St. John's Wort question

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jcasaglov

jcasaglov

In the Brooder
Mar 8, 2015
26
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24
Southern California
I've been reading the threads on Marek's disease and it looks like a potential treatment is St. John's Wort (hypericum). I have some questions about how and when to give to my chickens. They were confirmed to have Marek's disease via Necropsy at UC Davis and I have now lost 15 out of my 27 chicks. As of today, I don't have any that are exhibiting any symptoms, but with this disease I find the pullets get sick and die very fast- some within a day, others within 5 days.

My question is do I only treat the pullet who has symptoms or can I treat all my chickens even though they appear to be healthy and fine? I know the hypericum has to be absorbed through the mucous membrane for it to be effective- could I just add it to their water supply? My husband bought capsules at .3% so what would be the proper dose for each pullet or the total of 12? They are 16-18 weeks old now.

Thanks so much
 
Thanks for the thread links- I had read all of those and my question was very specific. I just didn't want to have to go back and read through 75 pages of one thread to locate an answer and was hoping someone here could answer for me. I lost another chicken this morning and would like some advice on using St. John's Wort without harming the rest of my chickens. I guess it doesn't matter since they are all dying anyway. :(

I'm very sad right now.
 
jcasaglov said:
Thanks for the thread links- I had read all of those and my question was very specific.  I just didn't want to have to go back and read through 75 pages of one thread  to locate an answer and was hoping someone here could answer for me.  I lost another chicken this morning and would like some advice on using St. John's Wort without harming the rest of  my chickens.  I guess it doesn't matter since they are all dying anyway.  :( 

I'm very sad right now.  
Click to expand...


I know this is an old post, but I'm sorry no one answered you. It's a very hard thing to deal with. I have only had chickens since May, but we have lost 6 out of 8 to Mareks. We are very attached to them, they are our pets, not for dinner and we love them. In the beginning I wasn't aware that St. John's wort could possibly help. I have since been using it as a prevention, because the necropsy and extensive state lab tests concluded I have the most serious and fatal strain of Mareks on our property. I dissolve one tablet into 3/4 gallon of distilled water twice a week into my current flocks drinking water for 2-3 hours to ensure they all go to drink it, but aren't drinking it all day long, consuming too much of it. I also rotate days using probiotics, ACV, and a vitamin blend called poultry cell. I now have not lost any more chickens in 3 months. I did however have a 2.5 month time gap in which I hadn't added any chickens... So I'd have to do some math and consider the incubation period of the virus.... I could start losing some again any day now, but I'm trying my best not to! I have had two become a bit lethargic recently, but after some additional St. John's wort and a few doses of collodial silver, they showed HUGE improvement. It's a day to day thing now.

I just wanted to ask you for an update.. Did you have any survivors? Did you try to add any? I sure hope you didn't have to give up on chicken keeping. I fear that is my fate some day, but I have a couple more things I will try first. I also spent a lot of time researching Mareks vaccines.. I even called vaccine manufacturers to learn all I could. I got a wealth of knowledge from the calls I made, if any one wants to know more about what I was told please message me.
 
Thank you SO much for responding to my post from last summer. So much was going on with our chickens and then when I didn't get a response it just seemed to add to my anquish. Out of 27 chickens, we ended up with 6 and with those, I wasn't sure if they were going to survive. I assume I had a similar serious strain of Marek's. And like you, I had grown attached to these chickens, some of which I had to cull myself. Once my favorite chicken died, I was done. I called the feed store where I had got them and they agreed to take back the few I had remaining and give us adults that had been vaccinated.

In order to get our chicken run/coop ready we had the top layer of dirt removed from the run and had sprayed the entire place (coop, dirt, fencing) with a product that is supposed to kill everything, virus, bacteria, everything. Then we covered the ground with about 6 inches of new DG and started completely fresh. I ended up getting with 15 adults and so far everyone is doing great with no illnesses and are laying eggs just fine. The downside is I don't have any breeds from my original group which I loved and I am not attached at all with these. a couple are somewhat friendly but since they were not handled much they are not friendly.

Sorry about your chickens, I hope to never have to go through that again!
 
jcasaglov said:
Thank you SO much for responding to my post from last summer.  So much was going on with our chickens and then when I didn't get a response it just seemed to add to my anquish.  Out of 27 chickens, we ended up with 6 and with those, I wasn't sure if they were going to survive.  I assume I had a similar serious strain of Marek's.  And like you, I had grown attached to these chickens, some of which I had to cull myself.  Once my favorite chicken died, I was done.  I called the feed store where I had got them and they agreed to take back the few I had remaining and give us adults that had been vaccinated.  

In order to get our chicken run/coop ready we had the top layer of dirt removed from the run and had sprayed the entire place (coop, dirt, fencing) with a product that is supposed to kill everything, virus, bacteria, everything.  Then we covered the ground with about 6 inches of new DG and started completely fresh.  I ended up getting with 15 adults and so far everyone is doing great with no illnesses and are laying eggs just fine.  The downside is I don't have any breeds from my original group which I loved and I am not attached at all with these.  a couple are somewhat friendly but since they were not handled much they are not friendly.  

Sorry about your chickens, I hope to never have to go through that again! 
Click to expand...


Do you remember what the product was that you used to clean? All of my current chickens have been vaccinated, although I know it is no guarantee they will make it either.
 
Hello sorry it has taken me so long to reply- my husband had it made up from a compound pharmacy that he works with. It is usually in a topical form but they made it into a liquid spray. To be honest I have no idea if it worked or if we got lucky with getting vaccinated adults this time around and removing all the dirt etc. I will probably never get chicks just to play it safe. Hope your hens are doing well :)
 

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