Viable treatment for Marek's Disease.

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

Yes! I’m the local dealer and “can you look at my chicken and help me fix it” neighbor I have had more chicken health issues than most so it’s worth their time cuz I feel like I’ve seen it all

I got a friend with a soft heart and a weak stomach. She brought me a chicken that was not eating, lethargic and had a slow crop that was developing into sour crop. I grilled her on what she had given the chicken as far as herbs. Because she was NOT following my recommendations.

She's pouring tinctures and teas down this chickens throat and 'nothing is working'. I had told her to give the chicken baking soda and water and to massage the crop. Nope. Herbs she thought might work better. She massaged her a little, but she didn't want to hurt her.

She brought her to my house, I start down the list and get to the feet.

This poor chicken had HUGE bubbles on both feet. My friend had no idea what a bumble was.

I lost my composure. Said some mean things. Scolded her for not using a tried and true method and opting for something that 'might work better.

I have the little hen baking soda and water, a shot of Oxytetracycline, removed the bumbles (they left CRATERS), and bandaged her feet with my personal blend of antibiotic creams.

I sent her home and she started eating that night. She was recovering quickly the next day. It's taken 3 weeks for those craters to fill in and heal over.

The kicker is, she's never checked her flock for bumblefoot. She has 18 chickens. 12 had bumblefoot. Most on both feet and 2 required cutting the chickens foot to get it all out. Guess who did it?

Not Ms. Softy....she did watch, but was holding back tears the whole time.

To make matters worse, when it came time for check ups, I unnecessarily reopened the healing bumbles on 2 chickens feet. Why?!, you ask? Because instead of soaking the chickens feet in Epsom Salt, she chose to soak their feet in MSM, a disinfectant that turns blood it comes in contact with black. So I'm digging out what I thought was reoccurring infection. But in actually was a failure to follow protocol.

She got another lecture about sticking to what is tried and true and not to screw around with a staph infection.

Now, she has zero confidence in her chicken

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

Alright. Let's Update. I have sufficiently knocked on wood. So here goes.....

No new deaths. I have not lost a chicken since Rogue.

The Red Silkie Roo. No more limp.

Henry has gone from constant vertigo to picking fights with the Bantam roosters. His courting of the ladies is still very gentle, but his mounting game needs work.

Nessa is still slowly gaining weight. I do wish her feathers would come in faster, but it is what it is.

Maureen is without symptoms. She's returned to sitting on nest boxes, therefore giving me hope for a blue egg again.

Lucy has no symptoms of Marek's, but her damaged liver is insisting on daily Milk Thistle.

Bea is without symptoms and still laying almost daily. She's about to get paired with Napoleon to start my first generation towards a Marek's resistant flock. I just hope he treats her nice. For that matter, I hope she doesn't beat the crap out of him. She's blind, not helpless.

Shelly developed symptoms with heat stress. She received treatment for heat stress and organ failure brought on with Marek's. I also gave her Furosemide for 3 days to clear the waterbelly and it worked like a charm. She's under observation and will return to the coop at the end of the week if all goes well.

I have some 8 week old chicks. I noticed a bit of a limp. I dosed 1/2 dose morning and evenings for 3 days. The limp is gone

 

[slaclr]

Update: Other than adding links to research sources, I did not plan to make updates to this. However, while continuing to research and rereading prior research bases off comments, I decided that after initial dosing, a short term regimen might be necessary. The studies indicate an effectiveness decline after 96 hours (4 days). I thought it has been exactly 4 days since I gave her the 1 week follow up. So I dosed her and gave her an exam.



She's still thin, but she eats. She's still off lay, pair that with vision problems from the blind eye, a lesser appetite is expected. She's no longer losing feathers. Comb is still pale.



Here's the notable event. The gray scale on her eye is almost cleared and the cataract has shrunk to a pinpoint. I am shocked. Like 'No REALLY!'. How is that even possible? There is still a small area of gray scale on her pupil and her iris is no longer exactly gray. It was like gray/colorless but now it has a bit of orange tint (the original color). And she's tracking with that eye! Ya'll, I thought blindness was one of the things that didn't resolve. She has a whole special needs apartment setup because I thought it was permanent.

Thank you for sharing your experiences! I'm trying to treat a little mille d'uccle hen. I'm terrible with dosages and how to administer - how did you measure the 425 mg? I see capsules of 800- what I just give her half of that in her food or water? Or would I mix that into something I would administer via dropper? Still learning about medicating chickens so I hope this isn't too stupid a question :-(

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

Thank you for sharing your experiences! I'm trying to treat a little mille d'uccle hen. I'm terrible with dosages and how to administer - how did you measure the 425 mg? I see capsules of 800- what I just give her half of that in her food or water? Or would I mix that into something I would administer via dropper? Still learning about medicating chickens so I hope this isn't too stupid a question :-(

Honestly, I wing it. If I feel it's short, I give it another pinch or two

Don't mix it with water. It turns nasty quick. I add some egg white. Roll it into a ball and toss it down her throat.

I also get tinctures for drops.

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

Time for an update.

Lucy passed. Her liver turned hard and no amount of Milk Thistle was helpful. I knew it was coming. She had a happy, spoiled life.

Nessa is declining. He waterbelly reoccurring if I don't keep her on Ferosimide. I'm hopeful, but not delusional. She may not make it.

Bea is taking her total blindness in stride and making the most of her extra attention.

Henry has begun successfully mounting hens. It felt a bit perverse to cheer the first time I saw him successfully complete. But, I am really happy about that.

Maureen is still doing great. I have another hen showing signs of illness. She may just be stressed from the heat. Her name is Cleo. She's a gorgeous Americauna. She's off lay and doesn't want to move or eat much, but nothing else notable. Still under observation.

Napoleon is doing great. His limp returned. I dosed him again for 3 days and it's gone again. Puzzling.

Other than 3 cases of bumblefoot, nothing else going on.

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

Well this sucks. Cleo died. She's dehydrated but clear fluid was coming out of her beak. I'm not sure, but I think that is fluid on the lungs from heat stress. I'm not only upset that I lost my prettiest hen, but I managed to make it through the last weeks record breaking heat without a loss. The only positive is that it wasn't Marek's.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Well this sucks. Cleo died. She's dehydrated but clear fluid was coming out of her beak. I'm not sure, but I think that is fluid on the lungs from heat stress. I'm not only upset that I lost my prettiest hen, but I managed to make it through the last weeks record breaking heat without a loss. The only positive is that it wasn't Marek's.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Lungs are very small so likely would not accumulate fluid. Chickens have 9 air sacs which pump air (like billows) through the lungs.

Clear Fluid from the beak was probably water coming from the crop. How heartbreaking for you to go through all this.

Since you do check your birds, you may find these helpful. First is respiratory system. Second is a very good video that I've found helpful in identifying organs. It's long, but it's also labeled, and you can fast forward or scroll to find a section of interest.

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

I'm sorry for your loss.

Lungs are very small so likely would not accumulate fluid. Chickens have 9 air sacs which pump air (like billows) through the lungs.

Clear Fluid from the beak was probably water coming from the crop. How heartbreaking for you to go through all this.

Since you do check your birds, you may find these helpful. First is respiratory system. Second is a very good video that I've found helpful in identifying organs. It's long, but it's also labeled, and you can fast forward or scroll to find a section of interest.

I'm quite familiar with a chickens anatomy. I am sure the fluid was coming from her lungs.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

I'm quite familiar with a chickens anatomy. I am sure the fluid was coming from her lungs.

That's good!
Often it's not known how much folks know about a subject, so this is why information is provided.
Just giving information, nothing more, nothing less.
I see that it's not welcome, so I wish you well.

 

[Jewelschick]

Like most backyard chickens keeps, it has been a bit of a disappointment to find out how much misinformation about chicken keeping there is out there.

I love my girls and I weep openly every time I lose one. My learning years have been harsh and heartbreaking, but my refusal to accept culling being an only option has been fruitful. I hope what I have recently discovered proves useful.

I was losing chickens. They'd be fine one day and dead the next. I have a rotating regimen of worming, pest control, protazoa abatement and bi-weekly, hands on exams. Still, fine one day, dead the next.

Like a good chook mom, all my girls are vaccinated. Turns out, that may not be so good. I recently read on BYC that the Marek's vaccine really does nothing useful. It does not prevent the transmission or contracting the virus, nor does it prevent the development of the disease. (Having the virus or the disease are 2 different things).

All the vaccine does is suppress symptoms. So if your chooks have the virus and develop the disease, they pretty much die without you knowing what killed them.

Every article I had read up to that point said there is no cure, no treatment, the most humane thing you can do is cull the bird to keep them from an agonizing death.

Well, I don't accept that. Marek's is a virus. Viruses have treatments. So I went hunting. Turns out that not only am I right, I'm not the only one giving the traditional data side-eye.

I found several clinical studies and a white paper out of China discussing several chicken viruses and the use of Chinese Skullcap. You can read two of the clinical studies on poultrydmv.org.

It basically rolled down to the herb Having the ability to shut the virus off, returning it to its dormant stage. They tested it with success on Marek's, Avian Flu and Mycoplasma Gallisepticum a/k/a Bubbleye (CRD).

A compilation of this single symptoms my chickens were exhibiting pointed to Marek's Disease. One had wing paralysis, two were limping, egg production was down, pale combs, ruffled feathers and weight loss was abundant and my boss hen, a Silver Wyandotte named Rogue, developed a cataract, she was going blind. I thought they were all soon to be dead.

I read on. 80% of fowl carry the Marek's virus. It mutates and can become quite deadly. But for the most part, it remains dormant. Birds carrying the virus, spread the virus.

So if 80% of fowl carry the virus and the standard recommendation is to cull the birds, wouldn't that wipe out the fowl population? It seems a tad counter productive. Ya think?

I found the clinical studies and poultrydmv.org confirmed my findings of 425mg, one time daily but no length of treatment is given. I went with 3 days.

Rouge was first in line. 425mg for 3 days. Then I decided to repeat in a week.

That was a month ago. Rogue is returning to normal. No longer a complacent lump, she's making rounds and kicking cloacas.

My other birds are recovering. I'm still treating the non-symptomatic birds.

I hope this is helpful.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8463782/

Antiviral effect of baicalin on Marek's disease virus in CEF cells:

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-020-02595-x

Baicalin (Scutellaria baicalensis) extract

100-200 mg/kg of diet

F Yang et al., 2020; Y Zhou et al., 2019; B Yin et al., 2021; M Bao et al., 2022; Z Hu et al., 2022

I have been giving Chinese Skullcap to my Marek’s positive flock for a couple of months and they seem to be doing well. I was very worried about my two older hens but they are doing much better now. I add some to their feed maybe once a week. I also made a tincture for acute illness but haven’t needed to use it yet. At this point I will try anything to help them. Adding an herb is easy. They all seem happy and healthy despite this 105° weather.