Merek - question

[diamonk]

I am buying some new chickens this weekend. The chicks they buy from hatcheries are vaccinated for Merek's disease but the ones they hatch on premise are not. The place is NPIP certified and i was told Merek's vaccination was therefore not necessary. What do you think? I have 3 chickens currently and they were all vaccinated.
Thanks!

 

[BarredBuff]

I would want them vaccinated for mareks purely because all of the other are vacinated for it.

 

[Matt A NC]

If they are from a flock that has been heavy vaccinated for several generations, I would get them vaccinated too. Most from a more natural flock will be immune to Mareks. I have birds that are both vaccinated and not. Those that are vaccinated are from the larger hatcheries. I normally lose 1 or 2 growing birds a year to mareks, but it is normally birds that already have something wrong or runts. Last year I didn't lose any.

This year I made the mistake of buying from Cackle and forgot to get the mareks vaccine. I have put down 8 of 19 that I kept for mareks.

Matt

 

[yelim]

I read on Ideal's web site they do not recomend getting chicks vacinated(sp). Is this usual?

 

[AHappychick]

if they have not been vaccinated and have been around any other chickens it is probably too late to vaccinate them but you can still try, just make sure to keep them isolated for 10 days from any other chickens and deal with them in fresh clean clothes before you have dealt with your flocks.

Their excuse for not vaccinated does not make sense as Mareks is in the soil everywhere, but they must not have had any real problems with it on their property or trust me they would be vaccinating. If they don't their breeds are probably resistant to the disease and that is a great thing. I would not bother vaccinating them if you have not had to deal with any bad outbreaks of Mareks before and not stress it

The fact that you will have some chicks that are vaccinated and others that are not will not have any ill effects and they can live together just fine.

I have found that breeders who have had to deal with a bad strain of Mareks either vaccinate or cull all those that are infected in order to breed only birds that have the genetic ability to be resistant of it. Since Mareks is everywhere the latter is really the best approach but many of us can not bring ourselves to cull so heavily in order to get to the point where several generations later we have a Mareks strong flock.

ETA that if these are your first chickens ever there is no reason to think that you have a bad strain of Mareks on your property.

I did not have any problems with the disease until I bought infected birds from a bad breeder. After that the cat was out of the bag so to speak and no amount of cleaning has gotten rid of it. I am willing to bet that Matts situation was similar.