Do you think they will succeed in an avian bird flu vaccine for chickens?

[RoyalChick]

Who would the vaccine be for? How and when would it be administered?
I have experience in the commercial poultry industry, and the only time broilers or layers are vaccinated is at hatch with either an in-ovo just before they are transferred to the hatcher, or sprayed with vaccine as they are packed into trucks to go to the farm. Vaccinating as chicks with one of these methods would be easy to integrate with existing systems. Any other vaccination time would take lots of time, labor (penning and catching), and people trained to vaccinate correctly.
If it would need to be injected, teams of people would have to be hired to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of birds a day to keep up with vaccinating every bird. I have vaccinated thousands of chicks (smaller scale university hatchery) that replace our breeder birds, and it takes a couple hours to vaccinate a couple hundred depending on how squirmy the chicks are.
Would it need a booster vaccine? That would be a viable thing in a layer or broiler breeder operation, but not worth it for broilers since they don't live that long.
As others have stated, the flu mutates very quickly, and vaccines are only effective against a specific strain/mutation. If they can't find a quick way to change antigens from one strain to the other, it might not be worth it. Antigens can be shared between strains, though, so a vaccine for one strain could be partially effective against another strain.

It could be available to backyard flocks and smaller producers, but lots of those vaccine ampules are only available in dosages for hundreds of birds at a time, and expire after a certain amount of time being mixed with the injection medium, so it wouldn't help anything to save the extra vaccine mix.

I believe it is administered in ovo, so would be a commercial flock vaccine only. But I am not 100% sure of that.

 

[Eggcessive]

As someone said, there have been vaccines available for certain strains for some time, but the US has not okayed them. They give them in some countries. However, it may happen soon, since we are so dependent on eggs and chicken for eating. It has become more difficult to have enough breeder birds and baby chicks available. Just like our human flu vaccine and Covid vaccines, they will have to be updated to the newer strains as the virus mutates.

 

[6-Hens-and-Me]

Personally, I don’t think their much point as birds are going to migrate every year, country to country, spreading new strains of the disease, so once they find a vaccine for one, another strain has occurred.

What they could do, however is vaccinate all the wild birds that are released from captivity etc so when the older generation die out the new generation are vaccinated.

They should solve the root cause of this issue, by the time the disease gets to poultry it’s already spread through the wild birds, so vaccinate the wild birds and the poultry after that way the root cause can be fixed before it goes on to poultry etc. which will eventually slow down the rate of transmission between avian, water foul, game birds and poultry etc.

 

[2 Acres]

I read in the news that they are working on a vaccine for avian bird flu in chickens. Do you think they will succeed in an avian bird flu vaccine for chickens?

Merck H5N1 vaccine

oped several vaccines for chickens that protect against avian influenza, including INNOVAX-ND-H5 and TENO-VAXIN.

INNOVAX-ND-H5

• Protects against highly pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) of the H5 type
• Can be administered in ovo or subcutaneously at one day of age
• Also protects against Marek's disease and Newcastle disease
• Developed using Merck Animal Health's HVT (herpesvirus of turkeys) vector platform technology

 

[Debbie292d]

My sister and her husband raise turkeys commercially in Minnesota. During a recent discussion, we found that they've been vaccinating their turkeys for Avian Influenza for several years. Their turkeys (8,000 x six batches per year) have been getting vaccinated for AI and a few other things at about four to five days old.

Prior to this, I recall many years ago, their operation nearly went down due to AI. They had to cull everything in most of their barns.

It just seems odd to me this vaccine wasn't here for chickens at the same time as for turkeys.

 

[igorsMistress]

Merck H5N1 vaccine

oped several vaccines for chickens that protect against avian influenza, including INNOVAX-ND-H5 and TENO-VAXIN.

INNOVAX-ND-H5

• Protects against highly pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) of the H5 type
• Can be administered in ovo or subcutaneously at one day of age
• Also protects against Marek's disease and Newcastle disease
• Developed using Merck Animal Health's HVT (herpesvirus of turkeys) vector platform technology

The “also protects against” bit makes me nervous. There’s a current Mareks vaccine that tends to be leaky these days I trust things like this less and less.

 

[Sally PB]

tends to be leaky these days

What does this mean?

 

[igorsMistress]

What does this mean?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous

 

[2 Acres]

A while back, After doing some reading

My sister and her husband raise turkeys commercially in Minnesota. During a recent discussion, we found that they've been vaccinating their turkeys for Avian Influenza for several years. Their turkeys (8,000 x six batches per year) have been getting vaccinated for AI and a few other things at about four to five days old.

Prior to this, I recall many years ago, their operation nearly went down due to AI. They had to cull everything in most of their barns.

It just seems odd to me this vaccine wasn't here for chickens at the same time as for turkeys.

A European company "Merck" is working on a vaccine. When will it be available in the states has yet to be seen.

 

[Eggcessive]

There has been a vaccine available, and France has been vaccinating for years. The US has not approved giving it yet, but has it stockpiled. Other countries will not buy our chicken if they have been vaccinated, so that has been the reasoning so far not to use it. The vaccines have to be updated as the virus changes.