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I introduced some new (18 month old former commercial free range chickens) into my flock. Soon after they were all very ill and the vet tested them positive for micoplasma. I suspect it came in with the birds, but the vet has said that this is a common problem with wild birds as well, although previously my flock were okay. It looks like I will have to vaccinate mine if I want to keep them free range. So is that what everyone else is doing? I know the wild bird population has all these things anyway, but they all look healthy, and its always my birds getting sick! My idea was to get the ex-commercial birds because they have been vaccinated against some things and I was extending their life! Where do you draw the line with vaccinations?
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Re: Micoplasma
Mon, June 9, 2008 - 9:56 PMI only buy commercially-hatched, pre-vaccinated chicks because (as a veterinarian friend so delicately put it) "usually a sick chicken is a dead chicken." Former commercial birds are discarded for a reason, and unless you know the conditions "free range" here in the States can mean some pretty stressful, light-pushed, crowded environments with NO ability to adapt and deal with "normal" life outside of climate-control. It can be rather like dropping a zoo animal onto the veld, but that's just my .02 (with prejudice). -
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Re: Micoplasma
Tue, July 8, 2008 - 2:25 PMI had assumed that commercially bred free range chickens would have been vaccinated for micoplasma, but obviously not!
I'll have to get more information before I buy the next lot. -
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Re: Micoplasma
Tue, July 8, 2008 - 4:22 PMI am guessing that your chicks were vaccinated but sometimes (to paraphrase Pasteur) "the germ is nothing and the terrain is everything." A commercial bird will have been kept under climate-control to increase production and later, upon release into a "normal" environment, will not be physiologically prepared for these stressors. Any general shock to the system makes an organism more vulnerable to all manner of opportunistic infections, while vaccinations are explicit and specific.
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