Member Stories: Facing Avian Influenza

So many things feel heavy these days.

A couple of our LCFA members and core leadership have recently gone through quite an experience having their flock get infected with avian influenza and would like to share some of their experience with you. It is our hope that what they have learned may be of a help to you. The following is what they have to share at this time. You are welcome to reach out with questions and we will do our best to provide you with resources.

We are saddened by the recent loss of our birds to avian influenza virus, which is now endemic to our area. We are sharing this to encourage any of you that have two or more birds die in quick succession to please make sure to have one of your birds tested immediately!

Our first chicken died on a Friday evening and the second was found dead the following morning. We began taking precautions immediately with that second bird; taking one of our deceased birds to the CSU vet diagnostics lab for testing, quarantining our remaining birds, quarantining our cats, and creating two separate control lines to mitigate any potential transportation of pathogens. This felt terrible to do to our sweet birds that have been able to range freely on the property, but important given the possibility of the avian flu.

We worked closely with the state veterinary office, self reporting of a possible outbreak to them at the same time as taking one to CSU for testing. Because we established strict contamination control lines in our protocol – isolating the birds to a well-contained area; bagging all straw and mulch from the hen house and pen; using three separate sets of shoes, one for the pen, one for the land at large, and one for our house’s backyard; bagging clothes after care for the birds in quarantine; double gloving and disposing of gloves properly; dawning eye protection and N95 masks; spraying everything with 10% bleach solution, including our car tires – the state vet office gave us the choice of keeping our remaining birds as long as we continued our protocols.

Because of the intensity of managing the control lines in cold weather and the lack of quality of life for the birds, we did not feel we could maintain this for the 120 day quarantine on our property. It was a truly terrible decision to have to make, but we opted to have the state vet team put down the rest of our flock. We felt this was the best course to attenuate the risk to ourselves and our community.

We’ve shared on social media to encourage folks to test as soon as more than one fowl dies in a short amount of time, or if you suspect bird flu for any reason. We need to de-stigmatize testing, so that we can be actively mitigating the impacts of any outbreaks in home or commercial flocks.

You are probably wondering how our flock got sick in the first place. Our property lays along a major migration path for waterfowl going between lakes, as do many around us. The opinion of the state vet office is that “shit-bombs” on properties are one of the greatest sources of infection for backyard chickens and ducks. We had a turkey – they are particularly susceptible and can spread the virus much more readily.

Tires and shoes are the two primary ways that people can transmit the virus. One particularly elegant intervention to help stop the spread of the virus was to make a tire bath for our vehicles. We fill them with a sanitizing solution so that tires get disinfected while driving on and off the property. As we begin to plan spring projects, one of the first will be to create a shoe sanitizing station for guests, with the option to put shoe covers on or to swap out for farm shoes. After the 120 day quarantine we will also be redesigning the chicken house with prevention and control of bird flu in mind for the design. This will include a space to keep cleaning supplies that is big enough to change in so that if we ever face this again we will be able to maintain control lines without having to change clothes outside in winter weather.

Our hearts are heavy and we’re thinking of more measures we can take to prevent infection in the future.

In hope this will help others,

Danny and Michelle