005]

I've been reading a lot of threads on here and a lot of other sites and people's stories and experiences about this and... if to keep your chickens alive and healthy you have to vaccinate them and give them all these magical things to help keep them alive then those chickens are just weak and you are just messing you and future chicken owners up by breeding chickens that need so much help to survive. Mareks disease is everywhere and chickens should be able to develop a natural immunity to it without any of our special creations. Imagine if no chickens could survive without the vaccine because they weren't breed to be resistant to mareks and all the sudden we couldn't give our chicks the vaccine anymore for some reason. We would have a big problem. Really people should be breeding chickens that are more resistant to mareks. I feel that would be a lot more beneficial in the long run then continuing to breed with and help baby along weak chickens.

 

[Stephine]

I've been reading a lot of threads on here and a lot of other sites and people's stories and experiences about this and... if to keep your chickens alive and healthy you have to vaccinate them and give them all these magical things to help keep them alive then those chickens are just weak and you are just messing you and future chicken owners up by breeding chickens that need so much help to survive. Mareks disease is everywhere and chickens should be able to develop a natural immunity to it without any of our special creations. Imagine if no chickens could survive without the vaccine because they weren't breed to be resistant to mareks and all the sudden we couldn't give our chicks the vaccine anymore for some reason. We would have a big problem. Really people should be breeding chickens that are more resistant to mareks. I feel that would be a lot more beneficial in the long run then continuing to breed with and help baby along weak chickens.

Well, people have certainly tried to breed for Marek‘s resistance, only so far without success. There are certain breeds that are less susceptible and others that are more susceptible, but so far no one has managed to breed a susceptible breed to resistance.
Every bug is different and Marek‘s is a tricky one. Luckily we have the vaccine and I am very thankful for it. I just lost two darling pullets to the disease because I was foolish enough to believe a small local hatchery owner when she said that her birds were resistant and she has never heard of issues from her customers…
It was absolutely heartbreaking and I will only get vaccinated birds from now on.