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- #11
Thank you very much. I really appreciate everyone's information-sharing and thoughts. Thank you for helping me become better informed!So sorry for your losses. Losing babies is truly heart wrenching, and then to find out on top of it that it's Marek's is quite a blow.
I personally would euthanize the partially paralyzed ones (since they're susceptible to the disease and are going to pass anyway, and suffering), and keep the rest.
Like Eggcessive said, the virus is in your environment now. No running from it, so if you have birds that can live in spite of it, more power to them. You'd have to wait years for it all to die off if you did put them all down.
And as far as minimizing risk in the future, you could order vaccinated chicks directly from a hatchery so you don't get ones that have been handled/contaminated, but you'd still be getting them at a few days old, and the vaccine probably wouldn't have a chance to work yet, as with yours. You could order started birds maybe that have been vaccinated?