Yoohooo, I'm here!!!!
Yes, at the moment vaccines come in doses of 1,000, and although they are coming down in price now, it's still a waste if you only have a few chooks, as you can't keep the leftover stuff.
I think it was Aunt Sally who said once they are thinking of doing them in smaller packs, but at the moment they are only really for the commercial farmers.
Most vets as we know, dont know much about chickens either, but even they couldn't vaccinate poultry any cheaper if they still come in doses of 1,000 unless they could get people with 1,000 chickens to come in!!!
I did vaccinate the last batch of Babcocks, but it was put in the drinking water. And not one person who bought the Babcock's was at all impressed! lol
But I think as long as your housekeeping is good and you keep your coop and run clean, you shouldn't get ant problems.
If you buy from a hatchery like we do at day old they are vaccinated against Mareks disease. And if you buy from a big breeder or rearer then they will sometimes vaccinate, but most little rearers like me don't. Saying that though, we have never had anything nasty happen to our chickens, and we haven't heard of any of our customers losing chickens to anything nasty, although a few have died. One man lost 7 of his last year amberlinks to a bad pecking problem, but we don't know his circumstances, although he said they have a BIG field, like several acres. Another bloke lost his to a fox or several.
so I will now stop waffling, but this latest flock of chicks I didn't vaccinate, but I do tell people when they come to collect their chickens.
Oh and like Rob said, the feed we use has an anticoccidiostat in it, but the worst vaccine to give them is the Salmonella. Simon who we buy our meat chicks from has to vaccinate his parent flocks against Salmonella, and they have to have 3 lots of injections, and afterwards the vet has to do test to make sure the vaccine worked, and that is expensive