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In this deep-dive episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast, we're joined once again by our resident poultry veterinarian, Dr. Morishita, to tackle one of the most misunderstood and hotly debated topics in the poultry world—Marek’s Disease.
We break down the science behind this deadly herpesvirus, how it spreads through feather dander, and why vaccination is the only real defense. Dr. Morishita explains the four main symptoms of Marek’s, how to identify them, and whether it's even possible to maintain a Marek’s-free flock.
Plus, we get answers to your biggest questions:
- Can vaccinated birds spread the virus?
- Is turkey dander protective?
- Do herbal remedies work?
- How can you safely necropsy your own birds?
- Can you test for Marek’s in a live bird?
🔬 Whether you're a backyard poultry keeper, gamefowl breeder, or raising exhibition chickens—this episode is packed with must-know facts that could save your flock.
🧬 Keywords: Marek’s disease in chickens, Marek’s vaccine, backyard poultry health, poultry vet advice, chicken tumors, gray eye disease, necropsy chickens, feather dander virus, poultry podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jennifer (00:01):
Welcome back, poultry nerd.
We are here again with I guess,our resident poultry
veterinarian at this point.
Dr.
Morshita.
So welcome back.
How are you doing?
Dr. Morishita (00:17):
I'm doing fine.
And how are you both?
Carey (00:22):
I'm doing good.
Jennifer (00:23):
Good.
We're good.
Carey (00:24):
I'm excited about today's topic because today's topic is
one of those that you hear somuch back and forth and back and
forth that nobody will ever sayanything definitive about it
because in my opinion, theydon't really know.
And there's very few people thathave actually studied it, that,
(00:47):
in my opinion, are qualified tospeak on it.
And they usually don't want to.
So I'm excited that we get totalk about it today.
Jennifer (00:59):
And the topic is Merrick's disease, so we are
gonna find all about it.
And I have my
Carey (01:09):
aluminum cap on.
Jennifer (01:12):
You're gonna what?
Carey (01:14):
I said I have my aluminum cap on my tenfold hat.
I'm ready to go today.
Jennifer (01:21):
So I listened to another discussion with a
scientist a couple weeks agoabout it and actually feel like
I have a grasp on what it is.
Will you explain Marck to usplease?
Dr. Morishita (01:40):
Okay.
So Merrick's disease, actually,and we should be concerned about
it because it's a very importantdisease in the poultry industry,
and many years ago is one of themost important, and it still is.
I know that we have AV influenzahappening to us right now, but
this Marx is always there.
So Marx's disease is caused byan disease agent called the
(02:07):
virus, and it's a herpes virus.
Jennifer (02:13):
Is it just one virus?
Dr. Morishita (02:15):
Yes.
Okay.
It's a herpes virus.
And as we talked about in thepast, remember we talked about
avian influenza?
And how.
You could it's like a, it'scalled an RNA virus and that's
how it has a lot of mutation.
This week the herpes virus iscaused by a DNA virus.
(02:36):
And this particular virus isvery hardy in the environment.
So guess how it spread?
Now this one is very unique inthat it is spread chicken to
chicken by feather danderfeather dutch, which is
literally
Jennifer (02:53):
everywhere.
Dr. Morishita (02:54):
And it stays in the environment.
And the other interesting thingis that if you get it on your
clothes, you can also pass thaton.
They call it indirectly,'causeyou're not a chicken, but you
can pass it on if you gotcontaminated clothing and things
like that.
Actually.
That's one of the reasons why inthe commercial poultry industry,
(03:16):
we wear coveralls when we wearhair nets because that virus can
survive in the environment forprobably up to four weeks,
sometimes even month, a month orso.
So it's very hardy.
So if you know your birds getinto a environment or you handle
an infected birds and you don'twash that clothes and you keep
(03:38):
on using it for other birds oryou, when you're working with
new chicks, potentially there'scontamination.
Carey (03:46):
So let me ask this.
Is merricks something that couldbe inside of the chickens in
their DNA all the time andsomething happened that makes it
to where it's full formed andobvious that's what's wrong and
the bird gets sick?
(04:06):
Is it like a hidden thing thatcan come out or does it just
happen?
Dr. Morishita (04:11):
It's there and it comes out and maybe the good
example I can give, it's aherpes virus.
So if we think about people withherpes virus, right?
Cold sores around the mouth.
Jennifer (04:22):
That's
Dr. Morishita (04:22):
a herpes virus.
So the herpes virus stays inyour body.
And like in people, if you getstressed, people that have cold
sores around the mouth.
So birds also, if they getstressed maybe or something
triggers it, they can releasethat and they can start shedding
that as well.
So what they always say once,once you have the chickens, once
(04:46):
you have a herpes virus, you'relike a potential known source of
that.
So let's say I like to add newbirds into my flock, right?
So your bird might not show anysign, but it might be carrying
that mareks.
It hasn't shown any signs atall.
All this feather, Dans comingout, your little feather dust,
(05:06):
you bring a new bird into thatarea and lo and behold, a bird,
that bird might developmerrick's disease.
Jennifer (05:16):
Okay.
Okay.
So what are the symptoms then?
Dr. Morishita (05:22):
So that, yeah, that's a good question because
the main thing that you wannaknow is what causes it?
What are the signs?
This is what you're gonna lookfor.
So they say that it can affectthe, they call it the peripheral
nerves.
So those are nerves that arelike going to your arm.
The, their legs or wings.
Okay.
(05:42):
Those are the peripheral nerves.
And, normally one of the classicsigns of Mareks disease is you
see a bird down lame and has onefoot forward and one backwards.
Like it's almost doing the spliton the ground.
That's almost like the classicalsign of Mareks.
Jennifer (06:00):
Okay.
Dr. Morishita (06:00):
And often, we have chickens and they are like
little cannibalistic, a littlepecking order.
So when they see one of theirfellow flock mates down on the
ground, usually they'll jump on'em, scratch the back.
And you see a lot of them, themde feathered and that bird dies
(06:21):
eventually'cause they all kindof gang up on that bird'cause
that bird is down.
So we see a lot of themortality.
I've seen like some people, thatI talked to with Merrick's
disease and.
If you had that bird alone, itmay be recuperate after seven
days, but most times, we keepchickens in a flock, so they
will go down.
(06:43):
Okay.
The other signs that you can seebecause it affects like the
nerves of the body and again,that's coming off the central
nervous system, that's a spinalcord.
Some of them might have lamenecks.
You might just see them on theground.
Okay.
So that's one sign.
The other one is only if youstart pulling feathers off, like
(07:06):
those people that are butcheringand slaughtering chickens.
If you pull the feathers off,you might see like little bumps
where the feathers were.
That's the skin form ofmerrick's disease.
We call it skin osis.
And it almost looks like a.
I would say little bumps, allwith the feathers attached to
(07:27):
the skin.
And that's the skin form.
So sometimes birds may show thatsign and you don't see it at all
because they have the featherscovering it.
Only if you butcher them or,slaughtering them for home use
and stuff.
You might see them.
We see sometimes that, like inthe large processing plant, when
(07:48):
we have the large commercialflocks affected, and then the
other form is on the eyes and wecall that gray eye disease.
So that's the third form ofMar's disease.
And that's when the tumor cellsinvade that colored part of the
eye, which we call the iris.
(08:09):
And so normally, you know thatchickens normally have a, an
iris of like orange, yellow.
And when they have merits, thesetumor cells will invade the
iris, and then you'll see it asgray, grayish blue.
And they often call that grayeye disease like a common name
(08:30):
when you see that.
So the birds might not die, butyou might see your birds, the
flock and some of them have onegray eye, some may have two.
But that's how you can see thatpotentially you have had
merricks through a flock.
If you see several birds withthat color V Okay.
And the fourth and mostdevastating form is the internal
(08:55):
tumors that grow throughout thebird.
So when you see a bird that'sdead and you open it up and it's
very good if you want, I.
Not, like we talked about lasttime, when there's a big
mortality that you're gonna openup birds, you wanna call a
professional, but sometimes youmight have one or two birds that
die and it's good if you keepchickens.
(09:16):
You wanna find out what's goingon if you don't have a nearby
lab, but you always try to takeyour lab to the lab if possible.
But you can see all these likenodules in the liver.
'cause the liver is normallydark red, but you'll see this
yellowish white nodules orspots, throughout the liver.
And it's hard.
(09:37):
And that is part of the tumorsthat are growing.
So you see it on the spleen andthose of you that if you
remember like you have cut upchicken before, like the spleen
is located between the provenventriculars and the gizzard.
The proven ventriculars is areal stomach.
And there's a little organ, areddish organ that's like oval
(09:59):
shape, that is a spleen ofchicken.
We know that it's probably aboutthe size of your first digit or
size in a.
Adult chicken.
But if you've got Merrick'sdisease, that little spleen can
be like two to three timeslarge, and it has those
yellowish white nodules inthere.
(10:20):
So those are immediate signsthat you've got marck.
So there's usually tumorsthroughout the body, and that
really is what kills the birds.
So just remember there's foursigns or clinical signs in the
birds with Mars, the peripheralnerves.
So they get lame and they havedifferent stretching, one leg
(10:40):
out, stretching, one leg back.
They have the skin form that'sbumpy skin where the feathers
join the skin.
Then they have the gray eye, andthen they have the tumors.
They can have one or all four ofthose signs.
So you always have to bevigilant of that.
And because it's spread byfeather dander, one bird can
(11:03):
spread it to the whole flock.
So that's one disease that we,so it affects that Always wanna
prevent It affects, go ahead.
Sorry.
Jennifer (11:14):
So it sounds like it affects a lot of different
things, the skin, the eyes, theliver the spinal cord.
So it's polygenic because itaffects several different parts
of the body?
No,
Dr. Morishita (11:29):
It has ability to spread'cause remember it's
tumors, so like a tumor cell canspread throughout the body and
then it can go to the differentorgans,
Jennifer (11:38):
okay.
Let's see, how do I wanna saythis?
So how does the vi the vaccinework then against the virus?
Okay,
Dr. Morishita (11:48):
And you brought up a good point because there is
no treatment for Marx, right?
So the only way we can preventthis is through vaccine.
So it's very important becauseyou remember, once a bird gets a
herpes virus, it remains therefor life, right?
So that is why one of the keythings is that we try to get
them vaccinated at one day ofage in the hatchery.
(12:13):
Traditionally it's beenvaccinated one day of age.
As soon as the chicks are bornthey'll vaccinate them for the
commercial flocks.
And all chickens producecommercially be vaccinated for
Marx.
'cause it's a devastatingdisease.
Now I did not know that.
So now some of the more, there'sbeen newer methods and some of
(12:38):
the.
Methods we have is called inoval vaccination.
That means vaccinating the chickwhile it's still in the egg.
So in and an oval is egg.
So they have these needles thatinject the eggs and when the,
when they're about 18 days ofincubation.
And we know that a chick hatchesat 21, but they give the
(13:00):
vaccination to the birds andhopefully beat the beat exposure
to the, the virulent forms ofMars that are in the
environment.
Okay.
That's why one of the big thingsin the commercial hatchery was
vaccinating them at day one ofage.
Jennifer (13:21):
So does the vaccine, oh, go ahead.
Does the vaccine like preventall of the different symptoms or
just the tumors?
Dr. Morishita (13:33):
We know that the tumors, once you get the tumors,
you can't save it.
Mainly the vaccine is given toprevent the tumors formation
because that is what's gonnakill the birds, right?
Like I mentioned before, you gota discolored eye but you're
still living.
You got like I mentioned before,birds have the skin osis and
(13:54):
nobody finds it because it's allunder their feathers until
they're gonna slaughter theirbirds.
But they're still living.
And then the one that is lamelike that, like they're doing
the split, there have been somecases, like I said before, like
maybe after seven days, the birdmay slowly recover, but we
really don't keep birdsindividually.
(14:15):
They're flock animals and asflock animals, their other flock
mates tend to jump on them andthat's how they die.
But I guess if you've seen them,I've known some people that put
'em in a sling if they wanted tosave their pet chicken,
Carey (14:30):
so let me ask you this, but it's not
Dr. Morishita (14:31):
guaranteed, because they already have that,
that we call it the fieldstrain, the ones that cause
disease,
Carey (14:39):
right?
Yeah.
So if your bird has the gray eyeor the bumps on their skin what
is a way that you can slow downthe advancement or help prevent
it to turn into the tumor form?
That's deadly.
Dr. Morishita (14:59):
Sometimes they might not develop into uniforms.
That's the only form they'regonna get.
They can have one or all four.
But so the what main way thateverybody needs to is the
vaccine.
Get the vaccine as soon aspossible.
If you see those gray eye inyour birds or your bumpy skin,
(15:20):
you know that the birds thatcome on to your farm, if you're
gonna, if you, let's say youdepopulated them.
Remember you got feathereddander and dust.
If you restock your farm, yougotta vaccinate those birds as
soon as they come on, now if youhave, you don't depopulate them
and gray eyes, or you justhappen to butcher a bird and you
(15:44):
see those bumby skins and youdon't wanna euthanize them
because of course they might bepets.
And so in that case, that,something like that, then.
You should vaccinate the birdsthat are there already.
Carey (15:59):
Now, when you vaccinate that's a live virus that
they're, that the birds arebeing, or the chicks are being
exposed to at a very smalldosage.
Correct?
Dr. Morishita (16:10):
That's correct.
Because one of the firstvaccines that was used for Marx
is called an H-V-T-H-V-Tstanding for herpes virus
Turkey, because they found thatthere was a Turkey strain that
didn't cause these tumors thatwere at a protection for the
chickens.
(16:31):
Okay.
Okay.
So they give that, and that washope to not develop that.
Thing, the, okay, so if they gotthe field strain, they wouldn't
develop this because there wasthat.
We call it virulent not causingdisease, the virulent HVT in the
birds already.
(16:51):
And so they were protected.
So that's why it's veryimportant.
One day of age,
Carey (16:57):
let's say I have birds that are not showing any signs.
And I decided that I wanted tobe a responsible person ordering
some birds.
And I get some that arevaccinated.
Will that possibly infect myexisting birds?
Dr. Morishita (17:19):
'Cause it is a herpes virus too.
So potentially you can spreadit, but we don't wanna wait till
that naturally happens becauseyou don't know how long it would
take.
So it's probably, if you'regonna get any new birds, and
even if you have old birds andyou never had signs at all, you
probably wanna vaccinate.
For the Merrick's disease, theMerrick's vaccine vi, to prevent
(17:43):
anything because, nobody wantstumors.
'cause that's a death sentence.
Jennifer (17:50):
Okay.
So let's back up for just aminute.
So does the, does Merrick onlyinfect chickens or is it all
poultry?
Dr. Morishita (18:02):
Oh we know it's the chicken only disease, but
there have been reports of itaffecting turkeys.
And there have been like theJapanese quail and then there
have been report in pheasantsand pfos.
So if you tend to mix your birdsthat's, a caution to have.
(18:24):
I have not, having worked withso many backyard flocks, back
at, in Ohio and in California, Ihave actually not seen any cases
of amerks in, Turkey or p fowl.
But then, most, I guess it wouldbe very rare that people have
(18:47):
both in close proximity,walking, in the same area
because of the big sizedifference and fighting for
food.
Maybe in the larger area orsomething, or smaller farms, you
might have Mex birds, part ofraising poultry, you don't wanna
mex like chickens and turkeys'cause there's so many diseases
that they can spread be betweeneach other.
Jennifer (19:11):
Okay.
What about ducks?
Can ducks and geese get Mars?
Dr. Morishita (19:16):
No, not at this point because they're of a
different order of birds andswarms.
Jennifer (19:22):
Okay.
Dr. Morishita (19:23):
But
Jennifer (19:23):
all right.
We don't know that, so if youhad a Marx positive flock you
could vaccinate any age bird tomix it in.
Dr. Morishita (19:37):
Whenever you get new birds, you wanna try and
find out are they vaccinated ornot?
But a lot of times, nocommercial poultry are all
vaccinated, like I mentionedbefore.
But what about the backyardflock?
Sometimes it's unknown, right?
And you can ask the person, didyou vaccinate the birds or not?
But if they haven't.
I would say that you couldvaccinate your birds.
(20:00):
You don't know.
See, the problem is as youvaccinate them at an earlier
age, you don't know if they wereexposed earlier or not.
Remember, we, when does it, whendoes that herpes virus express
itself?
We don't know, but we do knowthat once you're infected for
life.
So that's the thing is if youwanna be sure you can vaccinate
(20:20):
them at any age you got at, tomake sure that you vaccinate
them because you don't know.
Maybe you, maybe you, your flocknever had herpes virus, so you
probably safe, but who's to tellthat they don't come out later?
That's why they always sayvaccinate them at end of age.
(20:41):
But if you can't, the secondbest thing is to vaccinate them.
Hope they didn't get exposedearlier.
Hope that you're vaccinatingthem with the good.
Virulent Turkey strain,
Jennifer (20:51):
can wild birds spread it?
Dr. Morishita (20:55):
No.
Right now, all those birds thatseem to be susceptible, mainly
chickens, but I gave you rarecases of the other birds, they
all belong to the order birdscalled the gala forms.
Jennifer (21:07):
The wild
Dr. Morishita (21:08):
birds, like the sparrows or songbirds belong to
the order of birds called thepassera forms.
So a different order.
So we haven't reported any ofthat, in other or of birds.
Jennifer (21:24):
So you, in your opinion, you don't think you can
combine vaccinated withunvaccinated birds?
Dr. Morishita (21:32):
I would say I.
That you should vaccinate yourbirds if you're gonna put
unvaccinated birds in yourflock, or if you don't know
whether they're vaccine hadvaccines or not.
If you care for each bird as apet, and you don't want it to
die.
(21:52):
Okay.
But if you have okay, this is myflock.
I know that they may have Marsand they might die then you can
take that potential risk.
It's a hard disease.
It's a hard disease because youdon't, if you really love every
single bird, you don't want themto die, so you're gonna be
(22:12):
vaccinating them, right?
'Cause at least we don't know,because we don't know if they
were expe exposed earlier, butwhat can, what else can you do?
Jennifer (22:26):
So what I'm hearing, because you're, it's pretty like
everywhere.
Is it even possible to have aMarx free flock?
Dr. Morishita (22:39):
You possibly could have a Marx free flock if
you were like isolated.
Maybe you got your chick, youdidn't have dander in the area,
you didn't expose them, youweren't expo, you yourself.
Don't ca handle infected birdson your clothing and touch your
new chicks or whatever.
Potentially you could have aMars free flock,
Jennifer (23:02):
but that would be rare.
Dr. Morishita (23:06):
Depends on the, what they were exposed to.
Jennifer (23:10):
So I, when you were talking about the biosecurity,
I'm basically envisioningsomebody going to the feed store
and running into somebody thatthey know.
And so they sit down on afeedback to chit chat with their
friend and then they leave andthen I go in there and buy the
feedback and bring it home.
(23:32):
That theoretically that dandercould be on that feedback.
Dr. Morishita (23:35):
Potentially.
But you're only gonna have maybea few dander.
It's not gonna be as much as ifyou actually was in that chicken
house.
Jennifer (23:44):
I agree with that.
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (23:48):
So hopefully though those feed stores don't
keep your, their feed bags andstuff right next to chicks or
that people can sit on.
Jennifer (23:59):
Okay, so that's another point.
If you go to the big box storesand they have the chicks are
vaccinated.
That dander is flying everywherein the store and it's landing on
you and you walk through there,are you now not taking it home?
Dr. Morishita (24:15):
If somebody with let's say I have Mar's Disease
in, and I came in and said, oh,these new baby chicks, and you
touch them and you hold them.
Who knows?
You remember, if you're close,contain that from your farm.
And you brought it in, and thenthat little, you say, oh, buy
Little Chick.
And then he goes back in thereand you pick up another chick.
(24:35):
Maybe those get that on them.
And then it spreads to thoseother chicks that are in there.
So that's why vaccinating themat as soon as they're hatched.
When they come out and they're alittle fluffy moving around not
when they just hatch, but afterthey've dried up a bit and
(24:56):
vaccinate them.
Jennifer (24:58):
Once you vaccinate'em with a live virus, are they
shedding it in their dander nowtoo?
Dr. Morishita (25:03):
But it's the vaccine, it's the vaccine
strain.
And that virus goes in them andit has to populate in them and
then go to their featherfollicles.
But I think Carrie wasmentioning, can that vaccine
strain spread throughout theflock, that's gonna take too
long,
Jennifer (25:23):
okay.
So that's two different things,
Dr. Morishita (25:25):
right?
Gotcha.
So if you got your vaccinestrain, don't think that you
vaccinate one.
It's gonna spread throughoutyour flock.
Your flock is protected.
That's too gonna be too long.
'cause it has, that virus has togo into that individual bird.
That virus has to multiply, thenthat virus has to go to the
dander and then the nearbychickens have to be there.
That's too higher risk.
(25:47):
You might as well just vaccinatethem.
Carey (25:50):
What I was wondering is if I give that virus, if I get a
chick that is vaccinated and putit with chicks that are not
vaccinated, will those chicksget sick?
Because the one that I boughtthat was vaccinated has the live
virus inside of them.
Dr. Morishita (26:10):
The live virus that is the A virulent, so it
wouldn't cause disease.
So if they pass it on to theother chicks, they would be
like.
Feather vaccinate, but that'sgonna be too long.
And they could be exposed toother infected sources.
Carey (26:29):
Got it.
And that could stress'em out.
And that would be what wouldcause the tumors
Dr. Morishita (26:35):
that would cause them, yeah.
If you got some infected farmand then that bird shed that
virus then they have to get thatvirus in.
And that would cause the tumors,the, if they got the field
strain, the one that causesdisease.
Jennifer (26:52):
Okay.
So once a chick is vaccinated,how long before it is fully
protected?
Dr. Morishita (26:59):
It's protected almost immediately because that
virus that has the live avirulent vaccine strain like the
herpes virus from the turkeys,and it goes throughout the body.
Jennifer (27:17):
Okay.
Now different subtopic, youmentioned that the vaccine, HVT,
tur tea is Turkey.
So is there something in theTurkey dander that helps protect
the chickens from merricks?
Dr. Morishita (27:34):
The herpes virus of turkeys?
The HVT, that's what you get inthe vaccine.
Jennifer (27:44):
So would raising your chicks with puls do the same
thing?
Dr. Morishita (27:49):
I don't know because that's, that, that
wouldn't be doing, because it'sjust like the other question, if
I got one chicken, how long willit take to spread his vaccine
strain?
'cause he has to get it insideof him.
It has to multiply and spreadthat way.
So I wouldn't, I.
They haven't done
Carey (28:09):
that research yet.
Jennifer (28:10):
So there, there are discussions.
Excuse me.
There are discussions thatTurkey dander will help protect
your chicks, and I just wonderedthere's any merit to that.
Dr. Morishita (28:25):
There's probably thinking in that strain if
you're using the herpes virus,
Jennifer (28:29):
I personally raised my chicks and my pulps together.
Dr. Morishita (28:34):
Oh.
Did you find that?
Have you had any outbreaks ofmerricks?
Jennifer (28:39):
No.
No, but I don't stress my birds,so since my birds don't get
stressed how would I know that Ihad merricks?
Dr. Morishita (28:53):
You wouldn't until something develops, and
they don't have to develop rightaway.
They can be like later in agetoo.
Jennifer (29:02):
So what
Dr. Morishita (29:03):
age?
Most times we think of Marxx asbeing a young chick disease.
So they can happen as early asthree to four weeks of age.
You can see Marx usually aboutfour.
And traditionally we learn that,anywhere 12 weeks and younger,
you 12 to 16 weeks and youngeryou, when you see tumors in the
(29:24):
bird, you usually think of it asa merrick's disease.
But we do know that birds thathave never been exposed before,
let's say I show my birds at thefair and they don't have don't
have merricks, but I go to thefair and you take your bird to
the fair and then you bring thatbird back home.
There's feather dander at thefur fair, right?
(29:46):
And right next door we don't, wehave open while your cages and
sometimes it can be spread.
To the next birds and stuff.
Then your bird will come homeand with Mars.
So that's why if you tend to,you gonna show your birds and
stuff like that you wannavaccinate them, you're gonna
(30:06):
vaccinate them.
Carey (30:07):
Lemme ask this, let's say that I have a bird that I've
had, I hatched it out on my farmand it's a year old.
It may have been exposed toMerricks, but it's never shown
any signs or anything like that.
If I take that bird and I shipit across the country Obviously
(30:30):
that's gonna stress it out.
How long, if at all, if that wasgoing to stress it and make the
merits show up and be prominent?
How long would it be before Isaw that?
Dr. Morishita (30:45):
If it did have merits, it could shed it because
you're stressing, right?
You remember it.
It comes out, whatever.
But in the bird itself, that'swhere there's a lot, like you
said, a lot of research and alot.
When is it gonna, when is itgonna show?
Carey (31:02):
Would it be a week from now?
The bird just starts with theeye issue and the leg issue and
all that?
Or is it probably, you'll getthe leg
Dr. Morishita (31:12):
issue.
You probably get the leg issue.
If you have that, but it'sunknown.
And just think of it, this islike a cancer in chickens.
So just like cancer in people,you never know when it comes up.
It just shows up.
So think of this disease asthat.
You have the potential, likesome people have oncogenes in
(31:34):
them And they don't know when itcomes up.
So that's why you need to knowthat potentially you might have
this and you wanna prevent it.
Jennifer (31:44):
Okay.
Dr. Morishita (31:46):
Can you test for it?
That's a tough one.
I don't think you, you can ifyou have the disease, if you
didn't like something like a PCRtest that's quite expensive for
one bird.
Jennifer (32:02):
So it, but it is possible to test a live bird or
no?
Dr. Morishita (32:10):
I guess you could, but you would have to
have that DNA in the bird andtake some, so
Carey (32:16):
You would have to draw some blood or something like
that from the bird.
Dr. Morishita (32:19):
And if that tumor is actively circulating
throughout the blood, there's somuch If it's there, if it's
there.
So even if you had a negativenow, you wouldn't, even for
diagnosis, you can't, there'sreally very hard to do when the
bird is still living.
There's some cases like we getsome blood, we can see some of
(32:41):
these cells, but it's not aroutine thing that is done.
So most of the diagnosis isthrough historical signs.
And unfortunately if the birddies, then we can take pieces of
that liver or spleen, look atthat under the microscope, and
you can see the the cells, justlike cancer in people.
(33:05):
We look at the cell type.
So in the chickens they'relooking for this type of immune
cell called the lymphocytebecause that's the cell that's
affected by the virus thatcauses the tumors.
Jennifer (33:20):
Is there any other disease that presents that way?
Pardon me?
Is there any other disease thatpresents the same?
Dr. Morishita (33:29):
There's two big tumor diseases in chickens.
One was Merrick's disease andthe other one is lymphoid osis,
which occurs usually they say inolder birds after 14, 16 weeks
of age.
But we know that if you seetumors in a bird younger than
(33:50):
14, 16 weeks, it's mareksbecause lymphoid osis only
happens in older birds.
But if you see tumors in olderbirds, then you have to think,
is it marck or is it lymphoidosis?
So most of the time, thosebirds, they got the tumors,
they'll die.
You take that tumors you look atunder the scope and you look to
(34:11):
see the formation or how similarthose lymphocytes are, the T
cells.
And that will tell you whetheryou've got Merricks or you've
got lymphoid osis,
Carey (34:23):
but there's no 100% accurate way to test for this.
Like I can't just walk out to onmy farm and pick up a chicken
and open its wing, pop someblood out from the vein that's
under the wing like they do forthe NPIP testing.
And send that off and tell ahundred percent if a bird's got
(34:45):
married, the bird is going tohave passed and you're gonna
actually have to have the liveror doing the crops or something
along those lines,
Dr. Morishita (34:54):
That would be the best because they don't always
circulate in the blood and theyhave to be a high level too.
Carey (35:01):
Okay.
And if it was a high level whenyou're taking the blood, it
would be obvious because theirlegs would be, like you
described earlier, their eyeswould be gray.
They have the bumps on theirskin.
Something would be there at thatpoint when it's in their blood
and moving around.
Dr. Morishita (35:21):
Okay.
So let's say you got a burbecause now.
Now when you say like in theblood, because in the blood you
gotta do special things.
If I'm in the blood and I lookat the blood, I might not see
very many of those tumor cells,the lymphocytes in the blood.
But those are like special ones.
You gotta stain the blood, yougotta look at under the
microscope.
So then we think about what arethe new scientific methods that
(35:44):
there are, there's that PCR,right?
Polymerase chain reaction.
So that kind of machine takeslike a DNA and it's like a copy
machine.
It makes multiple copies.
So if you got very low levelsthat you find that machine makes
it like multiple copies, then itcan be detected.
So that's why people use thatPCR.
(36:06):
But again, it's a very, it's nota for the backyard chicken
owner,
Carey (36:12):
so for that PCR test.
If it's in, if it's in their DNAand they're immune to it,
essentially it's gonna show up.
Dr. Morishita (36:24):
The PCR detects the DNA of the virus.
So find it whether it's alive ora dead strain,
Carey (36:31):
okay.
So even if my birds werevaccinated as chicks and a year
from now somebody does a PCRtest, it's gonna show positive.
Dr. Morishita (36:44):
But I don't even know if those are commercially
available.
That's probably in a researchlab.
Carey (36:50):
Wow.
Yeah
Dr. Morishita (36:51):
It's not commercially available.
So for all intents purposesright now, commercially
available diag diagnosis isthrough necropsy with the
tissues.
Carey (37:02):
Gotcha.
Okay.
That's what I was thinking.
But we have a lot of listenersYeah.
That don't know and they're verycurious.
And this is a very controversialtopic.
And we know that you know a lotabout this type stuff'cause you
studied it.
So that's why we wanted to talkto you and find out, that the
(37:24):
ins and outs and what waspossible and what wasn't and all
that good stuff.
Dr. Morishita (37:29):
May maybe in the future somebody will develop a
quick test that could be done ata diagnostic lab.
Nothing's impossible'cause thisis a great time to be alive.
Look at all the advances inmedicine.
Carey (37:41):
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (37:42):
And we could use that too.
And who knows, maybe at somepoint they could do biopsies too
and send that tissue in.
And, for us that race POpoultry, because they're flock
animals, you get one positive,they, you consider your whole
flock positive, right?
Yeah.
Jennifer (38:00):
Okay.
I have a question about thevaccine itself.
So when I listened to the otherdiscussion about it, the, it was
a research scientist and she wasvery adamant that the vaccine
had to be stored and appliedunder very strict rules,
(38:21):
otherwise you were just wastingyour time.
Would you agree with that?
Dr. Morishita (38:25):
Yes.
Because remember, it's a livevirus, right?
We can't this has to be a mod.
The Turkeys virus strain, that'sa live virus.
You're injecting a live virusfrom a Turkey into your
chickens.
So in commercial production,it's held like in under liquid
nitrogen or, very coldenvironment.
It's given, within no longerthan.
(38:48):
One hour or so, depending on thetemperature because you wanna
ensure that your birds getvaccinated and you don't wanna
be vaccinating them with a, thatturkeys viruses out in the, in
in your air your place whereyou're vaccinate them they'll
die over time too.
So that's why you vaccinate themas soon as possible.
Jennifer (39:11):
Would you agree that a backyard person really can't
vaccinate their own birds withMerricks because they don't have
the tools to do it correctly?
Dr. Morishita (39:22):
You can, or you can work.
Maybe you find a localveterinarian that has the
supply.
You have to keep that vaccinecool.
Because they do sell that onsome of the.
Sites that sell poultry.
You've seen the individualvaccine now know that for the
backyard flock owner, thatvaccine was developed for the
(39:43):
commercial industry.
So you're gonna see vials madefor 1000 doses.
And we don't, most backyardflocks do not have 1000 birds,
right?
Jennifer (39:53):
So
Dr. Morishita (39:53):
one of the common things is to maybe have vaccine
get togethers or whatever, andyou have somebody that has a
vaccine and you vaccinate allyour chicks at the same time,
or, those chicks are valuable.
For me, I'll pay$29 to buy avaccine because I want my birds
to be protected.
(40:15):
It all depends on human, but ithas to be stored
Jennifer (40:17):
In liquid nitrogen.
Dr. Morishita (40:18):
That's to keep it cool because we have a lot of
birds, so I believe that theyship it there, so as soon as
they can ship it to you.
From the commercial where youcan buy those vaccines, you'll
see them.
Yeah.
You have to immediately with theday you get it, and thank God.
Now with the delivery serviceyou can get when it's coming in,
(40:41):
then you start get ready, and assoon as it comes out, then you
prepare it, and then you startvaccinating the birds,
Carey (40:48):
okay, so let's just, now my son has a nitrogen tank that
he can store stuff in.
Because of that reason, he'sgotta keep it cold.
Jennifer (40:54):
So somebody just says, oh, I just keep it in my freezer
and as they hatch, I give it tohim, or no?
Dr. Morishita (40:59):
No.
Once you open that vial, yougotta use it.
Jennifer (41:02):
Okay.
So is that doing nothing or isit doing bad?
Doing What if somebody just keptit in their freezer and gave it
to the chicks?
Is that doing nothing at allbecause it is now just a moot
point?
Or is it actually farming?
You
Dr. Morishita (41:20):
remember some frost freeze freezers do not
always keep it cold.
It's cold.
Then it defrosts.
Otherwise you got a lot of icebuildup in your freezer.
Like the freezer itself itfreezes and then it, the
temperatures fluctuate.
'cause otherwise there'll be icebuildup.
That's how you can tell thefreezers that don't have that
frost free.
So you're just wasting yourright.
(41:42):
You're gonna waste your timebecause that, that freezer is
fluctuating.
The only way they keep thesevaccines is like.
We have at research areas likenegative 80 degrees freezers.
Jennifer (41:55):
And then
Dr. Morishita (41:56):
when we're transporting them, we're putting
in a nitrogen tank, right?
Jennifer (42:00):
Okay.
We see, and then you have itthere,
Dr. Morishita (42:01):
but you're not gonna give the chick at nitrogen
tank level temperatures.
One cannot even touch the, likeliquid No.
That burned your skin.
Yeah.
So you take it out and you letit, thaw out that you're gonna
get, start injecting yourchicks,
Jennifer (42:20):
and then when you're done injecting your chicks, you
just throw it away.
The rest of it,
Dr. Morishita (42:24):
you gotta,
Carey (42:25):
because it's already thought out, so it's, you thaw
it out, do it.
You can't refreeze it and do itagain.
Jennifer (42:32):
Okay.
Got it.
All right.
You've, we collected somequestions to ask you, but I'm
looking at the list and you'veanswered most of'em.
So the pupils, how are thepupils affected by marck?
Dr. Morishita (42:44):
Okay, so the, that Merricks disease virus is a
herpes virus.
It attacks a certain type of wecall immune.
These are immune cells of thebody, and these are immune cells
that, that protect the birdsagainst disease.
There are two types, A, B cell,B type A, B cell, we call it B
(43:06):
cell lymphocyte.
Those are the cell types thatproduce antibodies in the body.
Then there other immune cell iscalled a t.
Type T cell, a T cell type oflymphocyte.
That's the one that's affectedby the Marck disease virus.
(43:27):
Okay.
And so it, it mutates that Tcell goes throughout the body
and spreads.
That's how we get the tumors.
It spreads throughout the bloodstream.
And then that can also go to theeye.
So that tumor virus invades thepupil.
And that's how it changes thecolor.
Jennifer (43:48):
Changes the color.
Does it change the shape
Dr. Morishita (43:52):
of the pupil?
It might have ragged edges.
A normal pupil is very nice andcircular and a clean circle.
If you take a look at anybodyeye, even our eye.
But sometimes when you, theyhave the invasion, sometimes
you'll see little ragged edgesaround there.
But the main thing is, the firstthing you'll notice is a color.
(44:13):
You know
Jennifer (44:13):
the gray?
Oh, good to know.
Dr. Morishita (44:16):
But that's more like a chronic, the birds have
survived the Merricks disease,but so they'll be alive.
And you see that.
So when you go through yourflock, always look at your birds
and see if there's differentcoloration.
One bird with that.
Maybe it had an injury.
When you have multiple birdswith gray eyes, you probably had
merricks going through theflock.
(44:38):
But thank goodness you only hadthat form and not the tumor
form, because that's right.
You can find dead birds, andthat's why it's important that
whenever you have dead birds,and we always say when you got
dead birds, and if you don'tmind opening up, you should open
it up.
Learn to look for what kind oflesions.
And seeing something, if youcan't take it to a vet, you
(44:58):
can't take it to a necropsy,your state diagnostic lab.
You as a poultry owner, youalways wanna learn what do these
diseases look like?
And that tells you right away Imight have this, and then you
yourself can do something.
Whether you got new birds oryour existing birds, what do you
(45:19):
wanna do to it?
Carey (45:20):
When I have people ask me, they're like, oh, look at
this bird.
It passed away.
What was wrong with it?
I always ask them to, I want toknow what their poo looked like,
because you can tell a lot bythat.
Very good.
Yes.
My next question is, can youopen the bird up and look at it?
Because if it smells funny,looks funny.
(45:43):
If you see the tumors, if yousee an exorbitant amount of fat
or something like that, then youcan tell that something was
wrong with it.
If you open it up.
And it looks like something youwould see on the aisle at Publix
then.
In the what?
It was in a Publix, the grocerystore.
Jennifer (46:01):
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah, he's in California.
They don't have Publix outthere.
Carey (46:04):
If you see it, if it looks like something in the
grocery, then, it could havejust been a fluke.
The thing had a heart attack'cause the plane flew over or
something like that.
Dr. Morishita (46:13):
But
Carey (46:14):
I tell him to look at But it might
Dr. Morishita (46:15):
look like in your public store or Kroger or
whatever, Safeway out here, but,or Stater Brothers.
But we will not eat any birdthat is dead, that is found
dead.
Even though it looks like theone in the store.
We don't because it died ofsomething.
Because you
Carey (46:30):
don't know.
But I tell people, I say, if itlooks like something you would
see in the store, then you'reprobably okay.
Then it might be, if it looksbad, you need to get it checked
out.
Dr. Morishita (46:43):
Okay.
If it died in the store, itmight have died from something,
right?
But it's something that wevisually cannot see.
So the things that we visuallycannot see could be maybe a
virus that doesn't cause diseaselike botulism.
Or maybe it is something likebacterial that gone through the
blood.
So those are things that maybewe cannot see.
Jennifer (47:03):
But
Dr. Morishita (47:04):
Things that we visually see, then we say, oh
yeah.
More likely we can hint what itis.
Yeah.
But any dead animal or sickanimal we do not eat.
Do not.
And I've had people say oh,after I do a necropsy, can I
have that breast or whatever?
'cause it looked okay.
Carey (47:19):
No you don't.
You don't know.
Dr. Morishita (47:22):
No,
Carey (47:23):
that's right.
I mean that you might as well goto a fast food restaurant and
get something.
'cause you don't know thereeither.
Jennifer (47:31):
Okay.
So the liver of a meric birdwill have white or yellow
nodules on it.
That makes it hard.
Dr. Morishita (47:39):
You will see that.
And if you had a knife orwhatever that you, and remember,
if you do this on your own, thisis disease, so you wanna make
sure you wear gloves and clean,right?
Because you don't wanna be like,oh, I just.
Cut this Mars liver up and thenI wipe it on my pants or
something.
And then you go touch your otherYeah.
Carey (47:58):
You do this and you clean up your mess and then you go
take a shower.
Jennifer (48:02):
Yes.
Carey (48:02):
And put your clothes in the don't go check on the rest
of your chickens or somethinglike that before cleaning and
sterilizing your hands andstuff.
Dr. Morishita (48:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wash your hands with soap andwater.
Jennifer (48:15):
Okay.
I just happened to harvest orwear a
Dr. Morishita (48:17):
gloves, first of all, wear our gloves.
Jennifer (48:19):
Wear gloves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
'cause it's gross because it's
Dr. Morishita (48:21):
common.
Now you can go and buy thoseplastic gloves.
Jennifer (48:24):
So I harvested about 15 chickens yesterday.
Two different breeds.
And I always check all theinsides for.
Any issue because in, if I hadissues in the ones I'm
harvesting in several birds,then that would tell me, okay,
hey, I need to look at theliving birds.
(48:45):
Then look for issues.
Yeah.
But all my livers, all 15 liverswere that nice, dark, maroon red
color lungs were pink,everything looked like it was
supposed to look, and so we justmotored right on through.
Carey (49:02):
You chop that up and feed it to your chicks.
Jennifer (49:06):
Lady dog was stealing out of the bucket as fast as we
were
Carey (49:10):
putting that, that happens too.
Yeah.
Jennifer (49:13):
So she ate good yesterday,
Dr. Morishita (49:15):
but you can check what, even the intestines if you
got worms or something,
Jennifer (49:20):
yep.
I, I didn't open them upyesterday, but I have opened
them up before and looked and Inever could find anything.
Dr. Morishita (49:28):
But I do wanna say when you give the raw meat
like that to the dogs, remember?
Always chickens are known tohave salmonella.
And so we don't wanna, it can bedone, but just watch out, as a
precaution too.
Jennifer (49:42):
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (49:43):
Cooked is there.
That's it.
Think things like that happen.
We people drink raw eggs withorange juice, those are.
Those are things that we, somepeople do
Carey (49:51):
that, and I don't understand it.
Dr. Morishita (49:54):
They do not.
Anytime we have raw food, eitherus or our pets, we always have
the potential risk of gettingbacterial diseases,
Carey (50:04):
oh yeah, definitely.
Dr. Morishita (50:06):
But some people like sunny side up eggs, that's
why for people with poor immune,sys poor immune systems, you
wanna cook your food well,
Jennifer (50:14):
little
Dr. Morishita (50:14):
kids or old people.
Jennifer (50:16):
Next question is, which I think we answered it,
but are there any medicinesavailable for Marx?
Dr. Morishita (50:23):
Unfortunately not.
A lot of people think we cangive antibiotics, but this is a
virus, a viral disease.
So virus is the only way totreat virus.
There are antiviral in drugs.
That humans have.
Like when you got a cold sore,there's antiviral medications.
(50:44):
But there is not any forpoultry.
And so the only way if you gotlike this Merrick's disease is
prevention is throughvaccination.
Jennifer (50:54):
There is a group on social media that swears they
can cure it with some naturalmedicines and herbs and such.
Any thoughts on that?
Dr. Morishita (51:12):
I'm not gonna say, never say never.
Jennifer (51:15):
Because,
Dr. Morishita (51:16):
How did people cure a long time in ancient
times?
What did people use?
Natural plants, right?
And herbal medicine.
So I don't know what kind ofherbs they are using.
Jennifer (51:30):
I'm looking really quickly because I couldn't
remember what it was called,
Carey (51:37):
but I would think if that was a possibility that the
commercial poultry industry, ifit was a possibility for it to
be done reliably andconsistently, that the
commercial poultry industrywould be doing it like clockwork
and probably have alreadycopyrighted it.
Dr. Morishita (51:53):
They would be doing it and they wouldn't do
it.
Not only for Mareks, but anyviral disease, right?
Jennifer (51:59):
But
Dr. Morishita (52:00):
how much is that medication gonna cost?
Jennifer (52:03):
It's Chinese skull cap.
Dr. Morishita (52:06):
Oh, yeah.
I don't know.
I'm not gonna expect.
Okay.
I don't either, But I know forother things that, you know,
like in working with some peoplethat wanna raise organic what
are some herbs that are knownantimicrobial?
So you got like oregano,rosemary.
Garlic, and we have things likeprobiotics,
Jennifer (52:29):
gut health is the beginning of good health.
All right.
I think I'm looking, I think weanswered all that's,
Carey (52:35):
I was gonna say, I think we covered everything.
Dr. Morishita (52:38):
It's a tough disease, but it's so complex,
Carey (52:42):
and I really like how you explain it.
And there's multiple strains ofvaccines.
Dr. Morishita (52:47):
Pardon me?
Carey (52:48):
I really like how you explained it all.
You did a really good job andyou're very thorough.
Jennifer (52:52):
And
Carey (52:52):
you said it like everything was in a way that our
listeners could understand it.
They don't have to have at leasta master's degree to understand
the way you explained it.
And so I think they'llappreciate that too, because
most of our listeners arebackyard poultry people.
So that's what we try to, that'swho we try to help out.
Dr. Morishita (53:14):
I'm here to help them if they have any questions,
to the best of my ability.
But that's what we know rightnow.
Jennifer (53:22):
We will have you back for yet another grilling on a
different disease.
Carey (53:28):
Yeah.
We'll collect some morequestions.
Dr. Morishita (53:31):
Or eating birds that are dead.
Jennifer (53:33):
No.
Carey (53:34):
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (53:35):
That will be a short podcast.
We'll just say don't do it.
Carey (53:39):
Don't do it.
Dr. Morishita (53:40):
I had some people, if they had, they found
some ostriches that were frozen.
They had a cold storm and theywere frozen out if they could
eat it because it was cold.
But it's not good.
Anything dead to not eat.
Carey (53:56):
If you don't, if you don't know what caused that,
don't chance it.
Jennifer (54:00):
All right.
Thank you so much for being herewith us again.
Dr. Morishita (54:04):
Always a pleasure.
Thank you for inviting me.
Carey (54:07):
Yes, ma'am.
Jennifer (54:08):
All right.
Bye bye.
Welcome back, poultry nerd.
We are here again with I guess,our resident poultry
veterinarian at this point.
Dr.
Morshita.
So welcome back.
How are you doing?
Dr. Morishita (00:17):
I'm doing fine.
And how are you both?
Carey (00:22):
I'm doing good.
Jennifer (00:23):
Good.
We're good.
Carey (00:24):
I'm excited about today's topic because today's topic is
one of those that you hear somuch back and forth and back and
forth that nobody will ever sayanything definitive about it
because in my opinion, theydon't really know.
And there's very few people thathave actually studied it, that,
(00:47):
in my opinion, are qualified tospeak on it.
And they usually don't want to.
So I'm excited that we get totalk about it today.
Jennifer (00:59):
And the topic is Merrick's disease, so we are
gonna find all about it.
And I have my
Carey (01:09):
aluminum cap on.
Jennifer (01:12):
You're gonna what?
Carey (01:14):
I said I have my aluminum cap on my tenfold hat.
I'm ready to go today.
Jennifer (01:21):
So I listened to another discussion with a
scientist a couple weeks agoabout it and actually feel like
I have a grasp on what it is.
Will you explain Marck to usplease?
Dr. Morishita (01:40):
Okay.
So Merrick's disease, actually,and we should be concerned about
it because it's a very importantdisease in the poultry industry,
and many years ago is one of themost important, and it still is.
I know that we have AV influenzahappening to us right now, but
this Marx is always there.
So Marx's disease is caused byan disease agent called the
(02:07):
virus, and it's a herpes virus.
Jennifer (02:13):
Is it just one virus?
Dr. Morishita (02:15):
Yes.
Okay.
It's a herpes virus.
And as we talked about in thepast, remember we talked about
avian influenza?
And how.
You could it's like a, it'scalled an RNA virus and that's
how it has a lot of mutation.
This week the herpes virus iscaused by a DNA virus.
(02:36):
And this particular virus isvery hardy in the environment.
So guess how it spread?
Now this one is very unique inthat it is spread chicken to
chicken by feather danderfeather dutch, which is
literally
Jennifer (02:53):
everywhere.
Dr. Morishita (02:54):
And it stays in the environment.
And the other interesting thingis that if you get it on your
clothes, you can also pass thaton.
They call it indirectly,'causeyou're not a chicken, but you
can pass it on if you gotcontaminated clothing and things
like that.
Actually.
That's one of the reasons why inthe commercial poultry industry,
(03:16):
we wear coveralls when we wearhair nets because that virus can
survive in the environment forprobably up to four weeks,
sometimes even month, a month orso.
So it's very hardy.
So if you know your birds getinto a environment or you handle
an infected birds and you don'twash that clothes and you keep
(03:38):
on using it for other birds oryou, when you're working with
new chicks, potentially there'scontamination.
Carey (03:46):
So let me ask this.
Is merricks something that couldbe inside of the chickens in
their DNA all the time andsomething happened that makes it
to where it's full formed andobvious that's what's wrong and
the bird gets sick?
(04:06):
Is it like a hidden thing thatcan come out or does it just
happen?
Dr. Morishita (04:11):
It's there and it comes out and maybe the good
example I can give, it's aherpes virus.
So if we think about people withherpes virus, right?
Cold sores around the mouth.
Jennifer (04:22):
That's
Dr. Morishita (04:22):
a herpes virus.
So the herpes virus stays inyour body.
And like in people, if you getstressed, people that have cold
sores around the mouth.
So birds also, if they getstressed maybe or something
triggers it, they can releasethat and they can start shedding
that as well.
So what they always say once,once you have the chickens, once
(04:46):
you have a herpes virus, you'relike a potential known source of
that.
So let's say I like to add newbirds into my flock, right?
So your bird might not show anysign, but it might be carrying
that mareks.
It hasn't shown any signs atall.
All this feather, Dans comingout, your little feather dust,
(05:06):
you bring a new bird into thatarea and lo and behold, a bird,
that bird might developmerrick's disease.
Jennifer (05:16):
Okay.
Okay.
So what are the symptoms then?
Dr. Morishita (05:22):
So that, yeah, that's a good question because
the main thing that you wannaknow is what causes it?
What are the signs?
This is what you're gonna lookfor.
So they say that it can affectthe, they call it the peripheral
nerves.
So those are nerves that arelike going to your arm.
The, their legs or wings.
Okay.
(05:42):
Those are the peripheral nerves.
And, normally one of the classicsigns of Mareks disease is you
see a bird down lame and has onefoot forward and one backwards.
Like it's almost doing the spliton the ground.
That's almost like the classicalsign of Mareks.
Jennifer (06:00):
Okay.
Dr. Morishita (06:00):
And often, we have chickens and they are like
little cannibalistic, a littlepecking order.
So when they see one of theirfellow flock mates down on the
ground, usually they'll jump on'em, scratch the back.
And you see a lot of them, themde feathered and that bird dies
(06:21):
eventually'cause they all kindof gang up on that bird'cause
that bird is down.
So we see a lot of themortality.
I've seen like some people, thatI talked to with Merrick's
disease and.
If you had that bird alone, itmay be recuperate after seven
days, but most times, we keepchickens in a flock, so they
will go down.
(06:43):
Okay.
The other signs that you can seebecause it affects like the
nerves of the body and again,that's coming off the central
nervous system, that's a spinalcord.
Some of them might have lamenecks.
You might just see them on theground.
Okay.
So that's one sign.
The other one is only if youstart pulling feathers off, like
(07:06):
those people that are butcheringand slaughtering chickens.
If you pull the feathers off,you might see like little bumps
where the feathers were.
That's the skin form ofmerrick's disease.
We call it skin osis.
And it almost looks like a.
I would say little bumps, allwith the feathers attached to
(07:27):
the skin.
And that's the skin form.
So sometimes birds may show thatsign and you don't see it at all
because they have the featherscovering it.
Only if you butcher them or,slaughtering them for home use
and stuff.
You might see them.
We see sometimes that, like inthe large processing plant, when
(07:48):
we have the large commercialflocks affected, and then the
other form is on the eyes and wecall that gray eye disease.
So that's the third form ofMar's disease.
And that's when the tumor cellsinvade that colored part of the
eye, which we call the iris.
(08:09):
And so normally, you know thatchickens normally have a, an
iris of like orange, yellow.
And when they have merits, thesetumor cells will invade the
iris, and then you'll see it asgray, grayish blue.
And they often call that grayeye disease like a common name
(08:30):
when you see that.
So the birds might not die, butyou might see your birds, the
flock and some of them have onegray eye, some may have two.
But that's how you can see thatpotentially you have had
merricks through a flock.
If you see several birds withthat color V Okay.
And the fourth and mostdevastating form is the internal
(08:55):
tumors that grow throughout thebird.
So when you see a bird that'sdead and you open it up and it's
very good if you want, I.
Not, like we talked about lasttime, when there's a big
mortality that you're gonna openup birds, you wanna call a
professional, but sometimes youmight have one or two birds that
die and it's good if you keepchickens.
(09:16):
You wanna find out what's goingon if you don't have a nearby
lab, but you always try to takeyour lab to the lab if possible.
But you can see all these likenodules in the liver.
'cause the liver is normallydark red, but you'll see this
yellowish white nodules orspots, throughout the liver.
And it's hard.
(09:37):
And that is part of the tumorsthat are growing.
So you see it on the spleen andthose of you that if you
remember like you have cut upchicken before, like the spleen
is located between the provenventriculars and the gizzard.
The proven ventriculars is areal stomach.
And there's a little organ, areddish organ that's like oval
(09:59):
shape, that is a spleen ofchicken.
We know that it's probably aboutthe size of your first digit or
size in a.
Adult chicken.
But if you've got Merrick'sdisease, that little spleen can
be like two to three timeslarge, and it has those
yellowish white nodules inthere.
(10:20):
So those are immediate signsthat you've got marck.
So there's usually tumorsthroughout the body, and that
really is what kills the birds.
So just remember there's foursigns or clinical signs in the
birds with Mars, the peripheralnerves.
So they get lame and they havedifferent stretching, one leg
(10:40):
out, stretching, one leg back.
They have the skin form that'sbumpy skin where the feathers
join the skin.
Then they have the gray eye, andthen they have the tumors.
They can have one or all four ofthose signs.
So you always have to bevigilant of that.
And because it's spread byfeather dander, one bird can
(11:03):
spread it to the whole flock.
So that's one disease that we,so it affects that Always wanna
prevent It affects, go ahead.
Sorry.
Jennifer (11:14):
So it sounds like it affects a lot of different
things, the skin, the eyes, theliver the spinal cord.
So it's polygenic because itaffects several different parts
of the body?
No,
Dr. Morishita (11:29):
It has ability to spread'cause remember it's
tumors, so like a tumor cell canspread throughout the body and
then it can go to the differentorgans,
Jennifer (11:38):
okay.
Let's see, how do I wanna saythis?
So how does the vi the vaccinework then against the virus?
Okay,
Dr. Morishita (11:48):
And you brought up a good point because there is
no treatment for Marx, right?
So the only way we can preventthis is through vaccine.
So it's very important becauseyou remember, once a bird gets a
herpes virus, it remains therefor life, right?
So that is why one of the keythings is that we try to get
them vaccinated at one day ofage in the hatchery.
(12:13):
Traditionally it's beenvaccinated one day of age.
As soon as the chicks are bornthey'll vaccinate them for the
commercial flocks.
And all chickens producecommercially be vaccinated for
Marx.
'cause it's a devastatingdisease.
Now I did not know that.
So now some of the more, there'sbeen newer methods and some of
(12:38):
the.
Methods we have is called inoval vaccination.
That means vaccinating the chickwhile it's still in the egg.
So in and an oval is egg.
So they have these needles thatinject the eggs and when the,
when they're about 18 days ofincubation.
And we know that a chick hatchesat 21, but they give the
(13:00):
vaccination to the birds andhopefully beat the beat exposure
to the, the virulent forms ofMars that are in the
environment.
Okay.
That's why one of the big thingsin the commercial hatchery was
vaccinating them at day one ofage.
Jennifer (13:21):
So does the vaccine, oh, go ahead.
Does the vaccine like preventall of the different symptoms or
just the tumors?
Dr. Morishita (13:33):
We know that the tumors, once you get the tumors,
you can't save it.
Mainly the vaccine is given toprevent the tumors formation
because that is what's gonnakill the birds, right?
Like I mentioned before, you gota discolored eye but you're
still living.
You got like I mentioned before,birds have the skin osis and
(13:54):
nobody finds it because it's allunder their feathers until
they're gonna slaughter theirbirds.
But they're still living.
And then the one that is lamelike that, like they're doing
the split, there have been somecases, like I said before, like
maybe after seven days, the birdmay slowly recover, but we
really don't keep birdsindividually.
(14:15):
They're flock animals and asflock animals, their other flock
mates tend to jump on them andthat's how they die.
But I guess if you've seen them,I've known some people that put
'em in a sling if they wanted tosave their pet chicken,
Carey (14:30):
so let me ask you this, but it's not
Dr. Morishita (14:31):
guaranteed, because they already have that,
that we call it the fieldstrain, the ones that cause
disease,
Carey (14:39):
right?
Yeah.
So if your bird has the gray eyeor the bumps on their skin what
is a way that you can slow downthe advancement or help prevent
it to turn into the tumor form?
That's deadly.
Dr. Morishita (14:59):
Sometimes they might not develop into uniforms.
That's the only form they'regonna get.
They can have one or all four.
But so the what main way thateverybody needs to is the
vaccine.
Get the vaccine as soon aspossible.
If you see those gray eye inyour birds or your bumpy skin,
(15:20):
you know that the birds thatcome on to your farm, if you're
gonna, if you, let's say youdepopulated them.
Remember you got feathereddander and dust.
If you restock your farm, yougotta vaccinate those birds as
soon as they come on, now if youhave, you don't depopulate them
and gray eyes, or you justhappen to butcher a bird and you
(15:44):
see those bumby skins and youdon't wanna euthanize them
because of course they might bepets.
And so in that case, that,something like that, then.
You should vaccinate the birdsthat are there already.
Carey (15:59):
Now, when you vaccinate that's a live virus that
they're, that the birds arebeing, or the chicks are being
exposed to at a very smalldosage.
Correct?
Dr. Morishita (16:10):
That's correct.
Because one of the firstvaccines that was used for Marx
is called an H-V-T-H-V-Tstanding for herpes virus
Turkey, because they found thatthere was a Turkey strain that
didn't cause these tumors thatwere at a protection for the
chickens.
(16:31):
Okay.
Okay.
So they give that, and that washope to not develop that.
Thing, the, okay, so if they gotthe field strain, they wouldn't
develop this because there wasthat.
We call it virulent not causingdisease, the virulent HVT in the
birds already.
(16:51):
And so they were protected.
So that's why it's veryimportant.
One day of age,
Carey (16:57):
let's say I have birds that are not showing any signs.
And I decided that I wanted tobe a responsible person ordering
some birds.
And I get some that arevaccinated.
Will that possibly infect myexisting birds?
Dr. Morishita (17:19):
'Cause it is a herpes virus too.
So potentially you can spreadit, but we don't wanna wait till
that naturally happens becauseyou don't know how long it would
take.
So it's probably, if you'regonna get any new birds, and
even if you have old birds andyou never had signs at all, you
probably wanna vaccinate.
For the Merrick's disease, theMerrick's vaccine vi, to prevent
(17:43):
anything because, nobody wantstumors.
'cause that's a death sentence.
Jennifer (17:50):
Okay.
So let's back up for just aminute.
So does the, does Merrick onlyinfect chickens or is it all
poultry?
Dr. Morishita (18:02):
Oh we know it's the chicken only disease, but
there have been reports of itaffecting turkeys.
And there have been like theJapanese quail and then there
have been report in pheasantsand pfos.
So if you tend to mix your birdsthat's, a caution to have.
(18:24):
I have not, having worked withso many backyard flocks, back
at, in Ohio and in California, Ihave actually not seen any cases
of amerks in, Turkey or p fowl.
But then, most, I guess it wouldbe very rare that people have
(18:47):
both in close proximity,walking, in the same area
because of the big sizedifference and fighting for
food.
Maybe in the larger area orsomething, or smaller farms, you
might have Mex birds, part ofraising poultry, you don't wanna
mex like chickens and turkeys'cause there's so many diseases
that they can spread be betweeneach other.
Jennifer (19:11):
Okay.
What about ducks?
Can ducks and geese get Mars?
Dr. Morishita (19:16):
No, not at this point because they're of a
different order of birds andswarms.
Jennifer (19:22):
Okay.
Dr. Morishita (19:23):
But
Jennifer (19:23):
all right.
We don't know that, so if youhad a Marx positive flock you
could vaccinate any age bird tomix it in.
Dr. Morishita (19:37):
Whenever you get new birds, you wanna try and
find out are they vaccinated ornot?
But a lot of times, nocommercial poultry are all
vaccinated, like I mentionedbefore.
But what about the backyardflock?
Sometimes it's unknown, right?
And you can ask the person, didyou vaccinate the birds or not?
But if they haven't.
I would say that you couldvaccinate your birds.
(20:00):
You don't know.
See, the problem is as youvaccinate them at an earlier
age, you don't know if they wereexposed earlier or not.
Remember, we, when does it, whendoes that herpes virus express
itself?
We don't know, but we do knowthat once you're infected for
life.
So that's the thing is if youwanna be sure you can vaccinate
(20:20):
them at any age you got at, tomake sure that you vaccinate
them because you don't know.
Maybe you, maybe you, your flocknever had herpes virus, so you
probably safe, but who's to tellthat they don't come out later?
That's why they always sayvaccinate them at end of age.
(20:41):
But if you can't, the secondbest thing is to vaccinate them.
Hope they didn't get exposedearlier.
Hope that you're vaccinatingthem with the good.
Virulent Turkey strain,
Jennifer (20:51):
can wild birds spread it?
Dr. Morishita (20:55):
No.
Right now, all those birds thatseem to be susceptible, mainly
chickens, but I gave you rarecases of the other birds, they
all belong to the order birdscalled the gala forms.
Jennifer (21:07):
The wild
Dr. Morishita (21:08):
birds, like the sparrows or songbirds belong to
the order of birds called thepassera forms.
So a different order.
So we haven't reported any ofthat, in other or of birds.
Jennifer (21:24):
So you, in your opinion, you don't think you can
combine vaccinated withunvaccinated birds?
Dr. Morishita (21:32):
I would say I.
That you should vaccinate yourbirds if you're gonna put
unvaccinated birds in yourflock, or if you don't know
whether they're vaccine hadvaccines or not.
If you care for each bird as apet, and you don't want it to
die.
(21:52):
Okay.
But if you have okay, this is myflock.
I know that they may have Marsand they might die then you can
take that potential risk.
It's a hard disease.
It's a hard disease because youdon't, if you really love every
single bird, you don't want themto die, so you're gonna be
(22:12):
vaccinating them, right?
'Cause at least we don't know,because we don't know if they
were expe exposed earlier, butwhat can, what else can you do?
Jennifer (22:26):
So what I'm hearing, because you're, it's pretty like
everywhere.
Is it even possible to have aMarx free flock?
Dr. Morishita (22:39):
You possibly could have a Marx free flock if
you were like isolated.
Maybe you got your chick, youdidn't have dander in the area,
you didn't expose them, youweren't expo, you yourself.
Don't ca handle infected birdson your clothing and touch your
new chicks or whatever.
Potentially you could have aMars free flock,
Jennifer (23:02):
but that would be rare.
Dr. Morishita (23:06):
Depends on the, what they were exposed to.
Jennifer (23:10):
So I, when you were talking about the biosecurity,
I'm basically envisioningsomebody going to the feed store
and running into somebody thatthey know.
And so they sit down on afeedback to chit chat with their
friend and then they leave andthen I go in there and buy the
feedback and bring it home.
(23:32):
That theoretically that dandercould be on that feedback.
Dr. Morishita (23:35):
Potentially.
But you're only gonna have maybea few dander.
It's not gonna be as much as ifyou actually was in that chicken
house.
Jennifer (23:44):
I agree with that.
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (23:48):
So hopefully though those feed stores don't
keep your, their feed bags andstuff right next to chicks or
that people can sit on.
Jennifer (23:59):
Okay, so that's another point.
If you go to the big box storesand they have the chicks are
vaccinated.
That dander is flying everywherein the store and it's landing on
you and you walk through there,are you now not taking it home?
Dr. Morishita (24:15):
If somebody with let's say I have Mar's Disease
in, and I came in and said, oh,these new baby chicks, and you
touch them and you hold them.
Who knows?
You remember, if you're close,contain that from your farm.
And you brought it in, and thenthat little, you say, oh, buy
Little Chick.
And then he goes back in thereand you pick up another chick.
(24:35):
Maybe those get that on them.
And then it spreads to thoseother chicks that are in there.
So that's why vaccinating themat as soon as they're hatched.
When they come out and they're alittle fluffy moving around not
when they just hatch, but afterthey've dried up a bit and
(24:56):
vaccinate them.
Jennifer (24:58):
Once you vaccinate'em with a live virus, are they
shedding it in their dander nowtoo?
Dr. Morishita (25:03):
But it's the vaccine, it's the vaccine
strain.
And that virus goes in them andit has to populate in them and
then go to their featherfollicles.
But I think Carrie wasmentioning, can that vaccine
strain spread throughout theflock, that's gonna take too
long,
Jennifer (25:23):
okay.
So that's two different things,
Dr. Morishita (25:25):
right?
Gotcha.
So if you got your vaccinestrain, don't think that you
vaccinate one.
It's gonna spread throughoutyour flock.
Your flock is protected.
That's too gonna be too long.
'cause it has, that virus has togo into that individual bird.
That virus has to multiply, thenthat virus has to go to the
dander and then the nearbychickens have to be there.
That's too higher risk.
(25:47):
You might as well just vaccinatethem.
Carey (25:50):
What I was wondering is if I give that virus, if I get a
chick that is vaccinated and putit with chicks that are not
vaccinated, will those chicksget sick?
Because the one that I boughtthat was vaccinated has the live
virus inside of them.
Dr. Morishita (26:10):
The live virus that is the A virulent, so it
wouldn't cause disease.
So if they pass it on to theother chicks, they would be
like.
Feather vaccinate, but that'sgonna be too long.
And they could be exposed toother infected sources.
Carey (26:29):
Got it.
And that could stress'em out.
And that would be what wouldcause the tumors
Dr. Morishita (26:35):
that would cause them, yeah.
If you got some infected farmand then that bird shed that
virus then they have to get thatvirus in.
And that would cause the tumors,the, if they got the field
strain, the one that causesdisease.
Jennifer (26:52):
Okay.
So once a chick is vaccinated,how long before it is fully
protected?
Dr. Morishita (26:59):
It's protected almost immediately because that
virus that has the live avirulent vaccine strain like the
herpes virus from the turkeys,and it goes throughout the body.
Jennifer (27:17):
Okay.
Now different subtopic, youmentioned that the vaccine, HVT,
tur tea is Turkey.
So is there something in theTurkey dander that helps protect
the chickens from merricks?
Dr. Morishita (27:34):
The herpes virus of turkeys?
The HVT, that's what you get inthe vaccine.
Jennifer (27:44):
So would raising your chicks with puls do the same
thing?
Dr. Morishita (27:49):
I don't know because that's, that, that
wouldn't be doing, because it'sjust like the other question, if
I got one chicken, how long willit take to spread his vaccine
strain?
'cause he has to get it insideof him.
It has to multiply and spreadthat way.
So I wouldn't, I.
They haven't done
Carey (28:09):
that research yet.
Jennifer (28:10):
So there, there are discussions.
Excuse me.
There are discussions thatTurkey dander will help protect
your chicks, and I just wonderedthere's any merit to that.
Dr. Morishita (28:25):
There's probably thinking in that strain if
you're using the herpes virus,
Jennifer (28:29):
I personally raised my chicks and my pulps together.
Dr. Morishita (28:34):
Oh.
Did you find that?
Have you had any outbreaks ofmerricks?
Jennifer (28:39):
No.
No, but I don't stress my birds,so since my birds don't get
stressed how would I know that Ihad merricks?
Dr. Morishita (28:53):
You wouldn't until something develops, and
they don't have to develop rightaway.
They can be like later in agetoo.
Jennifer (29:02):
So what
Dr. Morishita (29:03):
age?
Most times we think of Marxx asbeing a young chick disease.
So they can happen as early asthree to four weeks of age.
You can see Marx usually aboutfour.
And traditionally we learn that,anywhere 12 weeks and younger,
you 12 to 16 weeks and youngeryou, when you see tumors in the
(29:24):
bird, you usually think of it asa merrick's disease.
But we do know that birds thathave never been exposed before,
let's say I show my birds at thefair and they don't have don't
have merricks, but I go to thefair and you take your bird to
the fair and then you bring thatbird back home.
There's feather dander at thefur fair, right?
(29:46):
And right next door we don't, wehave open while your cages and
sometimes it can be spread.
To the next birds and stuff.
Then your bird will come homeand with Mars.
So that's why if you tend to,you gonna show your birds and
stuff like that you wannavaccinate them, you're gonna
(30:06):
vaccinate them.
Carey (30:07):
Lemme ask this, let's say that I have a bird that I've
had, I hatched it out on my farmand it's a year old.
It may have been exposed toMerricks, but it's never shown
any signs or anything like that.
If I take that bird and I shipit across the country Obviously
(30:30):
that's gonna stress it out.
How long, if at all, if that wasgoing to stress it and make the
merits show up and be prominent?
How long would it be before Isaw that?
Dr. Morishita (30:45):
If it did have merits, it could shed it because
you're stressing, right?
You remember it.
It comes out, whatever.
But in the bird itself, that'swhere there's a lot, like you
said, a lot of research and alot.
When is it gonna, when is itgonna show?
Carey (31:02):
Would it be a week from now?
The bird just starts with theeye issue and the leg issue and
all that?
Or is it probably, you'll getthe leg
Dr. Morishita (31:12):
issue.
You probably get the leg issue.
If you have that, but it'sunknown.
And just think of it, this islike a cancer in chickens.
So just like cancer in people,you never know when it comes up.
It just shows up.
So think of this disease asthat.
You have the potential, likesome people have oncogenes in
(31:34):
them And they don't know when itcomes up.
So that's why you need to knowthat potentially you might have
this and you wanna prevent it.
Jennifer (31:44):
Okay.
Dr. Morishita (31:46):
Can you test for it?
That's a tough one.
I don't think you, you can ifyou have the disease, if you
didn't like something like a PCRtest that's quite expensive for
one bird.
Jennifer (32:02):
So it, but it is possible to test a live bird or
no?
Dr. Morishita (32:10):
I guess you could, but you would have to
have that DNA in the bird andtake some, so
Carey (32:16):
You would have to draw some blood or something like
that from the bird.
Dr. Morishita (32:19):
And if that tumor is actively circulating
throughout the blood, there's somuch If it's there, if it's
there.
So even if you had a negativenow, you wouldn't, even for
diagnosis, you can't, there'sreally very hard to do when the
bird is still living.
There's some cases like we getsome blood, we can see some of
(32:41):
these cells, but it's not aroutine thing that is done.
So most of the diagnosis isthrough historical signs.
And unfortunately if the birddies, then we can take pieces of
that liver or spleen, look atthat under the microscope, and
you can see the the cells, justlike cancer in people.
(33:05):
We look at the cell type.
So in the chickens they'relooking for this type of immune
cell called the lymphocytebecause that's the cell that's
affected by the virus thatcauses the tumors.
Jennifer (33:20):
Is there any other disease that presents that way?
Pardon me?
Is there any other disease thatpresents the same?
Dr. Morishita (33:29):
There's two big tumor diseases in chickens.
One was Merrick's disease andthe other one is lymphoid osis,
which occurs usually they say inolder birds after 14, 16 weeks
of age.
But we know that if you seetumors in a bird younger than
(33:50):
14, 16 weeks, it's mareksbecause lymphoid osis only
happens in older birds.
But if you see tumors in olderbirds, then you have to think,
is it marck or is it lymphoidosis?
So most of the time, thosebirds, they got the tumors,
they'll die.
You take that tumors you look atunder the scope and you look to
(34:11):
see the formation or how similarthose lymphocytes are, the T
cells.
And that will tell you whetheryou've got Merricks or you've
got lymphoid osis,
Carey (34:23):
but there's no 100% accurate way to test for this.
Like I can't just walk out to onmy farm and pick up a chicken
and open its wing, pop someblood out from the vein that's
under the wing like they do forthe NPIP testing.
And send that off and tell ahundred percent if a bird's got
(34:45):
married, the bird is going tohave passed and you're gonna
actually have to have the liveror doing the crops or something
along those lines,
Dr. Morishita (34:54):
That would be the best because they don't always
circulate in the blood and theyhave to be a high level too.
Carey (35:01):
Okay.
And if it was a high level whenyou're taking the blood, it
would be obvious because theirlegs would be, like you
described earlier, their eyeswould be gray.
They have the bumps on theirskin.
Something would be there at thatpoint when it's in their blood
and moving around.
Dr. Morishita (35:21):
Okay.
So let's say you got a burbecause now.
Now when you say like in theblood, because in the blood you
gotta do special things.
If I'm in the blood and I lookat the blood, I might not see
very many of those tumor cells,the lymphocytes in the blood.
But those are like special ones.
You gotta stain the blood, yougotta look at under the
microscope.
So then we think about what arethe new scientific methods that
(35:44):
there are, there's that PCR,right?
Polymerase chain reaction.
So that kind of machine takeslike a DNA and it's like a copy
machine.
It makes multiple copies.
So if you got very low levelsthat you find that machine makes
it like multiple copies, then itcan be detected.
So that's why people use thatPCR.
(36:06):
But again, it's a very, it's nota for the backyard chicken
owner,
Carey (36:12):
so for that PCR test.
If it's in, if it's in their DNAand they're immune to it,
essentially it's gonna show up.
Dr. Morishita (36:24):
The PCR detects the DNA of the virus.
So find it whether it's alive ora dead strain,
Carey (36:31):
okay.
So even if my birds werevaccinated as chicks and a year
from now somebody does a PCRtest, it's gonna show positive.
Dr. Morishita (36:44):
But I don't even know if those are commercially
available.
That's probably in a researchlab.
Carey (36:50):
Wow.
Yeah
Dr. Morishita (36:51):
It's not commercially available.
So for all intents purposesright now, commercially
available diag diagnosis isthrough necropsy with the
tissues.
Carey (37:02):
Gotcha.
Okay.
That's what I was thinking.
But we have a lot of listenersYeah.
That don't know and they're verycurious.
And this is a very controversialtopic.
And we know that you know a lotabout this type stuff'cause you
studied it.
So that's why we wanted to talkto you and find out, that the
(37:24):
ins and outs and what waspossible and what wasn't and all
that good stuff.
Dr. Morishita (37:29):
May maybe in the future somebody will develop a
quick test that could be done ata diagnostic lab.
Nothing's impossible'cause thisis a great time to be alive.
Look at all the advances inmedicine.
Carey (37:41):
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (37:42):
And we could use that too.
And who knows, maybe at somepoint they could do biopsies too
and send that tissue in.
And, for us that race POpoultry, because they're flock
animals, you get one positive,they, you consider your whole
flock positive, right?
Yeah.
Jennifer (38:00):
Okay.
I have a question about thevaccine itself.
So when I listened to the otherdiscussion about it, the, it was
a research scientist and she wasvery adamant that the vaccine
had to be stored and appliedunder very strict rules,
(38:21):
otherwise you were just wastingyour time.
Would you agree with that?
Dr. Morishita (38:25):
Yes.
Because remember, it's a livevirus, right?
We can't this has to be a mod.
The Turkeys virus strain, that'sa live virus.
You're injecting a live virusfrom a Turkey into your
chickens.
So in commercial production,it's held like in under liquid
nitrogen or, very coldenvironment.
It's given, within no longerthan.
(38:48):
One hour or so, depending on thetemperature because you wanna
ensure that your birds getvaccinated and you don't wanna
be vaccinating them with a, thatturkeys viruses out in the, in
in your air your place whereyou're vaccinate them they'll
die over time too.
So that's why you vaccinate themas soon as possible.
Jennifer (39:11):
Would you agree that a backyard person really can't
vaccinate their own birds withMerricks because they don't have
the tools to do it correctly?
Dr. Morishita (39:22):
You can, or you can work.
Maybe you find a localveterinarian that has the
supply.
You have to keep that vaccinecool.
Because they do sell that onsome of the.
Sites that sell poultry.
You've seen the individualvaccine now know that for the
backyard flock owner, thatvaccine was developed for the
(39:43):
commercial industry.
So you're gonna see vials madefor 1000 doses.
And we don't, most backyardflocks do not have 1000 birds,
right?
Jennifer (39:53):
So
Dr. Morishita (39:53):
one of the common things is to maybe have vaccine
get togethers or whatever, andyou have somebody that has a
vaccine and you vaccinate allyour chicks at the same time,
or, those chicks are valuable.
For me, I'll pay$29 to buy avaccine because I want my birds
to be protected.
(40:15):
It all depends on human, but ithas to be stored
Jennifer (40:17):
In liquid nitrogen.
Dr. Morishita (40:18):
That's to keep it cool because we have a lot of
birds, so I believe that theyship it there, so as soon as
they can ship it to you.
From the commercial where youcan buy those vaccines, you'll
see them.
Yeah.
You have to immediately with theday you get it, and thank God.
Now with the delivery serviceyou can get when it's coming in,
(40:41):
then you start get ready, and assoon as it comes out, then you
prepare it, and then you startvaccinating the birds,
Carey (40:48):
okay, so let's just, now my son has a nitrogen tank that
he can store stuff in.
Because of that reason, he'sgotta keep it cold.
Jennifer (40:54):
So somebody just says, oh, I just keep it in my freezer
and as they hatch, I give it tohim, or no?
Dr. Morishita (40:59):
No.
Once you open that vial, yougotta use it.
Jennifer (41:02):
Okay.
So is that doing nothing or isit doing bad?
Doing What if somebody just keptit in their freezer and gave it
to the chicks?
Is that doing nothing at allbecause it is now just a moot
point?
Or is it actually farming?
You
Dr. Morishita (41:20):
remember some frost freeze freezers do not
always keep it cold.
It's cold.
Then it defrosts.
Otherwise you got a lot of icebuildup in your freezer.
Like the freezer itself itfreezes and then it, the
temperatures fluctuate.
'cause otherwise there'll be icebuildup.
That's how you can tell thefreezers that don't have that
frost free.
So you're just wasting yourright.
(41:42):
You're gonna waste your timebecause that, that freezer is
fluctuating.
The only way they keep thesevaccines is like.
We have at research areas likenegative 80 degrees freezers.
Jennifer (41:55):
And then
Dr. Morishita (41:56):
when we're transporting them, we're putting
in a nitrogen tank, right?
Jennifer (42:00):
Okay.
We see, and then you have itthere,
Dr. Morishita (42:01):
but you're not gonna give the chick at nitrogen
tank level temperatures.
One cannot even touch the, likeliquid No.
That burned your skin.
Yeah.
So you take it out and you letit, thaw out that you're gonna
get, start injecting yourchicks,
Jennifer (42:20):
and then when you're done injecting your chicks, you
just throw it away.
The rest of it,
Dr. Morishita (42:24):
you gotta,
Carey (42:25):
because it's already thought out, so it's, you thaw
it out, do it.
You can't refreeze it and do itagain.
Jennifer (42:32):
Okay.
Got it.
All right.
You've, we collected somequestions to ask you, but I'm
looking at the list and you'veanswered most of'em.
So the pupils, how are thepupils affected by marck?
Dr. Morishita (42:44):
Okay, so the, that Merricks disease virus is a
herpes virus.
It attacks a certain type of wecall immune.
These are immune cells of thebody, and these are immune cells
that, that protect the birdsagainst disease.
There are two types, A, B cell,B type A, B cell, we call it B
(43:06):
cell lymphocyte.
Those are the cell types thatproduce antibodies in the body.
Then there other immune cell iscalled a t.
Type T cell, a T cell type oflymphocyte.
That's the one that's affectedby the Marck disease virus.
(43:27):
Okay.
And so it, it mutates that Tcell goes throughout the body
and spreads.
That's how we get the tumors.
It spreads throughout the bloodstream.
And then that can also go to theeye.
So that tumor virus invades thepupil.
And that's how it changes thecolor.
Jennifer (43:48):
Changes the color.
Does it change the shape
Dr. Morishita (43:52):
of the pupil?
It might have ragged edges.
A normal pupil is very nice andcircular and a clean circle.
If you take a look at anybodyeye, even our eye.
But sometimes when you, theyhave the invasion, sometimes
you'll see little ragged edgesaround there.
But the main thing is, the firstthing you'll notice is a color.
(44:13):
You know
Jennifer (44:13):
the gray?
Oh, good to know.
Dr. Morishita (44:16):
But that's more like a chronic, the birds have
survived the Merricks disease,but so they'll be alive.
And you see that.
So when you go through yourflock, always look at your birds
and see if there's differentcoloration.
One bird with that.
Maybe it had an injury.
When you have multiple birdswith gray eyes, you probably had
merricks going through theflock.
(44:38):
But thank goodness you only hadthat form and not the tumor
form, because that's right.
You can find dead birds, andthat's why it's important that
whenever you have dead birds,and we always say when you got
dead birds, and if you don'tmind opening up, you should open
it up.
Learn to look for what kind oflesions.
And seeing something, if youcan't take it to a vet, you
(44:58):
can't take it to a necropsy,your state diagnostic lab.
You as a poultry owner, youalways wanna learn what do these
diseases look like?
And that tells you right away Imight have this, and then you
yourself can do something.
Whether you got new birds oryour existing birds, what do you
(45:19):
wanna do to it?
Carey (45:20):
When I have people ask me, they're like, oh, look at
this bird.
It passed away.
What was wrong with it?
I always ask them to, I want toknow what their poo looked like,
because you can tell a lot bythat.
Very good.
Yes.
My next question is, can youopen the bird up and look at it?
Because if it smells funny,looks funny.
(45:43):
If you see the tumors, if yousee an exorbitant amount of fat
or something like that, then youcan tell that something was
wrong with it.
If you open it up.
And it looks like something youwould see on the aisle at Publix
then.
In the what?
It was in a Publix, the grocerystore.
Jennifer (46:01):
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah, he's in California.
They don't have Publix outthere.
Carey (46:04):
If you see it, if it looks like something in the
grocery, then, it could havejust been a fluke.
The thing had a heart attack'cause the plane flew over or
something like that.
Dr. Morishita (46:13):
But
Carey (46:14):
I tell him to look at But it might
Dr. Morishita (46:15):
look like in your public store or Kroger or
whatever, Safeway out here, but,or Stater Brothers.
But we will not eat any birdthat is dead, that is found
dead.
Even though it looks like theone in the store.
We don't because it died ofsomething.
Because you
Carey (46:30):
don't know.
But I tell people, I say, if itlooks like something you would
see in the store, then you'reprobably okay.
Then it might be, if it looksbad, you need to get it checked
out.
Dr. Morishita (46:43):
Okay.
If it died in the store, itmight have died from something,
right?
But it's something that wevisually cannot see.
So the things that we visuallycannot see could be maybe a
virus that doesn't cause diseaselike botulism.
Or maybe it is something likebacterial that gone through the
blood.
So those are things that maybewe cannot see.
Jennifer (47:03):
But
Dr. Morishita (47:04):
Things that we visually see, then we say, oh
yeah.
More likely we can hint what itis.
Yeah.
But any dead animal or sickanimal we do not eat.
Do not.
And I've had people say oh,after I do a necropsy, can I
have that breast or whatever?
'cause it looked okay.
Carey (47:19):
No you don't.
You don't know.
Dr. Morishita (47:22):
No,
Carey (47:23):
that's right.
I mean that you might as well goto a fast food restaurant and
get something.
'cause you don't know thereeither.
Jennifer (47:31):
Okay.
So the liver of a meric birdwill have white or yellow
nodules on it.
That makes it hard.
Dr. Morishita (47:39):
You will see that.
And if you had a knife orwhatever that you, and remember,
if you do this on your own, thisis disease, so you wanna make
sure you wear gloves and clean,right?
Because you don't wanna be like,oh, I just.
Cut this Mars liver up and thenI wipe it on my pants or
something.
And then you go touch your otherYeah.
Carey (47:58):
You do this and you clean up your mess and then you go
take a shower.
Jennifer (48:02):
Yes.
Carey (48:02):
And put your clothes in the don't go check on the rest
of your chickens or somethinglike that before cleaning and
sterilizing your hands andstuff.
Dr. Morishita (48:11):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wash your hands with soap andwater.
Jennifer (48:15):
Okay.
I just happened to harvest orwear a
Dr. Morishita (48:17):
gloves, first of all, wear our gloves.
Jennifer (48:19):
Wear gloves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
'cause it's gross because it's
Dr. Morishita (48:21):
common.
Now you can go and buy thoseplastic gloves.
Jennifer (48:24):
So I harvested about 15 chickens yesterday.
Two different breeds.
And I always check all theinsides for.
Any issue because in, if I hadissues in the ones I'm
harvesting in several birds,then that would tell me, okay,
hey, I need to look at theliving birds.
(48:45):
Then look for issues.
Yeah.
But all my livers, all 15 liverswere that nice, dark, maroon red
color lungs were pink,everything looked like it was
supposed to look, and so we justmotored right on through.
Carey (49:02):
You chop that up and feed it to your chicks.
Jennifer (49:06):
Lady dog was stealing out of the bucket as fast as we
were
Carey (49:10):
putting that, that happens too.
Yeah.
Jennifer (49:13):
So she ate good yesterday,
Dr. Morishita (49:15):
but you can check what, even the intestines if you
got worms or something,
Jennifer (49:20):
yep.
I, I didn't open them upyesterday, but I have opened
them up before and looked and Inever could find anything.
Dr. Morishita (49:28):
But I do wanna say when you give the raw meat
like that to the dogs, remember?
Always chickens are known tohave salmonella.
And so we don't wanna, it can bedone, but just watch out, as a
precaution too.
Jennifer (49:42):
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (49:43):
Cooked is there.
That's it.
Think things like that happen.
We people drink raw eggs withorange juice, those are.
Those are things that we, somepeople do
Carey (49:51):
that, and I don't understand it.
Dr. Morishita (49:54):
They do not.
Anytime we have raw food, eitherus or our pets, we always have
the potential risk of gettingbacterial diseases,
Carey (50:04):
oh yeah, definitely.
Dr. Morishita (50:06):
But some people like sunny side up eggs, that's
why for people with poor immune,sys poor immune systems, you
wanna cook your food well,
Jennifer (50:14):
little
Dr. Morishita (50:14):
kids or old people.
Jennifer (50:16):
Next question is, which I think we answered it,
but are there any medicinesavailable for Marx?
Dr. Morishita (50:23):
Unfortunately not.
A lot of people think we cangive antibiotics, but this is a
virus, a viral disease.
So virus is the only way totreat virus.
There are antiviral in drugs.
That humans have.
Like when you got a cold sore,there's antiviral medications.
(50:44):
But there is not any forpoultry.
And so the only way if you gotlike this Merrick's disease is
prevention is throughvaccination.
Jennifer (50:54):
There is a group on social media that swears they
can cure it with some naturalmedicines and herbs and such.
Any thoughts on that?
Dr. Morishita (51:12):
I'm not gonna say, never say never.
Jennifer (51:15):
Because,
Dr. Morishita (51:16):
How did people cure a long time in ancient
times?
What did people use?
Natural plants, right?
And herbal medicine.
So I don't know what kind ofherbs they are using.
Jennifer (51:30):
I'm looking really quickly because I couldn't
remember what it was called,
Carey (51:37):
but I would think if that was a possibility that the
commercial poultry industry, ifit was a possibility for it to
be done reliably andconsistently, that the
commercial poultry industrywould be doing it like clockwork
and probably have alreadycopyrighted it.
Dr. Morishita (51:53):
They would be doing it and they wouldn't do
it.
Not only for Mareks, but anyviral disease, right?
Jennifer (51:59):
But
Dr. Morishita (52:00):
how much is that medication gonna cost?
Jennifer (52:03):
It's Chinese skull cap.
Dr. Morishita (52:06):
Oh, yeah.
I don't know.
I'm not gonna expect.
Okay.
I don't either, But I know forother things that, you know,
like in working with some peoplethat wanna raise organic what
are some herbs that are knownantimicrobial?
So you got like oregano,rosemary.
Garlic, and we have things likeprobiotics,
Jennifer (52:29):
gut health is the beginning of good health.
All right.
I think I'm looking, I think weanswered all that's,
Carey (52:35):
I was gonna say, I think we covered everything.
Dr. Morishita (52:38):
It's a tough disease, but it's so complex,
Carey (52:42):
and I really like how you explain it.
And there's multiple strains ofvaccines.
Dr. Morishita (52:47):
Pardon me?
Carey (52:48):
I really like how you explained it all.
You did a really good job andyou're very thorough.
Jennifer (52:52):
And
Carey (52:52):
you said it like everything was in a way that our
listeners could understand it.
They don't have to have at leasta master's degree to understand
the way you explained it.
And so I think they'llappreciate that too, because
most of our listeners arebackyard poultry people.
So that's what we try to, that'swho we try to help out.
Dr. Morishita (53:14):
I'm here to help them if they have any questions,
to the best of my ability.
But that's what we know rightnow.
Jennifer (53:22):
We will have you back for yet another grilling on a
different disease.
Carey (53:28):
Yeah.
We'll collect some morequestions.
Dr. Morishita (53:31):
Or eating birds that are dead.
Jennifer (53:33):
No.
Carey (53:34):
Yeah.
Dr. Morishita (53:35):
That will be a short podcast.
We'll just say don't do it.
Carey (53:39):
Don't do it.
Dr. Morishita (53:40):
I had some people, if they had, they found
some ostriches that were frozen.
They had a cold storm and theywere frozen out if they could
eat it because it was cold.
But it's not good.
Anything dead to not eat.
Carey (53:56):
If you don't, if you don't know what caused that,
don't chance it.
Jennifer (54:00):
All right.
Thank you so much for being herewith us again.
Dr. Morishita (54:04):
Always a pleasure.
Thank you for inviting me.
Carey (54:07):
Yes, ma'am.
Jennifer (54:08):
All right.
Bye bye.
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