Chicken People should read this

[tortoise]

From State Veterinarian Dr. Bob Ehlenfeldt:

Backyard poultry and the world

The Wisconsin State Journal ran a story in a recent Sunday paper detailing how to start your own backyard chicken flock. Under the heading of "Health and nutrition," the writer said "Chickens have relatively few health problems, most of which can be avoided by keeping their coop and run clean and dry."

I'm sympathetic to her urge to produce something on her own. After all, I'm the guy with a vineyard in my backyard. But her navet made me a little nervous, because she represents a movement. Every month or two, there's another report of another Wisconsin city considering an ordinance to allow backyard chickens.

But here's the part that makes me nervous. Taiwan just banned poultry from Nebraska because a backyard chicken flock showed up at an exotic bird market with low-pathogenic avian influenza. Nebraska found the case via routine testing at the market, and then found two more infected flocks whose owners had bought birds from the original one. Note: No commercial flocks were involved, yet those international trade doors started slamming.

This time it was low-path AI - no human health risk, little risk to commercial flocks. What happens when it's high-path H5N1, the strain that's been killing people along with birds in Asia? What about the fact that salmonella often arrives with chicks infected in utero, and can be passed to humans in eggs they handle?

Backyard flocks are open to wild birds, including wild waterfowl -- the reservoir for many strains of avian influenza. I imagine this writer would say her chickens don't mingle with wild waterfowl. But Madison is built on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, with waterfowl flying overhead all the time. A co-worker who lives on the isthmus sees ducks wandering around her yard every spring, looking for nest sites.

This all makes me nervous, too, because it's not only chickens. We have all kinds of people with good intentions wanting to raise their own food or just live the country life, with a cow or two, some goats, some pigs, some horses. Often they are not aware of biosecurity measures, or don't believe they need those measures because they're small-scale. They also don't know, or don't believe, that they're risking their kids' health, their neighbors' health, their animals' health -- and the financial health of farmers who need to make a living with their livestock.

Not every big farm is well-run, I know, and we have room in Wisconsin for all sizes and kinds of farms, including this new breed of farmers. But somehow we need to convince them that bacteria and viruses don't distinguish between small and large flocks and herds. We need them to realize that they may well be more vulnerable than big farms that have the resources to practice good biosecurity and hire veterinarians.

There's a lot riding on a few chickens.

Keep your chickens, but keep them safely.

 

[lwheelr]

And then there is the fact that many of the larger mass hatcheries ship diseased fowl on a regular basis, and if you get chicks that are infected, it can wipe out your entire flock, and take the neighbor's flock with it.

In actuality, biosecurity is a myth, and NPIP testing is frankly worthless. Once a year testing is meaningless when a disease can crop up the day after the testing, and sweep through the entire flock within a month, and be gone before anyone raises the alarm.

Raising strong and healthy animals, as naturally as possible, is as good as it gets. Chickens naturally scratch in the dirt - full of germs. They stay healthier when they do.

 

[BarredBuff]

And then there is the fact that many of the larger mass hatcheries ship diseased fowl on a regular basis, and if you get chicks that are infected, it can wipe out your entire flock, and take the neighbor's flock with it.

In actuality, biosecurity is a myth, and NPIP testing is frankly worthless. Once a year testing is meaningless when a disease can crop up the day after the testing, and sweep through the entire flock within a month, and be gone before anyone raises the alarm.

Raising strong and healthy animals, as naturally as possible, is as good as it gets. Chickens naturally scratch in the dirt - full of germs. They stay healthier when they do.

x2 Here, here!

 

[Denim Deb]

And if anyone knows that, I'd say you do!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

In actuality, biosecurity is a myth, and NPIP testing is frankly worthless. Once a year testing is meaningless when a disease can crop up the day after the testing, and sweep through the entire flock within a month, and be gone before anyone raises the alarm.

I am going to politely disagree with you on this. Yes, there are illnesses that can affect chickens and wipe them out, but not all of them are transmittable to people.

NPIP testing is just to be sure your flock is pullorum/typhoid clean - which CAN be passed to people. That's the purpose of the NPIP testing, to make sure your birds don't carry any disease that people can contract.

People who are NPIP are required by their state to practice biosecurity. If they don't, then their NPIP is considered null and void.

All of our local auctions now test all birds before their sold at the sellers cost unless that seller can prove NPIP status when they check their birds in.

At Mt. Hope, the inspectors come around checking for NPIP papers during the swap meet. If you don't have any, they test your birds on the spot.

And, biosecurity DOES work to some degree. Example: you and maybe another family member both have chickens. Their birds become ill and your birds do not. Would you risk letting that person into your chicken pens, possibly carrying the illness their birds have to your flock?

I know I found out the hard way that all new birds should be quarantined, even little chicks. Even hatchery birds can arrive with MG.

I believe biosecurity and NPIP testing is a personal choice, and for me, a good excuse to keep customers untrained children away from my animals

 

[Denim Deb]

What's MG?

 

[lwheelr]

NPIP requires testing for Pullorum. There are about six to eight other diseases that they can also certify for, which are voluntary. They also have guidelines for facility management and structures, which don't necessarily produce healthier birds.

Transmission to humans isn't all that matters. If you get one bad disease that runs through, it can wipe out every bird on your premises in a matter of weeks. Look up Infectious Bursal Disease some time - supposedly it only affects chickens and turkeys, but that isn't actually true. It only kills the immune system in those birds, but still makes all the other birds sick, and they can pass it too. No cure. Destroys the immune system of chicks, so it is 100% fatal to chicks under the age of 8 weeks if they contract it, and adult chickens that survive it will have permanent damage to their immune systems (some sources say not, but others say they do, and in fact, they do, and so can ducks and geese).

Further, this disease does not kill adult birds. It DOES kill chicks. It also stays active in the soil for up to 2 months, which means if you have very much turnover in your stock, that it will pretty much always be there and never go away. Facilities that are NPIP certified have to certify that they have not lost more than 10% of their flock to disease in the last year. Well, if you run a hatchery, and ship out every chick you hatch, and all those chicks die of a disease that is making continuous rounds through your adult flocks, you can still certify that you have not lost 10% of your flock to any infectious disease, even though you have a permanent resident evil on your premises.

The thing is, all NPIP requires for certification is once a year testing. That is pretty well useless, as we found out when we got infected birds from a certified facility. People make a big deal out of certification, as though somehow that piece of paper certifies that their birds are healthy, but it really ISN'T worth the paper it is printed on.

Imagine, you have to produce a certificate saying your child does not have chickenpox before they can go to daycare. That certificate has to have been certified by a doctor no less than 30 days prior to the day you submit it. Chickenpox can be symptomless, and the symptoms that it does have are vague and non-specific for chickenpox during the most contagious period, as are many diseases of both humans and animals. The entire disease course is only a week or two, and by the time they LOOK diseased, they are only contagious for a few days, though they LOOK diseased for several weeks. Would you think that such a certification guaranteed that your child would be attending a daycare where no one had chickenpox? Of course not. It wouldn't mean anything - any more than NPIP certification means.

Practicing biosecurity just means that you isolate any birds that show signs of infection, and practice good hygiene to minimize risk of transmission. But many of the poultry diseases have minimal symptoms, so that they are difficult to spot. They may be fatal to chicks, but adult birds show almost no symptoms - they'll get it, transmit it, but not show definitive symptoms. So they are left to infect the flock, and all of the chicks as they hatch, which are then shipped out to unsuspecting recipients.

Certified disease free animals are a total myth. There is no such thing, because they can contract something right after they are tested - or even before, and be in a stage of an illness that does not show on testing.

Your chances of getting animals with infections is no greater from a backyard flock with no testing than it is from a certified facility. Either one may be harboring an illness and not showing it.

 

[GOOGLE NIKOLA TESLA]

these new virus that are crossing the barrier are MAN MADE look it up it was on freaking PBS STATION!!!

YES PBS!!! so credible!! NOVA!!!!

this scientist talks about how he used genetic enginnering to bring back these diseases and make them cross the species barrier!!

THE GOVS BUILDING A ANIMAL BIOWEAPONS LAB IN FREAKING THE BREAD BASKET OF AMERICA!! its not even logical to put our food system at risk, but here they are doing against farmers living there!!! WAKE UP!!! THEY WANT US TO BE SICK!

HERES THE PBS LINK AND THE UTUBE LINK! WAKE UP EVERYONE, LISTEN TO THIS SCIENTISTS OBSESSION WITH THE DISEASE KILLING LAB ANIMALS! HE IS HAVING PLEASURE MESSING WITH THESE EVIL DISEASES AND WATCHING IT KILL, AND HE WANTS TO MAKE THE DISEASE CROSS TO HUMANS!!! WTF WTF !!

UTUBE CONDENSED
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3PO5mj-a8

PBS FULL VERSION.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3318/w02-220.html


PREPARE, BECOME SELF SUFFICIENT..
THERE REALLY ARE scary people out there.

I GOT ONE REMEDY THAT I FOUND "ULTRAVIOLET BLOOD TRANSFUSION" IT KILLS MOST BACTERIAL AND VIRAL DISEASES IN THE BLOOD FROM EXPOSING BLOOD TO UV LIGHT, IT MAY HELP US IF SOMETHING WAS RELEASED....

just take the new cases of disease with suspicion that is all i ask! pbs nova was a great wakeup call, H1N1 WAS EXTINCT TILL THIS SCIENTIST BROUGHT IT BACK! SO HOW DID IT GET OUT INTO OUR WORLD??

 

[Neko-chan]

Gah.

Nikola, like I said before, less is more regarding caps. It's not necessary to scream every typed thought, and yes, it comes across as screaming, for me, and probably many other people. And my first reaction to caps is to ignore them so, normal capitalization and regular typing is better in the long run for everyone.

This whole bird flu thing reminds me of an article I read. The person writing it was an inspector for those asian markets that sells birds, and when he went in on the official inspection date, everything was clean, the birds looked all right, and there were even people with megaphones telling the public to be clean and careful with their choices of birds and sanitary habits blahblah.

He went back the next day on the back of a motor scooter "under cover", and I don't remember his exact words, but there was unbelievable squalor and smell involved.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

About 15 years ago I lost most of my flock, as did all of the other chicken owners in this town. Fowl Pox got the credit for that epidemic, but I don't know if it was ever confirmed.
Since then, I take precautions and vaccinate. When I do, I do it in a big way. I get all the possible diseases covered and worm them at the same time.
Its about that time. I have some new projects going and I don't need to lose my investments.
Plus, I do some sideline hatching and I don't need a bad reputation for selling unhealthy animals.
I've seen a few sick chickens in my lifetime, but as far as I can see, they never got the owners sick.
I really think that even if your animals get a bug, they are better off than the animals raised commercially for eggs or meat.