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lol This is the same thing I said you just used alot more words.
I never referred to building resistance by keeping sickly birds who dont recover. But breeding birds that do recover and ones that dont get sick at all. Your "natural resistance " paragragh. Old timers didnt cull their entire flocks. If they found them they culled the ones that were poorly and not up to snuff. Probably ate em. The survivors that never got ill or recovered were the ones producing the next hatch. Why do I say "found"? Cause on those farms the chickens free ranged everywere. If they got sick they either recover or died in the bushes.
But now when people talk about diseases they refer to culling their entire flock.
Again, is this doing chickendom any favors? Not only having these diseases spread by wild birds but more and more folks are getting chickens.
Having a closed flock will be next to impossible unless you are a chicken farmer with huge sheds to lock them in.
As you pointed out, we are the offspring of survivors. Our chickens should continuie to be the offspring of survivors.
I also am a supporter of vaccines. One of the more natural ways we can jump start the immune system against cocci and mareks.
AGAIN, this is JUST MY HUMBLE OPINION which I am entitled too and do not jump on me for it.
I'm sorry. I don't think I articulated myself very well. We are absolutely not saying the same thing I am specifically responding to the implication that not culling chickens who have survived disease will somehow lead to resistance in the greater chicken population.
This part:
I am not sure that culling a chicken that has survived a disease is doing Ckickendom any favors. In other words- How can we produce chickens resistance to these diseases if we cull them?
And then this in the newer response:
But breeding birds that do recover and ones that dont get sick at all. Your "natural resistance " paragragh.
Birds that recover from disease do not have natural resistance; they have exposure resistance. As I explained above there is a big difference. The very fact that they fell ill to begin with -- thus having to recover -- demonstrates that they do not possess natural resistance. As I explained above, exposure resistance cannot be bred into future generations. The theory simply doesn't translate into reality. It does not work that way. It does work that way for chickens that never fall ill despite exposure to pathogens that would make illness likely. We ARE talking the same thing there, I think.
And, just for clarity's sake, when I say "sickly" I don't mean birds who are consistently or repeatedly ill, but simply those who are susceptible to illness. Probably not the best terminology on my part, best I could think of at the time though.
As to the old timers argument, it's the same as what I responded earlier to the other poster -- sorry, drawing a blank on the name right now -- yes, it's true that old timers didn't cull entire flocks and it's true that some of the best flock management goes back to these days but as I said before the danger comes when you blindly combine modern convenience and technology with old time theory. Old Timers didn't cull entire flocks, but they also didn't coddle sick chickens. How many times in this thread alone have we talked about someone who has an ill chicken in the house or in an "ICU" of some sort? Often with added heat, modern medicines being employed, special diets being offered, etc. We've even had people hand and force feeding chickens to keep them alive. Many times these chickens recover, it's a marvel of our modern times and it's great that people don't have to lose beloved pets, but it renders the flock management of our ancestors absolutely irrelevant.
So yes, if you want to leave your chickens to their devices if they fall ill, offer absolutely no extra supportive care or treatment and then breed the survivors of illness for the sake of capitalizing on the hardiness in recoverability we could certainly make a fair argument that that is doing something for "chickendom"; breeding chickens who survive illness with the incredible amounts of supportive care afforded them by our modern times however, is not in any way contributing to greater resistance or hardiness in subsequent generations.
You are absolutely entitled to your opinion and as I said before I am not trying to jump all over you, but some of what you're proposing just plain doesn't work biologically. It's definitely not personal, I just think it'd be wrong not to respond with the other side of things especially with how many people read and take most of their education from here -- many without ever even responding to ask questions themselves.
I edited this a few times because it is hard to respond to an attack without attacking back.
I stand by my opinion. These diseases are not going away. Survivors and healthly chickens after an infection can benefit the future of the flock.
Merry Christmas everybody.
