Not an Emergency...Marek's in the Flock

[schnebbles]

And I thought keeping chickens was going to be easy! Of course I still don't know what is wrong with Penny. First, I noticed my paint silkie has crossbeak, now this. I keep the silkies beak trimmed and she seems fine (did I mention, I'm new too? - I got all of my chickens late spring.

I am going to keep her on the super b (1 per gallon?) and see how she does before I take her back to the vet. I got a cheapie version of the SuperB at walmart, the others were 6.50 and these looked comparable. I put 1 in a gallon of vitamin/electrolyte water.

Can my other birds drink this too? Or should I mix up their plain vitamin/electrolyte water separate?

Also, I think I had been feeding broiler or boiler, not sure which, crumbles by Kent. For a long while, just finished 50#. So, I am now thinking that was probably not the right food. I drove 1/2 hour to get the Kent.

I just bought a bag of flock raiser (Purina) because it seemed more appropriate for my chickens ages, plus I have 2 cockerels. I''ll get into my food questions another time, probably next bag. Should I have oyster shells out? My girls might start laying in the fall, september or so.

Penny is still the same. I left her on the couch with pillows last night and my husband said she was on the floor when he got up. I might try the cage again tonight, I don't want her causing more damage, although I'm pretty sure she probably isn't. She can flap her wings really well.

That mareks sure is nasty, wish my birds had been vaccinated. I guess then I'd know for sure what this is, or isn't.

Deb Hogster - I forgot to tell you I grew up in Elkhart. in OH now, but lived up there til I was 44 or so. Moved to Ft Wayne for a couple years (I Loved that town!), and ended up here in OH.

 

[PoultryPedia]

You can use calcite instead of oyster shell, if you want. It's much cheaper.
You'll also need to offer them a container of grit (small stones) if they don't have access to the out-of-doors to pick it up themselves.
If you do use oyster shell, I think it serves a dual purpose as both a calcium supplement & grit.

 

[hogster160]

And I thought keeping chickens was going to be easy! Of course I still don't know what is wrong with Penny. First, I noticed my paint silkie has crossbeak, now this. I keep the silkies beak trimmed and she seems fine (did I mention, I'm new too? - I got all of my chickens late spring.

I am going to keep her on the super b (1 per gallon?) and see how she does before I take her back to the vet. I got a cheapie version of the SuperB at walmart, the others were 6.50 and these looked comparable. I put 1 in a gallon of vitamin/electrolyte water.

Can my other birds drink this too? Or should I mix up their plain vitamin/electrolyte water separate?

Also, I think I had been feeding broiler or boiler, not sure which, crumbles by Kent. For a long while, just finished 50#. So, I am now thinking that was probably not the right food. I drove 1/2 hour to get the Kent.

I just bought a bag of flock raiser (Purina) because it seemed more appropriate for my chickens ages, plus I have 2 cockerels. I''ll get into my food questions another time, probably next bag. Should I have oyster shells out? My girls might start laying in the fall, september or so.

Penny is still the same. I left her on the couch with pillows last night and my husband said she was on the floor when he got up. I might try the cage again tonight, I don't want her causing more damage, although I'm pretty sure she probably isn't. She can flap her wings really well.

That mareks sure is nasty, wish my birds had been vaccinated. I guess then I'd know for sure what this is, or isn't.

Deb Hogster - I forgot to tell you I grew up in Elkhart. in OH now, but lived up there til I was 44 or so. Moved to Ft Wayne for a couple years (I Loved that town!), and ended up here in OH.

Hi neighbor! Small world. Yes, I use 1 tablet to a gallon of water. I also got the cheap one. Yes all my girls drink the same water. If their bodies don't need the Vit B they pee it out, if they need it, its used. As far as food goes, I have mine on an all flock as I also have turkeys. So I do put out crushed egg shell/oyster shell. They prefer their own eggshells over the oyster shell. If they need it they will use it. I don't think yours need it until they are laying tho.

I wish my birds had been vaccinated as well. When I asked the hatchery about it, they said with me having such a small backyard flock it really wasn't needed. Famous last words I'm thinking.

I am glad Penny is the same, it means shes holding her own and her immune system is good. Keep doing what ever it is that you are doing. If she were getting worse, I'd try something else. So doing the same is good in my book!

Deb

 

[schnebbles]

calcite, will have to write that down. they do have chick grit (they were small, and still fairly small as they ae not full grown and are all bantams.

Deb - ya, I have 8 chickens and I just really never foresaw any troubles. Got my birds from good people who I know take care of their birds. My birds have a dog run kennel that I have their coop in, I kept them in there until they got bigger, now they have run of my extremely tiny back yard with a privacy fence so I thought they were as safe as could be. well, I might not have mareks, but still.

My husband is like, what are you doing with her, she's not going to get better. I said my chicken people say she might, lol!

I mixed the rest of the birds vitamin water with some water to make sure I wasn't giving them too much. Seems like when I got the vitamin/electrolyte stuff, it was specific to not use too much in their water. 3/4 t per gallon. Can't remember the brand, but it comes in a bag enough to make like 100 gallons and their instructions aren't very specific for small quantities, I had to come here to find out the ratio.

Oh gosh, reading about the ocular made me have freaky dreams, Penny's eye was all weird. I was crying. Another part tho, she was swimming with the rest like ducks, lol!

Off to work. have a good day everyone!

 

[hogster160]

ugh lost my whole post!

Any way this is what Haunted 55 said to me in a previous post:

I would say that rather than just a B Complex, you switch to a Super B Complex tablet crushed and added to their water. I get mine at WalMart, the Spring Valley brand and they haven't let me down yet. The trick with the Bs is to give a steady dosing of them. By giving them in the water, the birds are continually getting them into themselves, while giving it to them twice a day is just twice a day treatment. The Bs aren't kept in the body of an active chicken for long and water delivery is a better choice. 1 Super B complex to 1 gallon of water in your active birds.

Eta: link to original post #396

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/741957/not-an-emergency-mareks-in-the-flock/390#post_11524782

 

[hogster160]

And here is a thread regarding chickens swimming lol

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/538337/silly-swimming-chickens-i-mean-ducks-i-mean-chickens

enjoy!

Deb

 

[mithious]

Hi all, I have a question, my hatchery birds were supposedly vaccinated for just about everything. They came down with cocci at about 5 weeks, so am thinking that they were not really vaccinated for anything that the hatchery said they were, and I paid extra for????
Anyway, my question is, are wild turkeys the same as farm raised, as far as the turkey virus for marek's? I have wild turkeys on my land. Just yesterday, I was in the coop, looking out the pop door, long story, and saw a HUGE Tom turkey, outside the chickens run, checking them out, my 2+ month old Mr Roo, rushed all the girls in the coop..he's doing such a good job, as he didn't know what this HUGE bird was. Can the wild turkeys work like the farm raised and exposure be like a vaccine?

Thanks all!

Also, good luck with the chicks under the broody with marek's. Praying it works! This is exciting and scary at the same time...new ground being broken here!!! Good for you!!! Fingers crossed, prayers said, knocking on wood, and any other thing, that could help, that this works!!!!

 

[Haunted55]

That would be so devastating, and something I may end up facing. Part of me is afraid, and the other part is just plain excited. I haven't gotten any results yet, so I'm gonna call them in the morning. If I do have md, I will be pulling the eggs, I don't have a rooster, so maybe in the spring ill buy day olds, and get them immunized, with of course, a rooster, and start my own next fall or so.

The more time I have to think about it, the more I want to pull them. Boy I have some serious thinking to do.

I just want to thank everyone for their time and information. I truly wish to learn from all of you. And I'm also sorry for bringing up some of your bad experiences. I really don't want to breed them, just to have them die. I'm trying to look at this from a realistic way. If i have md, I haven't really begun to experience the full brunt of md. 2 ocular and 1 paralysis. Not to bad in my eye. From hearing some of the stories there is a whole lot more to md than what I'm experiencing. Maybe I really should wait and see what the future holds for my girls before I start breeding for resistance.

Deb

Okay...if you pull the eggs, are you going to put them into an incubator? If not, then those chicks are going to die, right? Hogster160, look at the over all before you make any decisions. Marek's isn't the end of the world, it's just different. Not all chicks are going to get Marek's and not all that do will die from it. I can tell you horror stories and I can also tell you the good ones as well. This is my journey, yours, with your birds, will be different. Every one of us facing this disease has a different story to tell because of what we've taken away from our experiences. When it hit here it was devastating. Now it seems to have settled out to a 'normal' infection of Marek's, whatever that is. Currently I have no one dying, limping, going blind....yet I know they all have the potential to do so. My opinion is work with what you have and don't be afraid to take a step that no one else has before you. This is how you make progress. If I had listened to everything I had been told...lol, there would be no birds here at all. Now I have over 200 of mixed species.

It is my opinion also that the Vets don't have all the answers. This disease is constantly changing and cannot seem to be nailed down. You have them making 'lab created forms of the virus' [yeah that's what we need], you have the wild versions that are just out there and then you have the mutated strains as well. I don't care how long you wait, do all in, all out, whatever....Marek's is out there and your birds will face it unless they live in a hermatically sealed enviroment. That's just the way it is. As for facing heartache with the birds....would it be any less painful to see them taken by a predator? Or one of the respiratory diseases? We who have, tend to think of the Marek's as the big bad wolf. to us it is and I think it's because we can't understand it enough to control it. But, trust me...there are worse things your chickens can get and some are reportable and whole flocks have had to be wiped out because of them. Put it into perspective if you can, it's hard, I know. You will lose chickens to something, even if it's just old age.

If I had the chance you do right now, I would continue with it. Get the vaccine for 2 dosings and I would do the hatch the same as I wrote before. It would be the opposite of what Seminolewind did. I would be taking them away from the disease while they are still covered by resistance from the parent stock and vaccinating them for even more. I would also do it again around 4-5 weeks of age to give them the boost needed to face the dreaded 6-8 week marker. I look at it this way...I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain by following this process. Remove the eggs...dead chicks. Continue and the chance of dead chicks but also the better chance of live chicks able to make it to adulthood.

Not all of these eggs will make it to hatch anyways. My best hatch rate in an incubator is 95% and that's a controlled thing. Nature never intended for all fertilized eggs to hatch out. From a clutch of 20 eggs, you may get 10 and that's a lot of wishful thinking with that. More likely, you'd get 5-6 under a hen. Nothing to do with chickens is perfect. It can be fun and provide a world of laughter, it can also give you tears enough to fill an ocean. All of us have to decide our course and take that first step to get where we want to end up. No one can tell you, they can guide, give experiences, but they can't tell you how. This is your journey.

 

[grazie29]

Looking for information regarding Mareks

We just purchased a home, complete with a really nice chicken coop. We cleaned it, predator proofed it and moved our healthy 7-8 week old chicks into it.

Two days ago I noticed "Red" having difficulty using her legs and "flopping about". I brought her indoors away from the rest of the flock. By yesterday morning she was all but paralyzed, no longer able to really even peck at/actually eat. I had her culled, it broke my heart. From what I am reading could it be that this was something that could have been picked up from the coop and yard from the previous owners flock?
My chicks were vaccinated prior to shipping at Murray McMurray and were thriving at the almost 8 week mark until this. No others in my remaining 15 are showing signs (yet).

How long can the virus thrive in an area where chickens are no longer present? In other words how many years before it would be safe to bring chickens back to the property should this virus take my remaining feathered children?

 

[Haunted55]

Looking for information regarding Mareks

We just purchased a home, complete with a really nice chicken coop. We cleaned it, predator proofed it and moved our healthy 7-8 week old chicks into it.

Two days ago I noticed "Red" having difficulty using her legs and "flopping about". I brought her indoors away from the rest of the flock. By yesterday morning she was all but paralyzed, no longer able to really even peck at/actually eat. I had her culled, it broke my heart. From what I am reading could it be that this was something that could have been picked up from the coop and yard from the previous owners flock?
My chicks were vaccinated prior to shipping at Murray McMurray and were thriving at the almost 8 week mark until this. No others in my remaining 15 are showing signs (yet).

How long can the virus thrive in an area where chickens are no longer present? In other words how many years before it would be safe to bring chickens back to the property should this virus take my remaining feathered children?

The virus can live for years, but not sure that's what you are dealing with. Can you give a time line? Feed? Treats? Any info you can provide is going to help figure this out.