Worrying about Mareks...what to do?

[jkzimm04]

Where to begin. I have a crate that I have been using for my pet chickens. We had a sick girl a bit ago, and we had her confined in this crate. We had acquired a few other chickens yesterday and had to put them in the crate that we use for our pet chickens. We put the chickens that we acquired in this crate, in a totally separate location from our girls. We had them in a shed with the door closed overnight. The hens that we acquired looked to be much older than ours, but I couldn't keep them and gave them to a friend who has been wanting some chickens to free range. We had them here for less then 10 hours. They seemed to be healthy and had some eggs from them this morning. One had a damaged eye, looked as it though it was pecked and I noticed that one had a constricted pupil in one eye. Immediately I thought of Ocular Mareks. They seemed 100% healthy otherwise. Normal poos, didn't detect lice or mites or anything of the sort.

SO, my question is, IF for example these chickens that I acquired yesterday had Mareks or some other contagious disease, is it possible to clean that crate and sanitize it so that we may use it again on our girls if we need to, or should we just get rid of it? I am such a worry wart about such things. My girls are about 21 weeks old now.

 

[Cuban Longtails]

The chicken could have had some sort of head trauma that caused it also. I've seen the same thing happen in roosters that get into territorial fights.

 

[donrae]

just sanitize the crate.