Yes, vaccinations and how to raise healthy chickens is a big topic on here, as it should be. As always you will get a lot of different opinions. As always, we have different circumstances.
When I moved here after retiring I called my local county extension agent, who put me in touch with a local chicken disease expert. This person teaches poultry science at the state university, has bred and raised championship show chickens and plays around with breeding chickens, and is on the team that investigates any chicken disease outbreaks in this area.
We discussed how I was going to manage them, a fairly closed flock where the only way I bring in new chickens is to get them from an established hatchery or with hatching eggs and hatch them myself. I don’t take my chickens to shows where they could be infected and I don’t do chicken swaps. We also discussed diseases in the area. There had been one reported case of Marek’s in the county during the past two years, not in my neighborhood. After talking to him I decided to not get vaccinated chicks, no vaccine of any type.
I hatch my own chicks, sometimes with a broody hen, sometimes in an incubator. My brooder is in the coop so my incubator chicks are also exposed to the flock from hatch. For the Marek’s vaccine to be effective the chicks need to be isolated from any exposure to Marek’s for about two weeks, give the vaccination time to become effective. That’s not the way I raise mine.
I don’t know the prevalence of diseases in your area, how you plan to manage them, or how close other flocks are to you. I don’t know what the right answer is for you. I wish you luck in your research, it’s not always an easy decision.
