Question Possibly Marek's Disease

[gendronk]

Hello All,

I am new to this site and to chickens in general. I purchased 10 day old chicks (4, cream legbar, 2 silver penciled Plymouth rock, 2 bielefelder and 2 amauracana's) from DC Heritage poultry in QC Ontario.

They are now 6 weeks old and the "runt" hs become very immobilized. It started with a limp and not wanting to move much,to being very wobbly and now no movement of the right leg and the left is really struggling. She will still eat and drink. She has been separated but is still in the same coop (was hoping originally that someone had jumped on her and hurt her, or it was a vitamin deficiency (which vitamins in now given the water).

Looking for peoples experience with MAREK'S DISEASE and/or DC HERITAGE POULTRY and welcoming feed back on my next's steps or if people have seen this before and its not Marek's disease? Any help would be wonderful.

Thank-you!

[Killerbunny]

Oh dear, sorry to have to welcome you to the site under these circumstances. It is possible it could be Mareks. I'm sure others will be along to help soon. You have done the right things with vits and separation.

[Ontario Chick]

Sounds like Mareks, separate preferably away from the flock, but not much chance it will recover.
If nobody else comes down with it they may be resistant, or carry the disease and come down with it when under stress.
If they are OK past 5 month of age, they are most likely going to be fine.
One theory is that Mareks is so prevalent and has so many different strains that probably most flocks carry it, so you just had a bad luck of coming across it early on.
Lets hope it's just the one and rest will be fine.

[gendronk]

thank-you for your help. I was told that if one is positive for Marek's disease that even if the others appear fine, they can be carries of the disease. so my flock should be culled to not contaminate other flocks of friends. any advice on this?

[Ontario Chick]

Since there is no way to tell which birds are resistant to Mareks and which are carriers, and the same applies to your friends flocks, it would be a bit rash to cull the whole flock.
If I was in your situation, I would cull the affected bird right away and then watch and wait. If you had 2 or more come down with the same symptoms, I would reconsider.
In the meantime all you can do is keep the flock healthy and stress free and their environment as clean as possible and hope for the best.

[kenya]

Most flocks have mareks to kill them all is nutty, wild birds carry it, you can't get away from it unless you vaccinate for it. Some breeders do not vaccinate in order to strengthen their flocks resistance to it. Only keeping birds that are naturally resistant.

[Farrier1987]

I had a similar situation. Not hatchery but raised at home. Mareks, as I understand it is fairly easy to diagnose, look at the eye. Google Mareks and it will show you what I mean.

What I had going was a genetic thing. Took several years to figure out. They would be fine til about 6 months, then start to limp, and the wing on one side droop. That would get worse til they could only sort of flop about on one side, then that would start to go. I really tried to take care of them, but never worked. So I started to cull within a few days of seeing it. Figured out which hen was sending the gene along and never set any of her eggs again. Havent had it for a couple years, and that hen died last fall.

Take care and good luck with it.

[Farrier1987]

This was the thread when I had that going if you have tome to look and see if what you have might be similar.

Farrier1987 @ Stumbling chicken

[Killerbunny]

Mareks has 6 different strains so if you vaccinate you cannot be sure to cover them all
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/ ... in-poultry
Here is a good article. Note that it says Mareks is ubiquitous. I hope your other chicks are resistant.