advice to chicken owners...

[suburbanite]

This is Seattle's advice for urban chicken owners regarding biosecurity to prevent bird flu (and Newcastle) in birds.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...birdflu04.html

I would have put this in the poultry forum but I'm still banned there. :grumpy:

[Judy in IN]

Banned from the POULTRY FORUM? OOOOH, you bad person, you!

I've never been banned anywhere! (I think I'm jealous)

[TwoAcresAndAGoat]

Some how I can't believe that three chickens in somenones back yard or garage are going to be a health risk to anyone.

I think the bigger risk is wild flocks of geese that land on private and public lakes at office complexes, parks and golf courses

[seedspreader]

Well I counted the word biosecurity at least 5 times in that article... but no real substantial information on what it means or how to practice it.

It seems like an article basically pushing for registering of those 500 "renegade" chickens.

[suburbanite]

Two Acres, so far in areas where there is bird flu in wild birds, people have only gotten it from the birds either by shooting infected waterfowl and then preparing them for table, or by close contact with their chickens who have had contact with infected wild birds.

Even if H5N1 never changes to transmit easily between people, when it comes here in wild birds, people who keep chickens will be at risk of catching it from their chickens if they don't build their coop in a way to keep them from contact with wild birds.

[Bearfootfarm]

Wonder how many "undocumented" PEOPLE there are in Seattle and how much effort are they putting into finding THEM?

And it says they "test migratory birds" Since they cant test ALL of those, why do they need to test ALL of the chickens?

Brainwashing at it's finest

[electronrider]

Ya know, I can just picture some crazy "Bird Lady" buying some imported infected chicken, and things sprialling out from there. Also, that would make a great "Canary in the mine" so to speak, when suddenly half the chickens get sick in town ya know?

[suburbanite]

They are saying that if there is an outbreak they want to test all the chickens. Also they want chicken owners to know what to look for and who to call if their chickens get sick.

[kesoaps]

Speaking as a Washingtonian...the biosecurity guidelines are the most ridiculous thing I've read to date. There is no way on earth they can be carried out.

Seriously...a ticking time bomb? Good grief.

Want to hear what some of our biosecurity guidelines would suggest? Tracking every person who comes and goes on your premise. Names and contact information. They should wear disposable booties. Their vehicles ought to be sprayed with disinfectant.

Hey, easy enough if you've got a small place with only one way in and one way out and someone standing guard. But as I pointed out to our state vet, rather difficult if the premise is a county fair. I can just see having everyone entering offering up their ID in order to get in. Passports, please. (We are, after all, next to the Canadian border and get a fair share of them here at our fairs.) And do you mind wearing these little booties? Oh, and change them between barns, will you?

And what was the state vet's response? Well...they're only guidelines...

[Ardie/WI]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

This is Seattle's advice for urban chicken owners regarding biosecurity to prevent bird flu (and Newcastle) in birds.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...birdflu04.html

I would have put this in the poultry forum but I'm still banned there. :grumpy:

For goodness sakes , what DID you do???????????????????

[Burbsteader]

Gotta love Seattle news. They can take a bunch of nothing and spin it into an article.

Ticking timebomb? Come on.
This was just a lame excuse to write about getting everyone registered.
Another way to panic people into a National Animal ID.

It is not hard to separate wild birds and domestic. We totally redid our chicken run. Put a roof on it and instead of chicken wire we used the 1" sq. hardware cloth. Now the little birdies cannot get in anymore.

That's the only thing that has to be done. Make sure little birds and their feces cannot get into the chicken enclosure.

Now tell us how you got banned Suburbanite!

[TwoAcresAndAGoat]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Two Acres, so far in areas where there is bird flu in wild birds, people have only gotten it from the birds either by shooting infected waterfowl and then preparing them for table, or by close contact with their chickens who have had contact with infected wild birds..

My point is that it is more likely for people in close contact with wild waterfowl to catch bird flu that it is for someone with a chicken in their back yard or garage. I have seen huge flocks of geese at a corporate business park's pond, where there is goose poo all over the sidewalks and grass. In Greensboro NC, geese will actually stop traffic as they cross the roads in places. They graze at shopping centers in very close contact with the general public yet no one seems concerned with the possibility of them spreading disease.

[Spinner]

Boy, they sure are on a mission. It took 3 months searching door to door to find 500 chickens. And then they "educated" everyone on the need to register them. Another fine case of our tax dollars at work!

Wonder what their next mission is going to be?

[hollym]

Originally Posted by ZealYouthGuy

Well I counted the word biosecurity at least 5 times in that article... but no real substantial information on what it means or how to practice it.

It seems like an article basically pushing for registering of those 500 "renegade" chickens.

Yep, that was my exact thought!

Here is the only info I gleaned about what to do....and no offense to the good folks in Seattle, but it's a real no brainer!

"Basically, it involves specific hygiene practices, restricting access to the birds and aggressive reporting of ill birds to officials."

Now I didn't count, but did anyone keep track of how many times they mentioned registering??

I LOVE it that you can live in a big city and have three chickens, lol, always knew that Seattle seemed like a really cool place.

Still giggling a bit about the 'ticking time bomb' line.

hollym

[FarmerDave]

Okay... I'm new here but... Don't you guys know this is serious?
Do you not remember the Anthrax letters issue back in 2001?
Why is that pertinent you ask.

Simple.

It was actually a preemptive strike by the chickens with the hope the cattle, sheep, goats and etc. would get the blame. Thereby taking the focus off the "yard birds" propogated by the bovines "Eat Mor Chikin" campaign.

[Maura]

I was pleased to read that people are allowed to keep chickens in the city. I think it may be a way to let people keep their chickens, but help to quell the fear people have of the bird flu. It's not easy to catch the bird flu. You have to be in close contact, closer contact than most of us are with our birds, which is why it is more of a problem in a commercial enterprise where there is fecal dust in the air. I'd rather go to a biosecurity class than give up my chickens.

[diane]

Oh yes, huge threat I guess I had better rush right out and register my chickens. NOT!!!!!!!

I too am curious.......whatever does one do to get banned from the poultry forum? Never hung out there myself.........but curiosity has overwhelmed me

[suburbanite]

I got banned from the poultry forum by posting in an outraged manner when I found a news article about a group of smugglers who had brought exotic chicken varieties from southeast asia, an area with known bird flu outbreaks in chickens, to Texas, locked them in a house until the house was full of chicken feces, and then left them to die in a heatwave. I was offended by the article on several levels: 1) animal abuse and neglect 2) illegal smuggling of birds 3) birds originating in a biological 'hot zone' coming into the country and potentially creating a biological danger to animals and people here 4) trashing of some poor landlord's house.

Authorities had to test all the dead chickens for bird flu because they couldn't tell if they'd died from the heat or if they were abandoned after they died of a disease.

Apparently I posted in too outraged a manner, though I didn't use any profanity.

This article illustrates why people in the US need to worry about bird flu in their birds even though there hasn't been any detected here or in wild birds--there is a smuggling trade that has no care whatsoever for biosecurity.

If any of these birds were infected, and had been sold or taken to a place where there are other birds, or if their smugglers had gone from their filthy chicken-house to visit a potential buyer with chicken poop on their shoes, or if they had distributed infected chicken meat, or infected eggs, then bird flu could have gotten into US chicken flocks or even people.

There was also a 2 ton seizure of smuggled chicken parts from China (another bird flu hot-zone) in...Minnesota?...where 200 lbs of goose guts disappeared from the seized merchandise. The smuggling was for the purpose of supplying Chinese restaurants.

[suburbanite]

Anyway, my point with the Seattle article isn't the registration (which I think is overkill) but the awareness and the willingness to report chicken illnesses, as well as building biosecure coops.

I don't see that a shoe-dip tray at the coop door would be that hard to implement. For coop walls ideally you'd have a double-wall of wire too small to admit birds, so that there's a no-bird buffer zone of (ideally) 3 feet between the chickens and any outside birds. Apparently that is the range of a bird's sneeze.

In countries suffering bird flu, so far there have been no human cases as the result of ducks in city ponds or as a direct result of wildfowl droppings. The only cases where a human has caught bird flu directly from a wild bird or its droppings has been 1) the Jakarta zoo outbreak where people caught it from birds in an aviary and 2) 6 hunters in Afghanistan (?) who became ill after cleaning waterfowl they shot. All the other cases are attributed to close contact with chickens or chicken feces, though there is some genetic evidence in Indonesia suggestive that the humans are actually catching it from an unidentified non-poultry carrier species. Cats and pigs have been suspect; I wish they'd test rats.

If you build a biosecure coop then that makes it more difficult for the government to make a case to 'cull' your birds if there is an outbreak in your area.

[suburbanite]

Cyangbald 'doesn't believe in' bird flu and thinks any mention of it is fearmongering. It is a taboo discussion in that forum.