What I Learned From My Awful Experience with Avian Flu

[countryladyNH]

This heartfelt post is so well written and just gut wrenching. It also seems that the government has again overstepped and that this is just WRONG. There has to be other ways and other options...If it were me, I would submit your post to every local newspaper and radio station I could and hope that it would perhaps cause people to band together and create a movement to make everyone aware of what is being done in the name of 'government regulations'. Maybe enough outrage could change things.

 

[Dragon Slayer Trinket]

I am so sorry for your loss. I've needed to get rid of roosters at times and that's hard enough, but I can't imagine strangers coming in and killing all of your birds (over 100!?). I sincerely hope that if you decide to own birds again, they will all be safe. I'll be sharing this with friends.

Praying for you,
DTS

 

[Oddyseous]

I don't get it, since humans have no risk assuming you cook your chicken like normal, what's with the chicken genocide going on here?

 

[Brooks_]

I don't get it, since humans have no risk assuming you cook your chicken like normal, what's with the chicken genocide going on here?

The risk/threat is to other birds.

 

[Oddyseous]

The risk/threat is to other birds.

Right, but they don't test all the birds, they just get one positive and kill them all.

 

[TheOddOneOut]

Right, but they don't test all the birds, they just get one positive and kill them all.

Yes.

 

[TheOddOneOut]

And there is risk to humans and other mammals.

 

[TheOddOneOut]

Yes.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily right. But it is their protocol.

 

[raingarden]

I don't get it, since humans have no risk assuming you cook your chicken like normal, what's with the chicken genocide going on here?

They are trying to minimize the chances that a mutation turns bird flu into yet another type of flu spread between humans. Bird flu is already killing mammals in the arctic. Common influenza kills a lot of peole every year and this one could be much worse.

This heartfelt post is so well written and just gut wrenching. It also seems that the government has again overstepped and that this is just WRONG. There has to be other ways and other options...If it were me, I would submit your post to every local newspaper and radio station I could and hope that it would perhaps cause people to band together and create a movement to make everyone aware of what is being done in the name of 'government regulations'. Maybe enough outrage could change things.

LOL. When the agency people start taking enough heat about their bedside manner they will form a committee to develop a new sensitivity training program. The end result will be the same (euthanized birds) but they'll fake more compassion when dealing with the public..

 

[Ponypoor]

I wanted to share...

It's an awful, terrible, painful day. One I don't wish on any of you. The state just killed all my babies. Even the brand new magpie ducks that just arrived in the mail yesterday and have never even set a webbed footie on the tainted ground that is now my 10-acre quarantined piece of property.

I loved every single one of my babies. I'm a good momma. I spoil them. I know each of them. I can tell you which one liked strawberry smoothies, or which one hated kale, and how their little white ducky bibs get stained pink with watermelon every morning.

My beautiful geese were hand trained to sit on my lap. They followed me from task to task, watching me in my windows as I vacuum or cook, and even climbed up on the deck and tapped on the slider when they wanted more lettuce or wanted to be held.

The first thing that happened is that one of my ducks had a runny eye. We dosed it with eyedrops and assumed it had run into something or had duckie pink eye. It cleared in two days so we didn't think any more of it.

Then one of my young geese became sick.

It looked like neurological problems and lethargy. His head shook like he was seizing. He died in one hour. I asked some other goose moms what it could be. Everyone else in the young gosling flock was fine. We all agreed he must have eaten something toxic like a nut or a penny.

A few days passed and another goose started looking ill. I made an appointment with the vet and researched. None of the books mentioned Avian Flu and I hadn't heard anything about it on the news. My ducks and geese free range around my home. We have a year-round creek and a seasonal pond frequented by waterfowl. Even the vet didn't suspect it. We were thinking Fowl Cholera.

He prescribed antibiotics which we began dosing the sick goose with and putting into the water for everyone else just in case.

The next day, several more geese became ill and the one I'd taken to the vet died.

I called the vet who said to bring in the baby for testing and we'd for sure figure out what was happening, meanwhile to keep up the treatment. Some of my geese appeared to be getting better with our watermelon, antibiotics, and syringe water feedings.

I went to a hair appointment and was talking about my poor flock when my hair stylist mentioned the bird flu epidemic. I googled it and she sent me an article with a phone number. While I had foils in my hair, I called for information.

Here's where everything goes from bad to worse.

Immediately, instead of information, I get interrogated as if I'm a criminal. When I explained what happened, they wanted to know my email, address, phone number, and my vet's information.

I gave it to them and hung up, thinking my vet would handle the rest.

Ten minutes later they called me back and acted even more aggressively. They said they couldn't contact my vet but they are taking over the "investigation" and appropriating the "sample" sent to OHSU and that they'd send it to Iowa and have results back by 5 PM and would be in touch.

I didn't know what to say to that. I never gave permission for the government to appropriate my goose. I was only calling for information.

By the time I got home, there was a message on my phone that the sample sent to Iowa had come back positive for HPAI-High Path Avian Influenza, and was Thursday a good day to cull my flock?

"Umm, wait a minute. Hold on," I said. "I'd like to investigate my options first. You know, talk to my vet. Do some research."

"What do you mean? If you're talking about hiding your animals. You can't do that. Some people try, but we will stop you."

Holy Crap.

Now I'm not a rebellious type. I drive the speed limit. I obey the law. But I also love my animals. I didn't know who this was. Something felt off. It was moving way too fast. I don't just hand over my baby because a stranger told me to. Would any mother? If an animal is sick, I put it down. But all life is precious. I want to think about it for a minute. For heaven's sake, let me breathe and at least try to understand the need to lose nearly one hundred animals. It's a lot to ask someone.

I told them my intention was not to hide my animals and I reassured them that they were all contained in our barn in separate pens (we'd confined our sick geese and separated the sick from the healthy already). I said I wanted to wait until I received confirmation from my own vet and consult with him before making any decisions.

They said there was no decision to make but that they would let me talk with him and that it was the only humane thing to do as all my birds would die terrible agonizing deaths and I wouldn't want that, would I?

Now that kind of talk is irresponsible. It's assuming and threatening. They don't know anything about me or how I take care of my animals. I'm an extremely careful, very loving animal owner.

I called my vet the next morning. He confirmed the diagnosis and said they had the legal right to put down the entire flock.

I asked him why they wouldn't test individual birds to see if they had it. If it was a matter of money, we would pay. He said it was policy. They just wouldn't.

Then I said, "According to what I've read, ducks and geese seem to survive this virus but become carriers."

He said that was correct.

My vet was kind and expressed empathy and agreed that putting down domestic animals in no way will stop this virus. If I hadn't reported it, they simply wouldn't have come out.

I said, "Isn't it possible that all the ducks and geese in the area have already been exposed and recovered from it?"

"Yes."

"Then we're putting down my babies for nothing."

"That's essentially correct. It's putting out fires where they can be controlled. To actually eradicate this virus we'd have to destroy every waterbird on the planet and that's just not possible."

"So because they can catch mine and test them, they die."

"Yes."

After that phone call, I found an email from the state putting my property under Quarantine for six months. And there was a phone call saying they'd get a court order if they didn't hear from me by noon on Wednesday. That was less than 24 hours after my first call. I don't know about you, but I don't typically pick up calls with numbers I don't recognize.

So I prepared myself for today and said my tearful goodbyes to my babies knowing I had no other choice.

Everyone got a huge dinner of roasted zucchini, corn, watermelon, lettuce, and peas and a soft, fluffy nest of an entire bale of straw. We hugged each bird and told them we loved them and they were special and wonderful and thanked them for sharing their lives with us. That they were beautiful and gave us so much joy. We told them they can swim in God's pond. That His pond is so pretty. It's full of delicious things they can dive for and sunny warm rocks to take naps on, and every morning is wormy morning, and the grass is delicious and thick and sweet and He puts out lots of fun things for geese to tear up and destroy. He even sometimes leaves His mud shoes outside for geese to move around and hide.

We took some photos and cried and cried. Our gander, our most special boy, snuggled his long neck into the crook of our arm and sighed. He gave us two of his feathers as if he knew he was leaving and wanted us to remember him.

I'd been planning to tell the state vets the story of each duck and goose as they killed them but I could tell they didn't care.

These aren't real vets like Dr. Pol. They're bureaucrats. Politicians with a license to kill animals. They smiled pretty while they were at my home.

But when we asked questions, there were several things that didn't add up.

1) He freely admitted that geese were getting sick from the virus but ducks heal. If we wanted birds again in the future, get ducks. You wouldn't even know they were sick.

What? Is the problem that they are sick or that we know they are sick?

2) When I asked if we needed to watch out for dead wild birds, the answer was no. They survive and stop carrying the virus after six months.

I followed up with "Then can't I simply quarantine my animals for six months until they stop shedding the virus?"

The answer was, "No. We can't risk that. You might contaminate the grocery store, for example, and other people might spread it to their flocks."

Personally, I disagree. I know how to quarantine. I know how to use Instacart. I work from home. That would be a small price to pay to keep my animals. That should be my decision. Give me a list of protocols and let me decide if I'm willing to follow your parameters.

3) My birds free roamed the property. We have lots of walking paths and fairy gardens. I asked if that meant we couldn't garden or walk the paths.

His answer was no. There are no restrictions.

That doesn't make sense. There are still wild birds on the property including waterfowl. Why is it perfectly fine for me to go to the grocery store wearing whatever shoes I want knowing my poor birds picked up the virus here from wild birds that are still floating on our pond but they have to be killed?

I'm not a conspiracist or anything. But I don't feel like we were treated well or with kindness or empathy. My nesting goose and gander kicked and screamed in the garbage can as they gassed them and their eggs in and I nearly collapsed when they then dragged out my poor hen's body and threw it in another can.

It was so awful!

Something feels very wrong about all this. It feels political to me and I hate politics. I don't know if I have the heart to ever have babies again. I don't think I can go through it again. I feel broken. Putting every single one of my birds in a garbage can almost did me in. But a mom doesn't abandon her young.

This might be my last post.

I hope it helps some of you.

Symptoms of Avian Flu to look for in your ducks and geese:

Weepy eyes
Enlarged black eyes
Glossy eyes (blind eye or cataract)
Lethargy
Loss of Appetite
Crooked Neck
Crying
Confusion/Disorientation
Spinning in Circles
Getting Lost
In Goose Yellow Rim around Eye turns Red
Exhaustion

If you have a large enough property, I'd suggest separately housing your different birds in groups. That might convince the state they don't all need to be killed. But when I told them about the new babies who'd just arrived in the mail, they said I take care of birds, I opened the box, so they all needed to be put down. Period.

Prepare yourselves for that.

They will also be testing flocks in a large radius around my home.

Good luck everyone.

May God protect and watch over your flocks.

So sorry for this - we have known about this influenza here in Canada since February - it was in the news constantly. Most of us know what to look out for and kept our birds (chickens and water fowl) inside until the migration ended and the wild flocks settled down - thus preventing spread of the virus.

But still there were hundreds of thousands of birds destroyed here. It is meant more as a means to prevent commercial flocks from being hit rather than domestic flocks.

Personally I know how viruses work, I also know that antibiotics would be useless against a virus. Best bet is to immediately segregate any sick animals and try to split our flock into smaller units so that no one bird can take them all out.

Morbidity for your form of the influenza is nearly always 100% fatal. And while those that do survive are carriers the virus can be shed for up to 6 months. It would be impractical for most places to keep recovered animals separate, and to keep 100% bio-security is near to impossible. One need only look at this Covid virus to know that - virus' are like any other life form - they will find a way to propagate and spread.

There was a Equine Influenza outbreak in Australia many years ago (they never had equine flu there before) and tho they tried to contain it by locking down farms etc, the virus still spread. They eventually found that birds were carrying the virus from farm to farm, eventually the Equine Flu was brought under control but not before many valuable horses (and backyard friends) were affected. The virus found a way....

So while I can understand and sympathize with you losing your feathered friends; I can also understand local commercial growers wanting to protect their livelihood.

Such a tragic tragic situation - my heart breaks for you; having livestock and pets is not for the faint of heart.

Everyone should discuss bio-security measures with their veterinarian, no matter how many animals you have. Also get your name onto a mailing list from your local agricultural society (if you have one) to ensure that important information such as this flu are passed onto you. I am sure that every State must have an Ag division that supplies this sort of info.

Again my heart breaks for you.