The Doctor is In

Anybody who's ever raised a baby knows that, despite how well you care for your little ones, they are still susceptible to diseases and conditions you can do little, if anything, to prevent. Vaccinations help, if you believe in that kind of thing, but, for the most part, infant care involves a lot of love and a great deal of time and effort spent wiping baby bottoms and trying to keep your baby germ- and injury-free.

The same holds true for baby chickens.

Even before we'd placed our orders with McMurray and Meyer Hatcheries, we were presented with a medical decision that could mean life or death for our hatchlings: did we want them vaccinated against Marek's Disease?

Marek's what?

It turns out that chicks are extremely susceptible to a virus called Marek's Disease. Birds infected with Marek's suffer from leg paralysis and droopy wings; they also often die. As if that weren't bad enough, Marek's is also horribly contagious. If one chicken in a flock contracts Marek's, it's a safe bet that all the chickens in the flock will get it, too; when that happens, the recommendation is that the entire flock be isolated or destroyed. But wait, that's not all! Once Marek's has come to call, it contaminates your yard for all future chickens. Healthy chicks, roosters, and hens can pick up Marek's from infected chickens, from yards that keep or recently kept infected chickens, and from yards that kept infected chickens ages ago. That's right. The virus can lie dormant for years, until a hungry hen scratches at the ground and wakes it up. Some poultry keepers believe that Marek's can even be transmitted to healthy chicks via contact with the owners of infected birds, ie. human-to-chicken contagion.

We had no idea who'd farmed our property before we owned it. We did know that just across the street from our acreage was a decrepit, abandoned old chicken coop. Did we want to risk our chicks? No, sirree. One Marek's vaccine, please!

We had to make this decision prior to ordering our chicks because the vaccine can only be administered when chicks are one day old. When I asked the McMurray Hatchery representative why the vaccine isn't just administered routinely, I was surprised to learn that some poultry keepers don't want their chicks vaccinated. According to the rep, these farmers feel that their yards are Marek's free and/or that the vaccine is an unnecessary expense. I later learned that this belief wasn't too off the wall: the vaccine apparently only prevents the paralysis associated with the disease. Vaccinated chicks could still become infected; they just wouldn't show any symptoms.

Super. Well, better infected and living happy, egg-laying lives than dead.

The next chick-related medical issue came right on the heels of the Marek's vaccine question. Did we want the chicks vaccinated against coccidiosis? Back to Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens I went. Coccidiosis, or coxi for short, is yet another lovely chicken illness. This time, protozoa called coccidia play havoc with a chicken's digestive tract, causing slow or stunted growth, diarrhea, bloody stools, and — you guessed it — death in serious cases. Contamination occurs through direct contact with an infected chicken's droppings, which can contain millions of coccidia eggs. Prevention involves keeping a clean, dry coop, since — like Marek's — once one chicken is infected, the rest of the flock is sure to follow.

The trick with the coccidiosis vaccine is that, once administered, chicks have to eat unmedicated chick starter — essentially baby formula for chicks until they're about 8 weeks old — because medicated chick starter can cancel out the vaccine, leaving the bird open to infection. I spent one morning driving from feed store to feed store, asking about the brands of chick starter they carried. Only one store, in the town just southeast of us, carried unmedicated starter, a blend they milled themselves on site. The owner gave me a tour of his mill, then indicated the pallets of Purina medicated chick starter piled nearby. "In all honesty," he told me, "I give my chicks the medicated starter. That way, the chicks don't get coxi and they build up a natural immunity."

Got it. No vaccination for coccidiosis. Check!

Other vaccines exist that can be administered to chicks and adult birds besides these two. There are shots for Newcastle disease, a severe respiratory infection; for fowl pox, which is not at all related to chicken pox; for infectious bronchitis, which is so contagious it can spread between chickens more than half a mile apart; and for laryngotracheitis, a sort of infectious chicken asthma. My mind began to boggle at the thought of all these injections. Chicks were so tiny... wouldn't the needle just go right through them?

Fortunately, I received some excellent advice from a veterinary nurse who happened to raise chickens herself: no need to vaccinate for laryngotracheitis or fowl pox unless symptoms manifest, and combine the Newcastle and bronchitis into one vaccine, administered orally. Should I have to administer a vaccine via injection, do it subcutaneously — just beneath the skin at nape of the chicken's neck. She informed me that the Randall Burkey Company was the most reliable supplier of poultry vaccines should I need them.

I bought a set of chicken-sized syringes, just to be safe. Tractor Supply carried them and, should vaccines need to be administered due to an illness raging through our flock, I didn't want to be running like, well, like a chicken without its head, searching high and low for the right-sized syringe.

Other supplies made it into our chick first-aid kit: a bottle of apple-cider vinegar, which, when added to the chicks' water, promotes the growth of beneficial intestinal flora and helps combat loose stools; a box of Band-Aids, to use should any of the chicks display splayed-leg syndrome (going into the splits due to minimized muscle development; the Band-Aid is wrapped around each "ankle" to keep the legs parallel and the bird upright); a roll of medical adhesive tape, to combat curled or crooked toes (chicks' toes that curl under or bend in unnatural ways; the adhesive tape is gently wrapped around the toe to straighten it and serve as a "shoe" until the bone has straightened); and finally, soft squares of absorbent white cloths and Q-tips to help treat pasty butt.

Pasty butt, or sticky bottoms, is a very common condition in chicks. Stressed-out chicks, or chicks who haven't yet balanced their water intake versus their feed intake, have problems pooping. Instead of dropping to the ground, the poop "pastes" to the affected chick's bottom. It seems almost trivial but, if left untreated, pasty butt can kill a chick since it effectively seals a chick's vent (the exit hole for poop and, in adult hens, for eggs). The treatment is relatively easy: dip a Q-tip in warm water, then wipe away the paste until the vent is clear.

That's the theory, of course. The reality, as I discovered with Barbra, one of our Ameraucana chicks, is that the paste spreads into the chick's down, becoming really hard clumps that no soft rubbing with a Q-tip is going to remove. Barbra sang like her namesake while I switched from Q-tips to the cloth squares, soaking them in warm water before applying them to her hindquarters in hopes that this would loosen the matted material. When that proved futile, and when practically the entire town could hear Barbra's protests, J finally suggested dunking Barbra's rear into a chick-sized bowl of water. While I tried in vain to calm Barbra down, stroking her fuzzy neck and cooing reassuringly to her, J approached with a tiny Tupperware brimming with water. On the count of three, I dipped Barbra's tush into the bowl, expecting shrieks to emanate from the little bird. Instead, we were greeted with silence as Barbra backed her little butt into the water and sank down in seeming relief. A few moments later, her bottom was paste free and she was busily warming herself beneath the brooder's heat lamp. Crisis averted... until two days later, when Barbra developed pasty butt again. Poor Barbra. I suppose that this is what happens to chicks at the bottom of the pecking order. Good thing human babies don't have to worry about that until they're in college. Middle school? I'll shoot for kindergarten.