Mareks vaccine

[Keira1st]

Hi everyone! I am hatching chicks for the first time and I know they need to get vaccinated for mareks disease. I have a couple questions about the best ways to obtain and administer this vaccine. I have done a little bit of reading on the subject and it seems easy enough to administer at home. But as a first time hatcher would it be better to take the chick to a vet? And if I were to decide on vaccinating at home, where should I buy it from. Thank you so much for your help. Chicks haven’t hatched yet but I want to be as prepared as I can.

 

[Folly's place]

Vaccinated chicks need to be totally isolated from possible exposure to the disease for about two weeks; hard to do at home if you have Marek's disease on your property.
Otherwise, it's ordering a vial from Jeffers or some other source. It can be divided into four amounts for a total of four hatches, really not more. It's only good for one hour after being reconstituted, really a pain for at home use.
Mary

 

[ackie]

I personally did the research and opted to not vaccinate mine against mareks for a couple reasons
1. while the $/dose isnt bad if you have enough chicks to use the whole vial, it's really cost prohibitive for a hatch of 20 or 30 chicks since it cant be stored once mixed. Whichever one I looked at wasnt even divided into 4 so it would have been a whole lot wasted.
2. The Mareks vaccine is leaky, so it will prevent the vaccinated chicks from getting sick but it wont prevent them from having and spreading the virus. Imagine like with the flu... if you got it and got really sick & couldn't get out of bed, youd infect a ton fewer people. But if you were asymptomatic and felt great and ran around like normal, you'd inadvertently expose many more people. I'd much prefer a couple birds to die quietly in the corner than basically be superspreaders to my adult unvaccinated birds and kill them.
3. Because its leaky, if you vaccinate these guys, you really need to vaccinate your next clutch too. And the next one. Otherwise you have the same problem described in #2 but with your new clutch at risk.

 

[Keira1st]

Vaccinated chicks need to be totally isolated from possible exposure to the disease for about two weeks; hard to do at home if you have Marek's disease on your property.
Otherwise, it's ordering a vial from Jeffers or some other source. It can be divided into four amounts for a total of four hatches, really not more. It's only good for one hour after being reconstituted, really a pain for at home use.
Mary

All of my birds are vaccinated and I want the hen who has been sitting on the eggs to raise them. If I isolate the chick will that cause problems with the bond between mom and chick? Can I keep them together?

 

[Folly's place]

That's not what actually happens. Here we have unvaccinated birds who were hatched here, and vaccinated birds from hatcheries, all together, and have managed this way since 1995(ish). We haven't had Marek's disease in our flock, because we've been very paranoid about biosecurity, and we've been lucky.
The vaccine does not produce Marek's disease!!! Our unvaccinated birds are the 'canaries in the coal mine' here. If Marek's disease arrives, those birds would be likely to develop issues, while the vaccinated birds likely won't. And we have them all tagged, so we know who's who out there.
Mary

 

[Keira1st]

That's not what actually happens. Here we have unvaccinated birds who were hatched here, and vaccinated birds from hatcheries, all together, and have managed this way since 1995(ish). We haven't had Marek's disease in our flock, because we've been very paranoid about biosecurity, and we've been lucky.
The vaccine does not produce Marek's disease!!! Our unvaccinated birds are the 'canaries in the coal mine' here. If Marek's disease arrives, those birds would be likely to develop issues, while the vaccinated birds likely won't. And we have them all tagged, so we know who's who out there.
Mary

Is this a reply to the person who doesn’t vaccinate or to one of my comments??

 

[ackie]

That's not what actually happens. Here we have unvaccinated birds who were hatched here, and vaccinated birds from hatcheries, all together, and have managed this way since 1995(ish). We haven't had Marek's disease in our flock, because we've been very paranoid about biosecurity, and we've been lucky.
The vaccine does not produce Marek's disease!!! Our unvaccinated birds are the 'canaries in the coal mine' here. If Marek's disease arrives, those birds would be likely to develop issues, while the vaccinated birds likely won't. And we have them all tagged, so we know who's who out there.
Mary

If this is in regard to my post, I definitely did not say the vaccine produces Mareks. Just if Mareks DOES show up, it can still infect the vaccinated ones and let them spread it farther than if they hadnt been vaccinated.

 

[Folly's place]

So true, but that's why I manage my flock as I do.
Mary