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

[Akrnaf2]

Hello to all of you .
As a side observer I want , if I may , to note you an Important note . All of You instead of Union forces against this dreaded disease. each one of you fight alone his fight instead of fighting it together . As stated before there are over 300000 members of this community and this is a tremendous resource of knowledge that you do not use !
If I was found in your situation , I would conducted a very extended poll, using BYC as a platform, among all the forum members that their chickens were infected in by MD . In the survey I would ask them to provide this information: Their location in USA, the breed of the sick chicken , the sex of a chicken , its age , and where it has been purchased ( if it is a hatchery , I would ask the name of the hatchery ) , and what happened at the end with the sick hen . After the gathering of this information from a substantial number of backyard's you could analyses it and could gather a much valuable information that you could share with the outer forum member.
You could larne if there are breeds that are more Vulnerable than others to MD, if there are areas in the US that are mor prone to the disease, if you find such areas you could search if there is a correlation to a specific climate. But the most important is that you could discover if there are hatcherys that you should not buy from them.
The next step that i would drive for is to establish ,with the help of growers that have the facility and the will, and with moony I would asks from the BYC members that want to participate in this Enterprise, breeding flock that all they do is to select for MD resistance without the use of vaccination! which the final goal should be to achieve flocs of resistend chicken, chicken from the most common breeds,that can produce eggs and chicks sold in a fair price to The members that participated in the project first and the to other BYC members after.
If I was living in the USA that I would try to do! If you will start with this I could help you,if you will need my help, with the statistical analysis of the data. even the obvious fact That you all can see from my grammar and spelling mistakes that, English is not my native language! (Although i can speak well 3 language and Fairly well another 2!) and I find it quite difficult to write all this post ( I would ilike to see if you can writ one post in Hebrew! )

 

[saltandpepper2]

What

Hello to all of you .
As a side observer I want , if I may , to note you an Important note . All of You instead of Union forces against this dreaded disease. each one of you fight alone his fight instead of fighting it together . As stated before there are over 300000 members of this community and this is a tremendous resource of knowledge that you do not use !
If I was found in your situation , I would conducted a very extended poll, using BYC as a platform, among all the forum members that their chickens were infected in by MD . In the survey I would ask them to provide this information: Their location in USA, the breed of the sick chicken , the sex of a chicken , its age , and where it has been purchased ( if it is a hatchery , I would ask the name of the hatchery ) , and what happened at the end with the sick hen . After the gathering of this information from a substantial number of backyard's you could analyses it and could gather a much valuable information that you could share with the outer forum member.
You could larne if there are breeds that are more Vulnerable than others to MD, if there are areas in the US that are mor prone to the disease, if you find such areas you could search if there is a correlation to a specific climate. But the most important is that you could discover if there are hatcherys that you should not buy from them.
The next step that i would drive for is to establish ,with the help of growers that have the facility and the will, and with moony I would asks from the BYC members that want to participate in this Enterprise, breeding flock that all they do is to select for MD resistance without the use of vaccination! which the final goal should be to achieve flocs of resistend chicken, chicken from the most common breeds,that can produce eggs and chicks sold in a fair price to The members that participated in the project first and the to other BYC members after.
If I was living in the USA that I would try to do! If you will start with this I could help you,if you will need my help, with the statistical analysis of the data. even the obvious fact That you all can see from my grammar and spelling mistakes that, English is not my native language! (Although i can speak well 3 language and Fairly well another 2!) and I find it quite difficult to write all this post ( I would ilike to see if you can writ one post in Hebrew! )

what a WONDERFUL idea! I would definitely participate in breeding a resistant flock, as this is my personal goal already.

 

[ochochicas]

There is another thread where people have discussed breeding for resistance to Marek's. I have not read the whole thing, so I don't know how people's "expereriments" are going. If I tried to breed for resistance without vaccinating, I would end up with virtually no birds since they would all be dead. I think that type of work would be very expensive, and unless I was getting grant money from the government I, personally, would not have resources to do it. On top of that, I have a full time job and run a horse farm. While I love my chickens, I don't have time to make a business out of it. I would have to hatch out hundreds of eggs a month just to get a dozen pullet out of the bunch that might survive to point of lay. I don't have time, money, or facilities to take on such a project.

For me, vaccinating is the most logical way to go. I will be writing up the results of my vaccine experiment later this year.

Your English is fine.

I could post in Spanish, but I don't think anyone would appreciate it. LOL

 

[Nambroth]

Hello to all of you .
As a side observer I want , if I may , to note you an Important note . All of You instead of Union forces against this dreaded disease. each one of you fight alone his fight instead of fighting it together . As stated before there are over 300000 members of this community and this is a tremendous resource of knowledge that you do not use !
If I was found in your situation , I would conducted a very extended poll, using BYC as a platform, among all the forum members that their chickens were infected in by MD . In the survey I would ask them to provide this information: Their location in USA, the breed of the sick chicken , the sex of a chicken , its age , and where it has been purchased ( if it is a hatchery , I would ask the name of the hatchery ) , and what happened at the end with the sick hen . After the gathering of this information from a substantial number of backyard's you could analyses it and could gather a much valuable information that you could share with the outer forum member.
You could larne if there are breeds that are more Vulnerable than others to MD, if there are areas in the US that are mor prone to the disease, if you find such areas you could search if there is a correlation to a specific climate. But the most important is that you could discover if there are hatcherys that you should not buy from them.
The next step that i would drive for is to establish ,with the help of growers that have the facility and the will, and with moony I would asks from the BYC members that want to participate in this Enterprise, breeding flock that all they do is to select for MD resistance without the use of vaccination! which the final goal should be to achieve flocs of resistend chicken, chicken from the most common breeds,that can produce eggs and chicks sold in a fair price to The members that participated in the project first and the to other BYC members after.
If I was living in the USA that I would try to do! If you will start with this I could help you,if you will need my help, with the statistical analysis of the data. even the obvious fact That you all can see from my grammar and spelling mistakes that, English is not my native language! (Although i can speak well 3 language and Fairly well another 2!) and I find it quite difficult to write all this post ( I would ilike to see if you can writ one post in Hebrew! )

The problem with a site-wide poll is that only a few people would respond, and it is actually really difficult to know for sure if a bird has Marek's disease or not without doing a necropsy and/or PCR (DNA) test by an experienced avian vet. Most people can't afford extensive testing to know for sure, so any poll results would be heavily skewed based on guesswork. I don't know if this would be of any value... There are still a lot of chicken keepers on this forum that probably have never even heard of Marek's Disease. Right now I think the biggest weapon we have is education.

I also wanted to mention that (thankfully) the major hatcheries in the USA that most people buy from are not a source of Marek's disease. Chicks are hatched in separate areas than parent stock and are shipped out immediately. The probability of exposure is incredibly low in these conditions.

Here is a thread about breeding for resistance: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/894589/moving-forward-breeding-for-resistance-to-mareks-disease

 

[seminolewind]

I tried a poll a few weeks ago and only one person replied. The poll was have your chickens had Marek's, not, or don't know.

I don't know if I see it as us fighting Marek's alone and not as a united force. I think it's too early for that right now. We are still sharing any information we all have. I wonder if this thread may be it for the US re Marek's. I think the best thing we've done is continually send dead chickens for necropsies where the information could be used by research at some point.

Maybe we can push those heads of departments of poultry science to accumulate our numbers and any information. I don't think backyard chicken owners are important to anyone at this time. We are a pretty small group. We're not an industry and don't affect the economy.
I hope someone else here has a different view to share.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/977936/poll-about-mareks/0_50

 

[ochochicas]

The state lab in Washington told me it is an additional $100 (more or less) to have a bird PCR tested to see if it is a carrier of Marek's. As mentioned above, this is more expensive that most people can afford when they are dealing with back yard flocks. All my birds live in the same coop. I'm going to assume they are all carriers. No more hatching chicks with broody hens.

Maybe I'll try some peafowl the next time I have a broody.

 

[seminolewind]

Ocho, If you feel like it, you could call them and ask why they charge 100 bucks, but your friend only pays $30.00. Maybe we should incorporate this thread and see if we can get reduced rates, LOL.

 

[Akrnaf2]

Hello to all
To establish a long lasting parents breeding flock, you need 20 resistant hens and 3 resistant roosters from each breed. I don't think that it is a unachievable goal.
If you understand the dynamics of a first clash between a pathogen and a new population of hosts, you know that in the beginning, the pathogen population is a mix of very virulent,medium virulent,and mild virulent strand of the same pathogen.
This population encounter a population of host that is a mix of non resistant, partially resistant and very resistant host, it is all dependent on the efficiency of the immune system of the bird and that is mainly dependent on the genetics of the bird. In the beginning the mortality of the hosts will be very high, as all the non resistant and some of the partially resistant will day meanwhile in the pathogen population there is a different selection process. The low virulent pathogens will be eliminated due to the immune response of the host, the very virulent will also be slowly eliminated from the flock because they usually kill the host so quickly that they could not ,in the most cases, transmit them self to a new host. leaving the medium virulent, as the major number of pathogens. So in some few generations the host population is evolving to more resistant population and the pathogen is slowly selected to medium virulency, so the 2 population achieve a steady state, a situation of equilibriumy. This steady state situations should be your goal! In this situation the majority of the hosts(chickens) live in "peace" with the pathogen(MV) even that once in a wail there will be a mortality among the hosts, there will be no more a situation of epidemic that kill entire populations. I think that you can do it yourself. And about the participance of the government in such a project, From my knowledge of governments you should not count on it. I would try to seek corporation from universities or veterinary schools that maybe have some P.Hd researchers that want to research the MV and can pay some money in this research instead of asking governments. (In my M.Sc I have used PCR to establish fatherhood in a herd of withe (squer lipped) rhinoceros and I know from first hand knowledge that al the materials needed to one PCR taste is no more than 5-8 $! So I think that 100$ Is a robbery! )

 

[Nambroth]

I tried a poll a few weeks ago and only one person replied. The poll was have your chickens had Marek's, not, or don't know.

I don't know if I see it as us fighting Marek's alone and not as a united force. I think it's too early for that right now. We are still sharing any information we all have. I wonder if this thread may be it for the US re Marek's. I think the best thing we've done is continually send dead chickens for necropsies where the information could be used by research at some point.

Maybe we can push those heads of departments of poultry science to accumulate our numbers and any information. I don't think backyard chicken owners are important to anyone at this time. We are a pretty small group. We're not an industry and don't affect the economy.
I hope someone else here has a different view to share.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/977936/poll-about-mareks/0_50

You hit the nail on the head. We don't have the money or power that big agribusiness does. There are some feed/product companies that focus on us as a niche-- but we are just that, a niche. It's hard to get taken seriously even when you pay well for testing to get answers. People that keep pet chickens are vastly outnumbered by the egg and meat industries, and even by small time farms that keep utility birds that practice careful husbandry, cull as needed, and generally follow a business model (for the record I appreciate these small farms that are utilitarian but still treat the birds as living critters).

The state lab in Washington told me it is an additional $100 (more or less) to have a bird PCR tested to see if it is a carrier of Marek's. As mentioned above, this is more expensive that most people can afford when they are dealing with back yard flocks. All my birds live in the same coop. I'm going to assume they are all carriers. No more hatching chicks with broody hens.

Maybe I'll try some peafowl the next time I have a broody.

The PCRs I had run through the University of GA's poultry science department cost over $100 each (on top of necropsy/tissue collection costs).

We have very limited options for PCR here in the states and we either pay for it handsomely or we don't get it done.

 

[Akrnaf2]

You hit the nail on the head. We don't have the money or power that big agribusiness does. There are some feed/product companies that focus on us as a niche-- but we are just that, a niche. It's hard to get taken seriously even when you pay well for testing to get answers. People that keep pet chickens are vastly outnumbered by the egg and meat industries, and even by small time farms that keep utility birds that practice careful husbandry, cull as needed, and generally follow a business model (for the record I appreciate these small farms that are utilitarian but still treat the birds as living critters).


The PCRs I had run through the University of GA's poultry science department cost over $100 each (on top of necropsy/tissue collection costs).

We have very limited options for PCR here in the states and we either pay for it handsomely or we don't get it done.

From my life expirians I can say that you should never expect that some one ells will resolve your problems! Especially governments in all its level. If you have a problem think about the most effective solution, and the ways to achieve it and act Tirelessly to achieve it! Seat and waiting approach will not resolve the problem. So I would not relay on the agriculture department, the eggs and meat industries, and others. only on other friend and people that share with we the same problem and interest!