Welsummer acting funny

[seminolewind]

Go thru your state's dept of agriculture, they all have animal disease labs. Mine charges $30.00. Some are free.

Snowflake, For 2 years I wondered why I lost a chicken every few months for no reason. Just wasting away , looking like they were eating. Not caught until the end when they poop that lime green poo.

Death can be for many different reasons. Even cancer. I was able to trace mine back to the pullet I bought . One pullet. The rest were hatched at home. So a good flock history can tell alot.

 

[Skipspin]

Skipskin, there is no way to tell if the neighbor's chickens carry Marek's. There's no test. My 20 or so original chickens, now 4-5 years old, are exposed, but haven't gotten symptoms or died. But they can still give it to other young chickens unless they are vaccinated at day 1 and quarantined a few weeks or more to give the vaccine time to work.

True. She hatches out lots of chicks and keeps some , however, and doesn't have any history of any symptoms of Mareks, so while I understand it's possible I trust them much more than randomly purchased birds. Our first birds were from her and they are 18 months old. She looked at our bird and has never had any birds look like that.

Thank you so much for the info on this thread. Assuming after due diligence I don't have any Mareks here, I will be vaxing all my DD's day old silkies when we start hatching since she is going to be selling them. I never would have done it otherwise- but I think it's prudent. I'm also going to look into the necropsy if the pullet dies. I'd be relieved to get back a negative report and not have to wait and wonder. If it's positive then at least I know.

 

[leadwolf1]

There is only one way to know for sure, please have that necropsy done and a report of negative for Marek's before you sell any chicks.

 

[Skipspin]

Update.

Well, we put her in the "front yard" alone because I really was worried it was something bad, We didn't sell any chicks or anything. Then, our 2 silkies died suddenly and I was really worried.

And... 6 months later she's still a little weak on the legs, but 100% healthy. She layed her first eggs this week, the whole flock is very healthy. I really think it's some kind of nerve damage. We won't hatch any of her eggs since we don't know it it was an injury or something genetic, and we have her away from the roosters anyway, but I"m hoping to use her to hatch some of our other eggs if she ever goes broody. She's great with our lonely only chick (8 weeks), so I think she'll be a great surrogate mama.

So, I'm happy it ended up not being something horrible, but also happy that I now know the risks. We will be getting any chicks from a hatchery and hens only from trusted sources- no auctions or random feed store birds unless we are able to quarantine them for at least 30 days, which we can't do now since said hen likes our front yard now and won't stay in the back.