- Nov 19, 2013
- 5
- 0
- 7
Hi all,
I just thought I'd post about my success against Mareks, since I first read about a 'cure' here in BYC. If you search for 'Mareks cure' in BYC you'll see a post by KittyCat who describes about how they created a potion from StJohns wort, which is what I tried using.
We had 8 chicks hatched last summer (Jan2013) from a single chicken...a case of buying 4 chickens which were 'guaranteed' female, but as it turns out, 2 were roosters....the result was a hen going clucky, and my young children wanting to see if it resulted in baby chicks.....against my better judgement! I softened and let them carry on.
7 hatched altogether, and then the mother abandoned the last 3 eggs....we left them in the hutch, and about a week later one of the hatched without the mother brooding....it was so hot she didn't need to!
The last chick was always weaker and smaller than the others, the kids named her 'Tiny'. 4 of the 8 turned out as roosters, so we gave them away. 1 sister died suddenly, without any symptoms of anything....in hindsight maybe mareks.
Tiny showed some early signs of Mareks (limping foot) at about 7-8 weeks, but I just didn't click as to what it was.....we let it go, and she got better. Then at about 9 months of age she redeveloped the limp, her remaining 2 sisters both died instantly one night without any symptoms showing....so Tiny was the last of the 4 females left sadly.
She was chronically bad - classic Marek's leg splits, one up near her head and the other 180 degrees from that. I was going to man-up and pull her neck, but I decided not to since she wasn't in any pain it appeared, but she was totally crippled and had lost 3/4 of her weight. I read Kittykat's 'cure' and eventual demise, but not disheartened I decided to have a go.
I separated her into a small cat carrier cage, and fed her by holding her upright 2-3 times a day.I tried to create the StJohn's potion KittyKat described a few times, but KittyKat talks about the potion needing distilled water, since the contamination nullifies the active ingredient, Hypericum. KittyKat only said the patient need 10 drops of water of the potion, but I decided that it was too hit-and-miss, so I tried something else.
I cut sultanas in half, crushed 1/2 a tablet of StJohn's Wort (2800mg tablets) down to fragments of about 1-2mm cubed, and shoved the fragments into the sultana halves. I fed this to Tiny twice a day, which she gobbled down quite happily, and the sultanas also boosted her energy. My logic was that the Hypericum would only be marginally 'contaminated' this way - the majority would go straight into the stomach and be properly absorbed, rather than trying the quite diluted potion of KittyKat's.
After about a week, Tiny could sit upright rather than sprawled out like road kill. She couldn't balance, and had the jitters badly in her legs, but it was an improvement. By the end of the second week, she could stand upright for short periods of time. By the end of the 3rd week, Tiny was walking around the yard, pecking around like a normal chicken, but her walk was a drunken, weak one. Its now 3.5 weeks, and she is running in the yard (slightly sideways), but she's a lot stronger and behaving almost completely normally, and quite strong in the legs.....she's scratching around, digging and running. Each day she's slightly better.
I should also mention that compassion in some animals for others can be astounding....our pet dog, a Sheltie, also looked after Tiny. Several times I spied on the dog without him knowing, and I saw him on more than 3-4 occasions push the water and food bowls up to Tiny so she could eat/drink....he also chased away pesky Myna birds and the other chickens so that nothing molested Tiny. His concern for her was amazing, whenever I fed her, he would watch intently and softly place his paw on my arm and look at me like a nurse tending a patient. Amazing.
Give it a go. I'm not sure if the StJohns helped her, or whether it was just time / care that she had that cured her.
I just thought I'd post about my success against Mareks, since I first read about a 'cure' here in BYC. If you search for 'Mareks cure' in BYC you'll see a post by KittyCat who describes about how they created a potion from StJohns wort, which is what I tried using.
We had 8 chicks hatched last summer (Jan2013) from a single chicken...a case of buying 4 chickens which were 'guaranteed' female, but as it turns out, 2 were roosters....the result was a hen going clucky, and my young children wanting to see if it resulted in baby chicks.....against my better judgement! I softened and let them carry on.
7 hatched altogether, and then the mother abandoned the last 3 eggs....we left them in the hutch, and about a week later one of the hatched without the mother brooding....it was so hot she didn't need to!
The last chick was always weaker and smaller than the others, the kids named her 'Tiny'. 4 of the 8 turned out as roosters, so we gave them away. 1 sister died suddenly, without any symptoms of anything....in hindsight maybe mareks.
Tiny showed some early signs of Mareks (limping foot) at about 7-8 weeks, but I just didn't click as to what it was.....we let it go, and she got better. Then at about 9 months of age she redeveloped the limp, her remaining 2 sisters both died instantly one night without any symptoms showing....so Tiny was the last of the 4 females left sadly.
She was chronically bad - classic Marek's leg splits, one up near her head and the other 180 degrees from that. I was going to man-up and pull her neck, but I decided not to since she wasn't in any pain it appeared, but she was totally crippled and had lost 3/4 of her weight. I read Kittykat's 'cure' and eventual demise, but not disheartened I decided to have a go.
I separated her into a small cat carrier cage, and fed her by holding her upright 2-3 times a day.I tried to create the StJohn's potion KittyKat described a few times, but KittyKat talks about the potion needing distilled water, since the contamination nullifies the active ingredient, Hypericum. KittyKat only said the patient need 10 drops of water of the potion, but I decided that it was too hit-and-miss, so I tried something else.
I cut sultanas in half, crushed 1/2 a tablet of StJohn's Wort (2800mg tablets) down to fragments of about 1-2mm cubed, and shoved the fragments into the sultana halves. I fed this to Tiny twice a day, which she gobbled down quite happily, and the sultanas also boosted her energy. My logic was that the Hypericum would only be marginally 'contaminated' this way - the majority would go straight into the stomach and be properly absorbed, rather than trying the quite diluted potion of KittyKat's.
After about a week, Tiny could sit upright rather than sprawled out like road kill. She couldn't balance, and had the jitters badly in her legs, but it was an improvement. By the end of the second week, she could stand upright for short periods of time. By the end of the 3rd week, Tiny was walking around the yard, pecking around like a normal chicken, but her walk was a drunken, weak one. Its now 3.5 weeks, and she is running in the yard (slightly sideways), but she's a lot stronger and behaving almost completely normally, and quite strong in the legs.....she's scratching around, digging and running. Each day she's slightly better.
I should also mention that compassion in some animals for others can be astounding....our pet dog, a Sheltie, also looked after Tiny. Several times I spied on the dog without him knowing, and I saw him on more than 3-4 occasions push the water and food bowls up to Tiny so she could eat/drink....he also chased away pesky Myna birds and the other chickens so that nothing molested Tiny. His concern for her was amazing, whenever I fed her, he would watch intently and softly place his paw on my arm and look at me like a nurse tending a patient. Amazing.
Give it a go. I'm not sure if the StJohns helped her, or whether it was just time / care that she had that cured her.
