Practical Poultry Magazine No.123 Buying the Jersey Giant Back Issue

We lost a bird recently; one of our small group of hybrid egg-producers. It’s always a sad event, especially in this case as she was the last of our white, Leghorn-based birds that have always proved such great performers for us. She was still a relatively young bird, and one of our most recent intake, so it was surprising when we noticed that her laying
performance started falling away for no apparent reason. To begin with we blamed the slight moult she was going through, the time of year, the appalling weather. But, as the rest of the flock got back into full swing, she didn’t. Her level of activity began to slow; she was less interested
in scratching around with the others and became progressively more withdrawn. Then once her tail dropped and she wound her neck in, we knew things were approaching the point of no return. One morning, soon after, I discovered her on her back in a nest box. She wasn’t in
the least bit distressed, but had simply lost the use of her legs, which were stretched out at odd angles. Fortunately, none of the other hens in that house had taken any notice of her vulnerability overnight, so she
didn’t suffer in that respect. It’s quite unusual for a mature hybrid hen to suffer this sort of Marek’s disease related fate for two reasons. For a start,
these commercially-produced birds are typically vaccinated against this sort of viral disease but, also, it’s a condition that most commonly affects very young birds, aged between eight and 20 weeks. I suppose it just goes to show that nothing can ever be taken for granted when you
keep chickens. This fact alone, of course, helps ensure that this hobby remains forever interesting, irrespective of your level of involvement.