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

[BeccaNoble]

Sorry to hear about your chicks Becca.    My very first chick to get it was smaller than the rest and I think her immune system was compromised from the beginning which is why she got sick so much earlier than the others.  It could be that your sick chicken in a Marek's carrier, or perhaps there is Marek's on your property from the previous owner.  The virus can stay dormant in coops and soil for seven years.

If the hen got better with your care, I am doubtful that it was Marek's that caused her inability to walk.  I've never had a chicken recover and regain its ability to walk (or breathe or see or whatever the case may be).  

I think you will need to cull the little one just to be fair to her.  However, it will not save the rest of the chicks.  If the sick one has Marek's, then the others have already been exposed.  It is too late to isolate them or vaccinate since they've already been exposed to the virus.  Sorry for the bad news.  If you are lucky the strain of the virus will be low virulence and not all of your chicks will develop the disease.  

Thank you so much for your help! I'm hoping it's just something that shows as Marek's but will actually get better

of course she was my favourite in the flock! Always the way

 

[ChicKat]

Hello! Another Marek's case in denial here. We just moved into a house that came with a very sick chicken. We didn't think she would make it, I somehow nursed her back to health. She spent a few days not leaving her cubby, I started bringing her outside every morning and putting her back every night. She couldn't walk, she would use her wings to balance herself, now she's up and walking and eating and completely better. So a couple months ago we got one month old chicks and now one of them seems to have come down with Marek's. Can't walk or stand, laying with one leg straight back and one straight forward... It's heartbreaking, she's so tiny compared to the rest. Do chickens ever get over Marek's? The first one also had a tasty case of thrush, could that have been all that was making her unable to walk and this new one got Marek's another way? Can she get better? The other five new ones are so healthy, should I cull the little sick one now to save the rest? So many questions, thanks in advance

Sorry to hear that you are dealing with this. One of the characteristics of Marek's is small size. e.g. the chick doesn't grow as fast as a normal chick

 

[ChicKat]

Sorry Armywife. My condolences to you. Please let us know when you get your lab results back.

Seminole - Your link didn't work. I found this article last week, which I think is the same information. I'm am shocked that PBS is publishing such information. There are a lot of discrepancies and errors in it, so I am not giving the article any validity at all. Unvaccinated birds do not die within 10 days of contacting the virus. This kind of info is just making the poorly informed even more uneducated. Unfortunately it isn't doing the rest of us any good.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous/

Are you saying that you think the researachers 'made up' their data?

"Andrew Read, who co-led the study, had heard about the severe effects of the hottest
Marek’s strains before his lab started studying the disease about a decade ago, but even he was surprised when he finally saw the virus in action.
“With the hottest strains, every unvaccinated bird dies within 10 days. There is no human virus that is that hot. Ebola, for example, doesn’t kill everything in 10 days,” said Read, who is an evolutionary biologist at Penn State University."

I think IMO, Penn state is a prestiegous University and an evolutionary biologist at a University doing research for 10-years would have a lot of credibility.

 

[ochochicas]

Chickat - What I was saying was PBS didn't cite their sources and they only present one side (and very biased portion) of the story. I doubt they "made it up" as you implied. They fail to mention things like how the vaccine is useful. For example, the meat bird industry could potentially be wiped out by a disease like Marek's if the chicks went unvaccinated. 90% of the chicks could die before they made it to slaughter age. The price of chicken meat would be so high that only the rich would be able to afford it.

I already made a second post explaining the answer to your question.

 

[ChicKat]

Chickat - What I was saying was PBS didn't cite their sources and they only present one side (and very biased portion) of the story. I doubt they "made it up" as you implied. They fail to mention things like how the vaccine is useful. For example, the meat bird industry could potentially be wiped out by a disease like Marek's if the chicks went unvaccinated. 90% of the chicks could die before they made it to slaughter age. The price of chicken meat would be so high that only the rich would be able to afford it.

I already made a second post explaining the answer to your question.

I must have missed the second post....and yes, vaccines are good -- perhaps they will develop a non-leaky vaccine. I think the point that they brought up wasn't common knowledge prior. No one source has all the answers and we all need to keep looking for them. ;O)

 

[seminolewind]

Chickat, I really didn't have any idea who wrote the article, but I find discrepancies, according to my lay person status, LOL. I have not heard about chicks dying in 10 days . Marek's and Cocci go hand in hand mostly due to immunosuppression. The writer says that those who survive are usually healthy. I don't know if he means being healthy -not getting Marek's , or they are overall healthy which I don't find they are.

I think that the majority of tested or experiment chickens are kept for more than a year or two since they are most likely production chickens. I'd like to know what happens through 3,4, 5, 6 years following exposure.

I'm not totally agreeing with the leaky vaccine theory and that's what it is, a theory. Viruses are known to change when vulnerable and become more resistant with or without a vaccine. Just the nature of the beast. I just didn't feel that the writer made it clear that this was a hypothesis being investigated, or , there are more factors involved than a leaky vaccine alone.

The vaccines do have a negative side . Example, if a breeder always vaccinates every chick, and they go to other flocks, they may bring an exposure with them and expose the new flock and nobody would know it was those birds. I personally had bought a 4 month old silkie pullet and a year later hatched 10 chicks that all got paralysis and died and then I knew. Had I not hatched them, Iwould not have known my sporadic deaths prior to the chicks were Marek's related. I had a chicken every couple months just waste away and die.

I guess what I'm saying is that Marek's can cause a variety of symptoms or none, chickens can live long after being exposed, and there are always vaccines and meds that can't keep up with viruses (influenza), and bacteria (staph orMRSA) that require stronger and stronger meds. It's not a new idea.

These are just my thoughts as a layperson with an extreme interest in learning about Marek's, like others here. I think all thoughts are important because I know I certainly learn more from reading factual and non factual material. I am just glad that our group knows enough to discuss it, and compare experiences.

 

[seminolewind]

I have a several-year history of problems with Marek's... I was down to two older hens that never had symptoms (but were vaccinated chicks) when I started over with 5 vaccinated chicks this past January. Two ended up to be roosters and went back to the breeder, and one developed paralysis at around 4-5 months. Isolation, hypericum and loving care wasn't helping, so I put her down.

Now one of these hens has started limping, and I'm quite attached to her and hoping I can help her pull through. I think she's about 7 months old, and the one other hen the same age started laying over a month ago, but not this one. She had been sick with coccidiosis in the first month, and her growth was then a lot slower than the others. I had thought she was in the clear at this age, but rereading the big Marek's FAQ I see 25 weeks.... I'm not sure when she went out to the coop, but it might just barely be within that time frame.

Any thoughts or advice? She seems healthy otherwise, do you think at this age she has a better chance of survival? I'm dreading watching the slow declinefo

Most of Marek's information is "chances are, most frequent, least frequent, most possible most likely, or less". The ball park figure for seeing symptoms is 6-25 weeks, most common. the less common is anything up to a year old. Or sometimes even older. I had one that was full blown symptoms at 18 months.

I usually gauge by if they are holding their weight or wasting away. So, I keep track of how thin their keel bone is or their weight. Most commonly you may see paralysis, inability to get around much like wing walking, and wasting.

 

[seminolewind]

Hello! Another Marek's case in denial here. We just moved into a house that came with a very sick chicken. We didn't think she would make it, I somehow nursed her back to health. She spent a few days not leaving her cubby, I started bringing her outside every morning and putting her back every night. She couldn't walk, she would use her wings to balance herself, now she's up and walking and eating and completely better. So a couple months ago we got one month old chicks and now one of them seems to have come down with Marek's. Can't walk or stand, laying with one leg straight back and one straight forward... It's heartbreaking, she's so tiny compared to the rest. Do chickens ever get over Marek's? The first one also had a tasty case of thrush, could that have been all that was making her unable to walk and this new one got Marek's another way? Can she get better? The other five new ones are so healthy, should I cull the little sick one now to save the rest? So many questions, thanks in advance

If a sick chicken has Mareks symptoms and recovers, she may have been in that condition for a number of reasons including dehydration, lack of food, needing B vitamins, etc. I would always try to eliminate the reasons that are easiest to eliminate. Many of marek's symptoms can be symptoms of other illnesses. I hope your chick does not have it.

Culling is not going to save the rest. Everyone would already be exposed. It won't go away and chances are if it's Marek's they do not recover. They waste away. Marek's causes immunosuppression and that is a good chance to grow thrush.

 

[lalaland]

Occhicichas, I'm on an unfamiliar device or I would paste the link again. I posted a few pages back the link to the original published study and was hoping you or nambroth or anyone would look at that.

 

[ChicKat]

In the quote that I posted above from the PBS article - the word Andrew Read is a hyperlink -- if you click it you get this:

http://www.thereadgroup.net/

From there if you go to the 'people' tab you will get this
http://www.thereadgroup.net/people/

If you click on Andrew Read you will get links to many paths

http://www.thereadgroup.net/author/andrew/

http://www.thereadgroup.net/research/questions/

Here is the link to Google Scholar researaach

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=zFQh3-EAAAAJ