Floppy chicken

[micstrachan]

I’m sorry about this little sweetie. Is she still with us and gave you brought her inside? Can her sister keep her company? Are you sble to tube feed her to see if she can get through this episide?

 

[Wyorp Rock]

Not judging just trying to make the best decisions. How do you replace this lost chickens without worry of mareks nightmare all over again? I know the vaccine doesn’t stop mareks and actually masks it but can still harm your flock. I’m just so lost. So many chickens in such a short time

If it is indeed Marek's, sadly it's something that you will deal with periodically from now on.
Some birds may become symptomatic, while others won't.
Offering supportive care as mentioned in the articles linked previously is something that most people do. Sometimes a bird can recover and carry on.

@microchick may have some tips for you on managing this disease.

 

[Suzyqschickens]

If I were in your shoes I'd wait for a bit to see if there are anymore deaths/hens with symptoms before getting new birds

My problem with that is I have 32 eggs in the incubator

 

[Suzyqschickens]

She is barely still with us. I don’t want her to suffer anymore. She looks like she’s in pain. Her sister and almost the whole flock keeps checking on her she is away from them but they can still see her. Breaks my heart. I just hope this is the end. I was reading it is in the dirt for a few years! I wish there was more concrete evidence on what it likes so I can disturb that process. Feel like I am losing a battle that I can not even fight

 

[microchick]

Thank you @Wyorp Rock for mentioning me.

@Suzyqschickens I'm going to go back this afternoon and read your thread but from what I'm reading on this page you are in a heartbreaking situation. I am so sorry.

I will be glad to help with whatever experience dealing with Marek's that I can draw upon. Yes, I've been dealing with it for over 4 years in my flock so while not an expert, I sure have the background.

 

[microchick]

Interesting.

In the 4+ years that I have dealt with Marek's in my flock I have only had one bird present with the particular 'scissor leg paralysis' that is the hallmark of the disease. All others presented with wild neurological symptoms and/or tumors along with Ocular Marek's disease.

I had young birds that would suddenly jump straight in the air and then run around blindly. If memory serves me correctly, I did have one that lost its balance and did circles. Some birds had seizures, wasted and died. When I had a hen turn up with grey eye that is when I began to suspect MD, but until then I had no idea what was causing the symptoms in my birds and killing them between the ages of 1 and 2 years of age. I called and talked to a Veterinary Doctor at the university of Missouri and he told me that he would be willing to do a necropsy on one of my birds but he bet real money it was Marek's.

After my conversation with him, I broke into tears. It was my husband who is a retired eye doctor who gave me my diagnosis. He checked my hen with gray eye and he confirmed that she had a raging herpes infection and was mostly blind. Since Marek's is herpes in a chicken, I knew finally what I was dealing with.

Marek's is heartbreaking and the stealer of dreams when it comes to keeping chickens. The birds I bought as chicks were bread for resistance. True, they were probably resistant to the form of Marek's that was in the area where they were hatched but not to the strain that exists around our farm.

AND, EVERY FLOCK IN THE U.S. WILL TEST POSTIVE FOR MAREK'S DISEASE. That is the cold hard fact about it. It took over 2/3rds of my flock. Second generation birds dropped like flies. The trick is to find birds that are resistant to Marek's and guard them with your life.

Management for me happened by accident. We live in the middle of an Amish community. My husband pointed out to me that the Amish neighbor's chickens looked healthy, why not get a bunch of eggs from him and hatch them in my incubator. I did, sure that they were going to drop like flies the same as my pretty pure bred Welsummers and Buff Os.

The didn't. They thrived. They more than thrived and one day my husband found me standing in the yard watching them and asked me if I had another bird on the radar and on its way out. I told him no, and wondered "Why aren't they dying?" And they weren't. The Amish barnyard mixes were breeding like mice and I was up to my elbows with little OEGB/Cochin/God only knows what else mixed birds running around acting healthy.

Local bred birds had evolved to the point where they were truly resistant to the local form of Marek's disease.

6 months later I made the painful decision to cull my original flock their egg production had dropped off due to age and all they wanted to do was sit around and shed virus in their dander. For the health of my flock of thriving birds I had them butchered.

If you can figure out a way to do it I would go with a necropsy for a bird from your flock. A civilian necropsy is going to be hard in that if they don't know what to look for, you ain't gonna see it and frankly a lot of the neuro stuff is going to be in the brain and the nervous system where Marek's will create tumors on the nerves along with nerve enlargement.

Tumors will be self explanatory. I lost a beautiful Welsummer rooster to throat cancer. He was approaching his 2nd birthday so I was watching him carefully. Suddenly I noticed he was losing weight. A few weeks later I saw him struggle to swallow scratch grain I had tossed to him. I picked him up, rubbed his throat and encountered three huge tumors under his wattles in his throat, hiding in plain sight. I set with him in my lap, petted him, talked to him, thanked him for taking care of my girls for me and how much he was loved, and got my .22 and released his spirit to fly free.

While culling the 11 birds that I had left from the original 30 odd birds of the original flock was painful, it was the right decision to make.

I currently have a flock of around 50 birds. Amish barnyard crosses, pure bred OEGB Silver Duck Wing and BBR OEGBs. I have brought vaccinated chicks from the local Orschelns and two years ago I added Egyptian Fayoumis to the flock as they are not only vaccinated but naturally resistant to MD.

Knock wood, the mass exodus of birds has stopped in my flock. I have gone from losing 1-2 birds a week to maybe 2 a year.

I know it is there, lurking around, just waiting for a chance to surface again.

The question was asked about spraying your coop, your soil. You can spray your coop but remember what I said. MD is everywhere. Dander carrying the virus (which is how it spreads) can travel 5 miles and the virus can live in the soil for 7 years.

I do not let my birds leave our neighborhood. I have given my Barnyard specials to our next door neighbor to give them a start of birds and theirs' are doing well also. Somebody once asked me if they could scrape the soil to rid it of virus. Only, I told them, if you are willing to scrape your whole property, burn your house down, burn your out buildings down, enclose your whole property in an environmentally sealed habitat bubble, dress in an airtight contagion suit and...and well, I think you get the point.

Vaccinated birds? Worth a try. I'm having good luck with them. Are you going to lose a lot of birds? I'm sorry, the potential with Marek's is always there for that to happen.

A member here on Back Yard Chickens once told me after a rather tearful post about my dealings with the disease to hang on. It would get better. Sooner or later the deaths will taper off and I will lose only the occasional bird and that has happened. I wish I could remember who gave me that advice but God Bless You is all I can say because they were so right.

In the mean time my best advice is to go with an autopsy/necropsy if you can swing it but until then just consider it to be Marek's disease.

I read a painful number of medical studies in my research that while I'm a retired nurse, frankly made my brains hurt and one stands out. It said. If you have a bird mysteriously die for no obvious reason, it's probably Marek's Disease. In all honesty, that is stretching it a bit. Chickens, like sheep, just love to die, but I understood what they were saying now. Knowing that I have Marek's exposed birds, when one does die, my husband says, 'Marek's Disease?' and I just shrug and say 'yep'.

Except the one hen that died suddenly. Fine that morning, dead as a board that afternoon. I got up my nerve and cracked her open expecting Marek's related tumors. Nope. She died of a reproductive infection. I giggled with relief and at that moment knew my flock of spoiled fat birds had a chance. One had died from something other than Marek's disease.

But not knowing what is happening is stressful and painful. Please, if you can, find out for sure.

In the meantime. You aren't alone. There are a lot of us on BYC dealing with MD. It's not a club anybody wants to belong to but it has a lot of support and understanding folks to talk to.

Blessings. Becky/AKA Microchick.

 

[Suzyqschickens]

Interesting.

In the 4+ years that I have dealt with Marek's in my flock I have only had one bird present with the particular 'scissor leg paralysis' that is the hallmark of the disease. All others presented with wild neurological symptoms and/or tumors along with Ocular Marek's disease.

I had young birds that would suddenly jump straight in the air and then run around blindly. If memory serves me correctly, I did have one that lost its balance and did circles. Some birds had seizures, wasted and died. When I had a hen turn up with grey eye that is when I began to suspect MD, but until then I had no idea what was causing the symptoms in my birds and killing them between the ages of 1 and 2 years of age. I called and talked to a Veterinary Doctor at the university of Missouri and he told me that he would be willing to do a necropsy on one of my birds but he bet real money it was Marek's.

After my conversation with him, I broke into tears. It was my husband who is a retired eye doctor who gave me my diagnosis. He checked my hen with gray eye and he confirmed that she had a raging herpes infection and was mostly blind. Since Marek's is herpes in a chicken, I knew finally what I was dealing with.

Marek's is heartbreaking and the stealer of dreams when it comes to keeping chickens. The birds I bought as chicks were bread for resistance. True, they were probably resistant to the form of Marek's that was in the area where they were hatched but not to the strain that exists around our farm.

AND, EVERY FLOCK IN THE U.S. WILL TEST POSTIVE FOR MAREK'S DISEASE. That is the cold hard fact about it. It took over 2/3rds of my flock. Second generation birds dropped like flies. The trick is to find birds that are resistant to Marek's and guard them with your life.

Management for me happened by accident. We live in the middle of an Amish community. My husband pointed out to me that the Amish neighbor's chickens looked healthy, why not get a bunch of eggs from him and hatch them in my incubator. I did, sure that they were going to drop like flies the same as my pretty pure bred Welsummers and Buff Os.

The didn't. They thrived. They more than thrived and one day my husband found me standing in the yard watching them and asked me if I had another bird on the radar and on its way out. I told him no, and wondered "Why aren't they dying?" And they weren't. The Amish barnyard mixes were breeding like mice and I was up to my elbows with little OEGB/Cochin/God only knows what else mixed birds running around acting healthy.

Local bred birds had evolved to the point where they were truly resistant to the local form of Marek's disease.

6 months later I made the painful decision to cull my original flock their egg production had dropped off due to age and all they wanted to do was sit around and shed virus in their dander. For the health of my flock of thriving birds I had them butchered.

If you can figure out a way to do it I would go with a necropsy for a bird from your flock. A civilian necropsy is going to be hard in that if they don't know what to look for, you ain't gonna see it and frankly a lot of the neuro stuff is going to be in the brain and the nervous system where Marek's will create tumors on the nerves along with nerve enlargement.

Tumors will be self explanatory. I lost a beautiful Welsummer rooster to throat cancer. He was approaching his 2nd birthday so I was watching him carefully. Suddenly I noticed he was losing weight. A few weeks later I saw him struggle to swallow scratch grain I had tossed to him. I picked him up, rubbed his throat and encountered three huge tumors under his wattles in his throat, hiding in plain sight. I set with him in my lap, petted him, talked to him, thanked him for taking care of my girls for me and how much he was loved, and got my .22 and released his spirit to fly free.

While culling the 11 birds that I had left from the original 30 odd birds of the original flock was painful, it was the right decision to make.

I currently have a flock of around 50 birds. Amish barnyard crosses, pure bred OEGB Silver Duck Wing and BBR OEGBs. I have brought vaccinated chicks from the local Orschelns and two years ago I added Egyptian Fayoumis to the flock as they are not only vaccinated but naturally resistant to MD.

Knock wood, the mass exodus of birds has stopped in my flock. I have gone from losing 1-2 birds a week to maybe 2 a year.

I know it is there, lurking around, just waiting for a chance to surface again.

The question was asked about spraying your coop, your soil. You can spray your coop but remember what I said. MD is everywhere. Dander carrying the virus (which is how it spreads) can travel 5 miles and the virus can live in the soil for 7 years.

I do not let my birds leave our neighborhood. I have given my Barnyard specials to our next door neighbor to give them a start of birds and theirs' are doing well also. Somebody once asked me if they could scrape the soil to rid it of virus. Only, I told them, if you are willing to scrape your whole property, burn your house down, burn your out buildings down, enclose your whole property in an environmentally sealed habitat bubble, dress in an airtight contagion suit and...and well, I think you get the point.

Vaccinated birds? Worth a try. I'm having good luck with them. Are you going to lose a lot of birds? I'm sorry, the potential with Marek's is always there for that to happen.

A member here on Back Yard Chickens once told me after a rather tearful post about my dealings with the disease to hang on. It would get better. Sooner or later the deaths will taper off and I will lose only the occasional bird and that has happened. I wish I could remember who gave me that advice but God Bless You is all I can say because they were so right.

In the mean time my best advice is to go with an autopsy/necropsy if you can swing it but until then just consider it to be Marek's disease.

I read a painful number of medical studies in my research that while I'm a retired nurse, frankly made my brains hurt and one stands out. It said. If you have a bird mysteriously die for no obvious reason, it's probably Marek's Disease. In all honesty, that is stretching it a bit. Chickens, like sheep, just love to die, but I understood what they were saying now. Knowing that I have Marek's exposed birds, when one does die, my husband says, 'Marek's Disease?' and I just shrug and say 'yep'.

Except the one hen that died suddenly. Fine that morning, dead as a board that afternoon. I got up my nerve and cracked her open expecting Marek's related tumors. Nope. She died of a reproductive infection. I giggled with relief and at that moment knew my flock of spoiled fat birds had a chance. One had died from something other than Marek's disease.

But not knowing what is happening is stressful and painful. Please, if you can, find out for sure.

In the meantime. You aren't alone. There are a lot of us on BYC dealing with MD. It's not a club anybody wants to belong to but it has a lot of support and understanding folks to talk to.

Blessings. Becky/AKA Microchick.

Thank you! While I watch this bird suffer I am almost 100% it is mareks. All the signs are there. It is not in their eyes so it is the neural form. I did talk to a bet office the other day and they said it probably is with the amount I am losing and in the manner in which they are going. Just so damn frustrating. I was about to buy a few bantams for my kids to show chickens in 4-H and then this struck!!! Now I am terrified to get anymore chickens especially right now while I am losing one a week. What other breeds are resistant? I have black copper marans, Welsummers, cream leg bar, black sex links, Easter eggers, Rhode Island reds,cuckoo marans and a barnyard mix! And I just set 32 eggs to hatch. So do I vaccinate these hatchlings? Do I just sell them??? I don’t want them dying from this horrible virus!

 

[microchick]

I feel your frustration.

Your whole flock is now exposed to Marek's. Unfortunately they are all now carriers of the disease and capable of spreading it.

It would be unethical to show birds from your flock or sell birds from your flock without disclosing that they are Marek's exposed.

Like I said, Marek's is the destroyer of dreams. I had hoped to raise rare and exotic chickens and sell my extra birds. Now that is impossible.

My best advice is to close your flock. I did give birds to my next door neighbor but given the nature of the disease and hey, they are next door, not across the state, or county, I didn't feel bad doing that as a fox had killed their whole flock and they have 11 kids to feed.

Don't sell your birds. Start breeding resistant birds from your survivors and if you introduce any birds, make sure they are vaccinated, keeping in mind that even vaccinated, they are carriers once they are exposed to your property or birds.

Resistant birds are Egyptian Fayoumis, Naked Necked Turkens and I believe I have heard that some of the leg horns are resistant but please check on that one before acting on my recommendations.

I also recommend checking around your neighborhood and talk to your neighbors who have chickens. Ask them if they are having any unusual losses in their flocks that aren't predator related. If they say no, barter or buy some hatching eggs from them and hatch them.

Also, and this is a hard one. Cull any birds the moment they show a downward spiral. Birds that are stressed will have a higher death rate then birds who's day to day lives stay pretty much the same. I always lost roosters around spring when the hormone rush happened that accompanies breeding season occurred. Plus, sick birds shed dander and virus in huge amounts. It's hard, ask me, I know.

Remember also that you can carry the disease on your clothes, on your skin, on your car tires. It's impossible to avoid it entirely. Your birds shed dander whenever they stretch their wings and it's in their bedding.

The best you can do is all you can do.

It does get better. Just hang in there and do not give up and be tempted to throw the baby out with the bath water.

You may have to choose another 4H project for your kiddo to pursue.

 

[microchick]

About the hatching eggs in your incubator. If you don't want to keep them, I would find some way to sell them before they hatch, passing them on to somebody who has an incubator that will finish the job.

The virus does not pass through the egg barrier. But the chicks, exposed to the rest of your flock or handled by people who have been in the coop and brought the dander inside on their clothes will expose them.

There is also a train of thought that says that a degree of protection is passed on to the chicks from resistant or vaccinated birds.

I wonder about this because I haven't lost a second or third generation bantam so far that have hatched from eggs my vaccinated birds have laid.

 

[Suzyqschickens]

About the hatching eggs in your incubator. If you don't want to keep them, I would find some way to sell them before they hatch, passing them on to somebody who has an incubator that will finish the job.

The virus does not pass through the egg barrier. But the chicks, exposed to the rest of your flock or handled by people who have been in the coop and brought the dander inside on their clothes will expose them.

There is also a train of thought that says that a degree of protection is passed on to the chicks from resistant or vaccinated birds.

I wonder about this because I haven't lost a second or third generation bantam so far that have hatched from eggs my vaccinated birds have laid.

So do you think these hatchlings have a chance? The neighbor across the street has chickens that we bought together he has not lost any I have lost 6-8. All the same thing. I don’t really want to give up the hatchlings this is my first try. Should I vaccinate them? I can shower and not wear the same clothes to feed and vaccinate these