As you know from my previous post, Sad News, I lost one of my quail a day or so ago, with strange symptoms which might (or might not) have been Mareks. Two days on, the others are all fine, and I've done as thorough a cleanup as I can of the cages and summerhouse where they live, though in the nature of the place it's not possible to get the whole floor, walls and ceiling perfectly clean, and other stuff is stored in there as well, eg garden furniture for the winter. If there were any virus particles, too aggressive an attempt at cleaning might only spread them into the air anyway. As you know, quail give off a lot of dust, from feather dander and just digging in the woodshavings and flying around.
So I've done my best on that, though not perfect, and at present am quarantining them in there. We have been making a new quail house the past few weeks, nearly finished now, just needs the cage fronts fixed on basically. This is totally clean of anything, made of all new materials etc, so would be perfectly safe for any birds I want to put in there. There are 6 cages, ready I hope for me to breed some youngsters next Spring. So my dilemma is, do I transfer my present quail to the 'safe' new house now, to get them out of possible danger? Or wait until they've shown no signs of infection after say, 2-3 weeks? Or, since Mareks can lurk for quite a long time, should I leave them in the summerhouse for the duration, and avoid any risk that they might bring a virus to the new house with them on their feathers, even if everything else was clean?
I hope this doesn't sound paranoid, and I can't really see how my quail could have contacted Mareks, but obviously it's best to err on the side of caution when thinking about possible implications for disease control. Not so many people on here keep quail as keep other birds, but the problems are the same for all of us, so maybe people with wider experince than me can give advice.
So I've done my best on that, though not perfect, and at present am quarantining them in there. We have been making a new quail house the past few weeks, nearly finished now, just needs the cage fronts fixed on basically. This is totally clean of anything, made of all new materials etc, so would be perfectly safe for any birds I want to put in there. There are 6 cages, ready I hope for me to breed some youngsters next Spring. So my dilemma is, do I transfer my present quail to the 'safe' new house now, to get them out of possible danger? Or wait until they've shown no signs of infection after say, 2-3 weeks? Or, since Mareks can lurk for quite a long time, should I leave them in the summerhouse for the duration, and avoid any risk that they might bring a virus to the new house with them on their feathers, even if everything else was clean?
I hope this doesn't sound paranoid, and I can't really see how my quail could have contacted Mareks, but obviously it's best to err on the side of caution when thinking about possible implications for disease control. Not so many people on here keep quail as keep other birds, but the problems are the same for all of us, so maybe people with wider experince than me can give advice.
