Where to buy Marek's Vaccine?

[nuts4chickens]

LittleAmer- I dont believe the vaccine comes in a smaller vial. It is a live vaccine, and it has to be used within an hour of mixing it with the dilutant.

 

[ADozenGirlz]

Smaller vials are not available and I couldn't find it locally. I bought mine recently at First State Vet Supply.com. The shipping wasn't the fastest or the cheapest. The vaccine was $18.95 plus $10.50 for the cooler PLUS $13.75 for shipping and handling plus needles & syringes (which were cheap). $46.35 to vaccinate 5 birds! But. he was the only one who had it in stock February 2, 2010. He was very helpful & friendly too (the owner seems like the only employee?). He said that when vaccinating small batches of chicks, you can conserve the vacccine for future use by cutting up the vaccine wafer into 4 parts and use it according to the instructions found here at his web site (I did it and it worked great. The unmixed portions are in my 'fridge awaiting the next hatchlings!):

www.firststatevetsupply.com/poultry-health/mareks-disease.html


Wonderful article on Mareck's and vaccination how-tos:
http://poultryone.com/articles/mareks.html

 

[Little Ameraucana Mom]

Thanks for the info. That would work great for me to cut it up. I hatch about 20 chcks a week,

 

[Bravo]

Ahhh....there is still no one that has it and no release date.

Who would have thought this was going to be so complicated?!?

 

[TrystInn]

You can contact your local Grange Hall and they can find local folks with the vaccine they might be willing to share for a minimal fee. I'm the go-to-gal for poultry Penicillin and get calls all the time from ours.

 

[Bravo]

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Yikes...I don't have a clue what that is

Is it like a feed store? I've called every feed store within a 50mi radius and come up empty.

 

[mstricer]

is it really important to give this vaccine. what cause this and how many dont vaccinate for mareks

 

[coffeemama]

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I never had vaccinated birds in 14+ years....until now. We had a random outbreak from who knows where, and our birds started dying left and right. We had to put them all down eventually. I think this is an important step to make when acquiring new chicks.

 

[ADozenGirlz]

I just hatched five chicks yesterday and gave them their Mareck's vaccination tonight. This was the second time I did it and it was easy! FINDING the vaccine at this date in time, not so much.

 

[FrenchToast]

I just got mine yesterday and vaccinated 18 chicks. They were 13 days old but the guy from First State Vet Supply, Peter Brown aka The chicken Doctor said it's best to do day old chicks but you could do it any time and the info he sent said it should be done before 2 weeks old so I just made it.
I used 1/4 of the wafer. You will find the wafer is bigger than the opening in the bottle so you can't just dump it out so I used a clean needle and was able to score the wafer with the needle (attached to syringe so I could reach into the bottle). Then I just poked the needle into the piece I was going to use and lifted it out of the bottle.
Very easy to vaccinate but definately needed two people on chicks this age. I don'tknow how day old would be.
My chicks were a bit lethargic an hour or so after the vaccine but perked up later in the day and are fine today. I feel so much better now that that is done. Hopefully they didn't pick up anything before the vaccine. I guess it takes 2 weeks for the vaccine to provide the protection they need.

Hope everyone that is looking for the vaccine can get some. It is a very important precaution that could spare our beautiful birds from a very painful and prevenatable death.


There website says they have 150 vials available.
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