Would it make any difference if it first appear in an 'unhealthy' flock?I asked first where it came from. It just appears in a healthy flock?
I heard from a chicken company vet that some of the upper midwest chicken/egg farms used large ponds for their water supply. He said that geese and duck crap in those ponds was a very high risk for disease transmission. Here, chicken houses get water from deep wells or water utilities for the most part.I notice when an H5N1 outbreak occurs in a backyard flock, the owners invariably have not just chickens but free range ducks. They go down to ponds where the wild ducks and geese gather.
Its gotten really bad on California dairies. I don't have waterfowl but wild birds migrate through here so now I keep my (6) hens in the henhouse.
Would it make any difference if it first appear in an 'unhealthy' flock?
Illnesses of every sort, across all species have historically been known to show up in perfectly healthy communities.
If you are proposing that someone intentionally 'planted' the sick bird there, then it's upon you to provide proof of it.
I'm not very knowledgeable on the commercial poultry business as there are none in this area. Wife's stepfather works for a chicken company in OK. From my understanding the farms have contracts with one of various companiesUsually things that are taken care of aren't sick in multiple locations at the same time. Just as history has suggested, the cleaner you are the healthier things, animals, people, are. I would expect a house that has regular inspections to be better taken care of than someone that cant afford it of doesn't have access to care. Then again there has been free range chickens surviving for thousands of years, even on farms with ponds, lakes, rivers. This is a relatively new sickness for multiple species.Hence the to many pages of craigslist cattle we all seem to be against.
I'm not proposing anything, but a duck is a duck. Pun intended... wrong thread for that. Good on you guys and gals for pointing out the oddities of this loss of food production.
I was wondering about why dairy has been a locus for the bird flu and not beef. I wonder if beef feedlots have more problems, come to think of it.And huge flocks of H5N1 infected sparrows and starlings that are attracted to dairy's continuous feed of the cows.