The first out of the shell was this little chick.
Soon we had more …
From the six eggs that we incubated, only these five hatched.
From the five that hatched, three survived. We had a problem and we didn’t know what it was.
After much researching and observation, we discovered that our chickens had Marek’s Disease (a herpes virus that affects chickens). This has a couple of nasty prognosis: Tumours grown on the chicks organs resulting in the chick dying of starvation, alternatively, their sciatic nerve is destroyed and the chick cannot move, also resulting in the chick dying of starvation. There is another alternative … the chick is not affected at all (very uncommon). However, the virus is carried in the dander (the skin and feather flakes that float around in the coop) and affects all of the flock. Typically, if the chicken has not been affected by 8 weeks old, it will not be affected. However, the chicken will carry the disease.
Our only course of action at this stage, is to wait for our flock to die naturally (those that are not affected by Marek’s) and then set up a new coop. The old coop needs to be thoroughly cleaned and left for about a year until the virus has died out in the coop (not guaranteed).
The eggs are unaffected by the virus and it cannot be transferred to humans, so we are just fine to eat the eggs. We’ve taken the decision to keep the chickens alive and let them live out their life as comfortably and happy as possible.
