Marek's?

[shenke79]

I have an approximately 6-7 mo old Americauna that I have had since 8-10 weeks old. The last 4 days she has been stumbling, seems uncoordinated, droopy wings, some loose stools. Otherwise acting normal. Eating/drinking/coming for treats, etc.
It was a sudden onset. They are on 16% layer pellets (although she has not started laying that i know of). About 10 days ago I did bring in 2 new adult chickens. I did not quarantine them unfortunately. None of my others are acting differently at all.

 

[M-H-Fielding]

Maybe that one is just feeling a bit down?
Not an expert on mereks.

 

[FarmerGirl101]

@microchick has some experience with Mareks disease

 

[microchick]

Unfortunately yep, guilty as charged, @FarmerGirl101.

There is another member having problems with an uncoordinated hen on the thread titled Floppy Chicken. Here is what I wrote there. Please feel free to ask questions. I am no expert, just a flock owner who has been hit by this disease and my answers are based on observation and experience along with the knowledge that I have gleaned from personal study down through the years.


In the 4+ years that I have dealt with Marek's in my flock I have only had one bird present with the particular 'scissor leg paralysis' that is the hallmark of the disease. All others presented with wild neurological symptoms and/or tumors along with Ocular Marek's disease.

I had young birds that would suddenly jump straight in the air and then run around blindly. If memory serves me correctly, I did have one that lost its balance and did circles. Some birds had seizures, wasted and died. When I had a hen turn up with grey eye that is when I began to suspect MD, but until then I had no idea what was causing the symptoms in my birds and killing them between the ages of 1 and 2 years of age. I called and talked to a Veterinary Doctor at the university of Missouri and he told me that he would be willing to do a necropsy on one of my birds but he bet real money it was Marek's.

After my conversation with him, I broke into tears. It was my husband who is a retired eye doctor who gave me my diagnosis. He checked my hen with gray eye and he confirmed that she had a raging herpes infection and was mostly blind. Since Marek's is herpes in a chicken, I knew finally what I was dealing with.

Marek's is heartbreaking and the stealer of dreams when it comes to keeping chickens. The birds I bought as chicks were bread for resistance. True, they were probably resistant to the form of Marek's that was in the area where they were hatched but not to the strain that exists around our farm.

AND, EVERY FLOCK IN THE U.S. WILL TEST POSTIVE FOR MAREK'S DISEASE. That is the cold hard fact about it. It took over 2/3rds of my flock. Second generation birds dropped like flies. The trick is to find birds that are resistant to Marek's and guard them with your life.

Management for me happened by accident. We live in the middle of an Amish community. My husband pointed out to me that the Amish neighbor's chickens looked healthy, why not get a bunch of eggs from him and hatch them in my incubator. I did, sure that they were going to drop like flies the same as my pretty pure bred Welsummers and Buff Os.

The didn't. They thrived. They more than thrived and one day my husband found me standing in the yard watching them and asked me if I had another bird on the radar and on its way out. I told him no, and wondered "Why aren't they dying?" And they weren't. The Amish barnyard mixes were breeding like mice and I was up to my elbows with little OEGB/Cochin/God only knows what else mixed birds running around acting healthy.

Local bred birds had evolved to the point where they were truly resistant to the local form of Marek's disease.

6 months later I made the painful decision to cull my original flock their egg production had dropped off due to age and all they wanted to do was sit around and shed virus in their dander. For the health of my flock of thriving birds I had them butchered.

If you can figure out a way to do it I would go with a necropsy for a bird from your flock. A civilian necropsy is going to be hard in that if they don't know what to look for, you ain't gonna see it and frankly a lot of the neuro stuff is going to be in the brain and the nervous system where Marek's will create tumors on the nerves along with nerve enlargement.

Tumors will be self explanatory. I lost a beautiful Welsummer rooster to throat cancer. He was approaching his 2nd birthday so I was watching him carefully. Suddenly I noticed he was losing weight. A few weeks later I saw him struggle to swallow scratch grain I had tossed to him. I picked him up, rubbed his throat and encountered three huge tumors under his wattles in his throat, hiding in plain sight. I set with him in my lap, petted him, talked to him, thanked him for taking care of my girls for me and how much he was loved, and got my .22 and released his spirit to fly free.

While culling the 11 birds that I had left from the original 30 odd birds of the original flock was painful, it was the right decision to make.

I currently have a flock of around 50 birds. Amish barnyard crosses, pure bred OEGB Silver Duck Wing and BBR OEGBs. I have brought vaccinated chicks from the local Orschelns and two years ago I added Egyptian Fayoumis to the flock as they are not only vaccinated but naturally resistant to MD.

Knock wood, the mass exodus of birds has stopped in my flock. I have gone from losing 1-2 birds a week to maybe 2 a year.

I know it is there, lurking around, just waiting for a chance to surface again.

The question was asked about spraying your coop, your soil. You can spray your coop but remember what I said. MD is everywhere. Dander carrying the virus (which is how it spreads) can travel 5 miles and the virus can live in the soil for 7 years.

I do not let my birds leave our neighborhood. I have given my Barnyard specials to our next door neighbor to give them a start of birds and theirs' are doing well also. Somebody once asked me if they could scrape the soil to rid it of virus. Only, I told them, if you are willing to scrape your whole property, burn your house down, burn your out buildings down, enclose your whole property in an environmentally sealed habitat bubble, dress in an airtight contagion suit and...and well, I think you get the point.

Vaccinated birds? Worth a try. I'm having good luck with them. Are you going to lose a lot of birds? I'm sorry, the potential with Marek's is always there for that to happen.

A member here on Back Yard Chickens once told me after a rather tearful post about my dealings with the disease to hang on. It would get better. Sooner or later the deaths will taper off and I will lose only the occasional bird and that has happened. I wish I could remember who gave me that advice but God Bless You is all I can say because they were so right.

In the mean time my best advice is to go with an autopsy/necropsy if you can swing it but until then just consider it to be Marek's disease.

I read a painful number of medical studies in my research that while I'm a retired nurse, frankly made my brains hurt and one stands out. It said. If you have a bird mysteriously die for no obvious reason, it's probably Marek's Disease. In all honesty, that is stretching it a bit. Chickens, like sheep, just love to die, but I understood what they were saying now. Knowing that I have Marek's exposed birds, when one does die, my husband says, 'Marek's Disease?' and I just shrug and say 'yep'.

Except the one hen that died suddenly. Fine that morning, dead as a board that afternoon. I got up my nerve and cracked her open expecting Marek's related tumors. Nope. She died of a reproductive infection. I giggled with relief and at that moment knew my flock of spoiled fat birds had a chance. One had died from something other than Marek's disease.

But not knowing what is happening is stressful and painful. Please, if you can, find out for sure.

In the meantime. You aren't alone. There are a lot of us on BYC dealing with MD. It's not a club anybody wants to belong to but it has a lot of support and understanding folks to talk to.