Moving Forward- Breeding for Resistance to Marek's Disease

[Chickie Baby]

Sorry to hear that.

Try different things this time, maybe?

There are still so, so many treatments for various serious and even similar diseases people have not tried on poultry. Experimentation will be necessary until the cure is found... There is no incurable disease, only disease for which the cure has not yet been found. Sounds to me like Hypericum is part of the answer for some but not the whole answer.

Best wishes.

I gave her liquid B12 Complex for 2 days and it seemed to constipated her. Good news for now is she's NOT any worse. Still gets up and goes everywhere the others go. Just a little slower and takes many naps. She gets her daily leg massages which she seems to adore. Such a precious little thing... I really want to see her fight and win. One of my Roos did the same thing and he pulled through. His gait is a little off, but it doesn't hinder him one bit. He started crowing recently (late crower for sure) and it sounds like he doesn't have the oxygen my other 2 do to get it out, but it's shows me he's a fighter!

I haven't tried Hypericum yet.... When I tried the B12 (not sure what even prompted that) it seemed so easy because it's red and she ate it on a small piece of bread. A cure is there somewhere. I look at things all the time and wonder if "that" is the cure and no one has tried it yet!!

 

[chooks4life]

As long as the animal is willing to fight for its life there is a chance. Keep experimenting and best of luck with that.

A sustained mega-dose of vitamin C is known to cure many diseases, basically it acts as hydrogen peroxide within the cells and flushes them with oxygen, which is anti everything harmful to us and animals, more or less. Just a random thing worth mentioning on any thread about serious disease.

Sometimes your subconscious has already put two and two together but the logical/conscious brain keeps shouting it down because, well, it's logical... 'Logic' depends on quantifying the situation in every possible way and there are many areas in which it's still beyond our capacities to measure everything.

A lot of what we now know as 'logical' was once considered illogical or abstract at best. Happy accidents do happen. Probably more often when people stop so rigorously adhering to what we currently 'know' even though historically it's proven to be subject to rapid change without warning. People tend to dismiss intuition but a fair few scientific and medical discoveries were based on people acting on their intuition/subconscious thought trains.

Hopefully you find something that works, and if so, in future we can come to figure out and understand the 'why'. Sometimes people dismiss things because 'logic' does not seem to explain it, which is putting the carriage before the horse. Finding out through experimentation what works and then finding the explanation is generally how it works, not the other way around.

Best wishes.

 

[speckledhen]

I have been puzzling over this disease for a few days now and found this thread from a fellow Georgian who sounds like me, trying to do everything right as far as biosecurity, etc, and still, BOOM! hit by this horrible thing. sassybirds, coincidentally, I was just corresponding today with Dr. James Davis at the poultry lab in Oakwood to understand this stuff. I was trying to reach Dr. Bohanan, but I guess he must have retired and the Dalton lab is closed. Telling him that I've never seen lameness in my birds other than injury or old-age arthritis so does this mean I do not have this in my flock, Davis told me that some with Mareks never show any symptoms at all, period, and no one would know they have it unless you open them up and look inside.

So, here's my problem in trying to understand this disease:

We always hear folks say when one of our members is wondering about the unexpected death of a bird, sometimes, chickens just die . Dr. Davis sent me his brochure he wrote on the disease, which states what I did in the previous paragraph, that some never show any symptoms, but have the disease and are carriers. So, how would anyone know that there was Marek's in their flock aside from symptomatic birds? It's maddening to think you, sassy, like me, do everything right as far as keeping the birds safe, no trading, etc, but your flock is a victim of this insidious disease anyway. Like you, we have Tyson houses not far from us, like most folks in far North Georgia do. I don't believe in mollycoddling birds, medicating the heck out of them and I do not vaccinate them, either, but Dr. Davis says the only way to prevent it is to buy hatchery birds vaccinated at hatch. Well, that doesn't prevent it and I know this already. My comment was then, if I did that to avoid this virus, I will be back to square one with the sucky genetics and hens dying from internal laying/salpingitis/egg yolk peritonitis if I did that. Can I just say

? It's so frustrating!

 

[seminolewind]

Hi. First off there is a link at the bottom of my posts -Marek's the Big FAQ- by Nambroth. I think it's the best easiest to read written on here.
Yes you can do everything right and still get it, it's like greater chance or lesser chance. I learned way back when from you that a closed flock to You is only day old hatchery birds or hatching your own. I broke that rule One time and ended up with many deaths over the years. It was a silkie from a breeder I met at a swap.

Tyson and the like all vaccinate their birds, don't mix ages, and disinfect. (The best disinfectant so far is Virkon). It's rare that birds will carry Marek's to you. Uncommon, not impossible. It depends on a bird's territory and whether it visits you and Tyson.

You can not prevent Marek's. You can prevent the symptoms in 90% of vaccinated birds. The vaccine will Not give them Marek's or make them carriers.

If you ask me, with your biosecurity only hatching or day olds from a hatchery, it would be rare but not impossible to get it. Don't wear your chicken shoes to the feed store. Be very careful at others' homes with chickens.

In the beginning, I had had a few deaths , wasting with unknown cause, and a roo with all the classic symptoms at 18 months old and was dx'd with Equine Encephalitis (wrong) . I had realized my flock had it because a whole hatch of mine died one after another with paralysis and no depth perception, and some gasping. Prior to that my hatches were fine between the time I bought the hen and these 10 chicks dying at 6 weeks old.

So you CAN get some outside blood into your flock with hatching. Even if you hatch eggs you get from others. Marek's does not travel in eggs. And you can vaccinate your own day olds if you decide to.

Read Nambroth's FAQ, it says a lot.

There's a group of us on here that can take care of any question you have.

Texas A&M can test blood from a live chicken and test for Marek's. It's a PCR test. However, as I and Nambroth have experienced that false negatives can happen but we haven't discovered why yet.

http://tvmdl.tamu.edu/tests_services/test_info.php?unit_id=1349

 

[speckledhen]

Hi. First off there is a link at the bottom of my posts -Marek's the Big FAQ- by Nambroth. I think it's the best easiest to read written on here.
Yes you can do everything right and still get it, it's like greater chance or lesser chance. I learned way back when from you that a closed flock to You is only day old hatchery birds or hatching your own. I broke that rule One time and ended up with many deaths over the years. It was a silkie from a breeder I met at a swap.

Tyson and the like all vaccinate their birds, don't mix ages, and disinfect. (The best disinfectant so far is Virkon). It's rare that birds will carry Marek's to you. Uncommon, not impossible. It depends on a bird's territory and whether it visits you and Tyson.

You can not prevent Marek's. You can prevent the symptoms in 90% of vaccinated birds. The vaccine will Not give them Marek's or make them carriers.

If you ask me, with your biosecurity only hatching or day olds from a hatchery, it would be rare but not impossible to get it. Don't wear your chicken shoes to the feed store. Be very careful at others' homes with chickens. [[[That's exactly what I do, Karen. My chicken shoes never leave my property. I've only visited one person's home with a flock and I bought brand new shoes to wear there to keep hers safe.]]]

In the beginning, I had had a few deaths , wasting with unknown cause, and a roo with all the classic symptoms at 18 months old and was dx'd with Equine Encephalitis (wrong) . I had realized my flock had it because a whole hatch of mine died one after another with paralysis and no depth perception, and some gasping. Prior to that my hatches were fine between the time I bought the hen and these 10 chicks dying at 6 weeks old.

So you CAN get some outside blood into your flock with hatching. Even if you hatch eggs you get from others. Marek's does not travel in eggs. And you can vaccinate your own day olds if you decide to.

Read Nambroth's FAQ, it says a lot.

There's a group of us on here that can take care of any question you have.

Texas A&M can test blood from a live chicken and test for Marek's. It's a PCR test. However, as I and Nambroth have experienced that false negatives can happen but we haven't discovered why yet.

http://tvmdl.tamu.edu/tests_services/test_info.php?unit_id=1349

I asked Dr. Davis about this, having this testing done at my place to see if it was here, lurking, and he said he knew of no blood test for Marek's so I just sent him this link.

Hey, he is head of a poultry lab and ought to know about it, right??

The only wasting I've had in this flock was with internal laying, but every single hen had a healthy, robust liver and other organs, never went lame at all, just had loads of that cheesy gunk in her abdomen and/or oviducts. And I know about how the vaccine works, doesn't prevent the disease only the tumors...that bugs me, really. That means there could be infected birds, carriers, walking around and you just don't know it. I'd rather KNOW it!

I know of folks with Mareks in their own flocks who are selling hatching eggs and though it isn't technically passed down through the egg, I'm not sure I could do that. Seems the slightest chance of dander or something being on the surface of the eggs themselves, however slight.

Seems odd not to mix ages when many of us depend on broody hens to raise the chicks naturally. Brooding chicks artificially, having to do so, just doesn't seem right to me. And if you get hatchery day-olds, well, Karen, you know how that worked out for me--they were the ones with sucky reproductive genetics, except for Caroline, my almost 8 year old Buff Brahma.

 

[seminolewind]

Cynthia, haven't you realized that BYC is the place to go for the latest breaking information?

There are many illnesses that cause wasting. Many. Prior to blood tests and PCR testing and necropsies, the only way to guess if your flock had Marek's was with a good flock history (who came when), and more than one symptom. Please don't refrain from buying hatching eggs. I know they have egg washing stuff.

The problem was with the production houses, and they started using the vaccine. However, in the 80's, Marek's had wiped out close to 2/3 of production chickens . They learned the rest from the Amish. Don't mix ages, and disinfect between batches. Producers finally got the number down to less than 5%. But since then the backyard chicken scene has exploded and now it's become OUR problem. We do all the wrong things. Continue to add chickens, buying from swaps, thinking we're safe buying from a breeder, etc.

We need to protect our own. No new chickens except hatchery day olds, and vaccinate. Hatch eggs. There has been no known case of Marek's traveling by egg. (that I've read). We can mix ages with biosecurity.

Wasn't Caroline Suede's lady friend?

 

[seminolewind]

Oh yea, I doubt Marek's will lurk behind your back without giving you any hints. I think you'll know if something is just not right. And if one of yours dies, I know you and hubby do a necropsy now and then, and what you'd find, most likely, is tumors, or one sciatic nerve is much larger than the other. Not a guarantee, but a much better info.

 

[chooks4life]

It's maddening to think you, sassy, like me, do everything right as far as keeping the birds safe, no trading, etc, but your flock is a victim of this insidious disease anyway.

We do all the wrong things. Continue to add chickens, buying from swaps, thinking we're safe buying from a breeder, etc.

If both 'doing all the right things' and 'doing all the wrong things' still results in the same end conclusion i.e. getting Marek's sooner or later, then surely doing something else or reconsidering what we think is 'right' or 'wrong' is needed.

Going from personal experience, it seems to me that flocks in which people 'did all the right things' tend to be more likely to be wiped out when Marek's does get in as compared to flocks in which nobody has ever 'done all the right things'... Because the protected flocks have no exposure to develop immunity or resistance, and their status regarding being resistant to the disease is unknown and probably quite unlikely to be resistant due to this lack of exposure, whereas obviously exposed flocks will be far more likely to only breed resistant individuals over the long term.

If things keep going this way we need to be conscious of possibly eradicating less common breeds due to biosecurity measures which prevent them from developing resistance, and thereby having the only chickens in future be completely neglected ferals or random-bred mongrels. I like mongrels but this state of affairs would be heartbreaking for many and certainly a great loss genetically, not to mention a waste of the lifetimes of work people have put in.

Best wishes.

 

[chooks4life]

Random thought... What's the chances the vaccine is enabling non-resistant, but not completely susceptible (middle of the road type) birds to pass on their semi-effective yet semi-apathetic immune response to Marek's by preventing the fatal symptoms in enough of them for non resistant birds to pass on their weak responses? Seems quite likely to me.

In which case vaccinating would be a further cause of problems, not the solution it's touted to be by some (lol at the 'experts' who call vaccination a preventative); I think it should be judiciously used in some flocks and not in the rest of them. Used right, the vaccine could help preserve rare breeds, but further controls would be necessary to somehow ascertain that we are in fact breeding towards resistance, should that be something the owners of such flocks choose to do. It seems futile, saddening, and not a little crazy, to spend one's time as a poultrykeeper living in fear of a disease which isn't even fatal to many.

There's other diseases which are fatal to susceptible individuals but which the vast majority of the rest of the species is infected with and passes on, all without harm; one day Marek's may be the same. But at this rate it'll be brought about at the expense of rare breeds unless we figure out a better way to manage it, or a complete cure for it.

 

[sassybirds]

I have been puzzling over this disease for a few days now and found this thread from a fellow Georgian who sounds like me, trying to do everything right as far as biosecurity, etc, and still, BOOM! hit by this horrible thing. sassybirds, coincidentally, I was just corresponding today with Dr. James Davis at the poultry lab in Oakwood to understand this stuff. I was trying to reach Dr. Bohanan, but I guess he must have retired and the Dalton lab is closed. Telling him that I've never seen lameness in my birds other than injury or old-age arthritis so does this mean I do not have this in my flock, Davis told me that some with Mareks never show any symptoms at all, period, and no one would know they have it unless you open them up and look inside.

So, here's my problem in trying to understand this disease:

We always hear folks say when one of our members is wondering about the unexpected death of a bird, sometimes, chickens just die . Dr. Davis sent me his brochure he wrote on the disease, which states what I did in the previous paragraph, that some never show any symptoms, but have the disease and are carriers. So, how would anyone know that there was Marek's in their flock aside from symptomatic birds? It's maddening to think you, sassy, like me, do everything right as far as keeping the birds safe, no trading, etc, but your flock is a victim of this insidious disease anyway. Like you, we have Tyson houses not far from us, like most folks in far North Georgia do. I don't believe in mollycoddling birds, medicating the heck out of them and I do not vaccinate them, either, but Dr. Davis says the only way to prevent it is to buy hatchery birds vaccinated at hatch. Well, that doesn't prevent it and I know this already. My comment was then, if I did that to avoid this virus, I will be back to square one with the sucky genetics and hens dying from internal laying/salpingitis/egg yolk peritonitis if I did that.  Can I just say ?  It's so frustrating!

Hello speckledhen. Soooo sorry to hear that! I have actually read quite a few of your threads, and have always found them entertaining and well written! I also have gotten a feel (from your threads) on how much you love your birds and the biosecurity measures you take.

Dr. Davis is a nice man. I have talked to him face to face a couple of times, and I think he's of the "vaccination is the only way" camp, though I never had the fortune of reading a brochure! Did you get the MD result from a necropsy? Or is it a suspicion? I am of the thought that I am fine with having birds that are asymptotic/carriers, it's the symptomatic birds that I cull. I, like you, do not mollycoddle my birds. I have culled all the symptomatic birds from my flock, and the "death rate" has actually been zero for the past 2-3 months. Thankfully.

It is really frustrating. And upsetting. I can't tell you how many nights that it has kept me up...but I have to move forward! I don't want to give up, I don't want to start over with hatchery birds, and I don't want to mask genetically weak/susceptible birds. I hope things start to look up for you, and that you can find peace with it like I have!

Hope everyone else (and their chickens) is well too!