Grow Out losses

[Jake Cooke]

Hello All,

I hope someone can give me some advice or an idea of what I have going on. I raise Standard Bred Delaware chickens and I am experiencing something I have never dealt with before. This year I purchased 50 chicks of Delaware’s from 2 different breeders. I had little to no issues with brooding them only loosing 1-2 chicks from each group. I raised them separately from one another and split roosters from hen at 6 weeks of age. So I have 4 different pens set up. What I experienced was, one of the groups of chicks at about 9wks old started to have 1-2 a week within a 24hr period become anemic looking, loose color and then die. When I would handle them after they passed I found they were almost skin and bones even though they were eating and drinking normally just 24hours prior. I didn’t see any blood in any stool just treated with Corvid. The losses seemed to slow slightly after that only loosing 1 every other week. Then The losses spiked again loosing 3-5 a week. Same symptoms again, everything appeared normal would do my nightly checks, birds would look down  would pull them out to isolate then next morning dead. I am at a loss for words and now at 22wks It has started to effect my other set of birds. I am down to the last 15 birds when I started with almost 100. Now I have also raised 450 other birds, of different breeds, this year, same management, feed, water, everything and 0 issues.

[Anonymous]

Please go to NAL and get sample kits and do a Marek’s test. I was losing birds to what I saw as a wasting issue and the pen did test positive for Marek’s. The sample kits are $18 for 3 swabs and blood collector and you don’t have to cull a bird. The blood can be gotten from clipping a toe nail close.

I lost 70% of one pen before testing, 7 wry neck issues and what looked like cocci issues, but two birds did end up with split leg but if I cared for them they ate and were fine, just not getting better.

I had one pen of Black Copper Marans, that had 2 leg issues but only lost 2 birds out of 20 birds, tested that pen and positive for both Marek’s and ALV. I informed the breeder on the ALV, it is not tested for during NPIP certification unless asked for at an extra changed and most breeders sell of their chicks too young to show symptoms, so I gave them a copy of the results. Test for Marek’s is $20 and ALV is $25 but samples need to be overnighted to get results on the ALV.

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