Let’s Talk About Bird Flu

[Goosebaby]

Goosebaby, I don't know your background, but if you are not in teaching in some way, you have missed your calling. You are very patient.

I spend most of my day with hormonal teenagCOUGH I mean geese and ducks so that may be what’s wrong with me.

 

[ILoveDaffy]

Here are the precautions I am taking this year in the coop:

• 1/4 hardware everywhere except  maybe the top of the run, in which case it would be 1/2 inch.
• Top of the run, and a bit below the top on the sides will be covered.
• The chickens will not leave the coop and run. Period. Too much wildlife around, especially waterfowl and song birds.
• Poultry nipple waterer to ensure clean, uncontaminated water.
• Food will be kept in the coop.
• No gaps uncovered by hardware cloth.

Anything I have missed, or suggestions for precautions I may not have thought of?

 

[SourRoses]

I spend most of my day with hormonal teenagCOUGH I mean geese and ducks so that may be what’s wrong with me.

Being helpful is a right, not a wrong.

I'm interested and curious about something you explained... where the stronger immune response is more dangerous (like Covid)... and it makes me wonder about that scenario where a chicken with less immune response is not fighting the pathogen in their body. It's just living with it? As a virus, is it not replicating beyond a certain point? What keeps the chicken from turning into a macro viral blob?

 

[Sally PB]

Here are the precautions I am taking this year in the coop:

Don't forget the precautions outside the coop. You and anyone who goes into your coop/run (their shoes, clothing) can also be a vector.

We have a huge flock of geese in nearby fields, and they poop on the road we use for our morning/evening walks. I have "coop boots" that I wear when I tend the chickens. I don't wear them on our walks.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

Found in a Canada about 12 miles away.

 

[Goosebaby]

Being helpful is a right, not a wrong.

I'm interested and curious about something you explained... where the stronger immune response is more dangerous (like Covid)... and it makes me wonder about that scenario where a chicken with less immune response is not fighting the pathogen in their body. It's just living with it? As a virus, is it not replicating beyond a certain point? What keeps the chicken from turning into a macro viral blob?

After infection a virus will replicate until the point where it’s host’s immune system finally recognizes the presence of a foreign invader attacking cells and the body initiates an immune response by producing more of the cells that target the pathogen which is what results in a fever that kills the pathogen.

In a normally functioning immune system the response will be just effective enough that the virus is neutralized but the organs aren’t negatively affected. This is a carefully balanced dance between virus and host, the virus needs to be less aggressive so long that it can continue to replicate and pass to a new host, but the host immune system has to be just aggressive enough that it kills the virus without damaging its own organs. In most cases this results in an individual that gets infected, is briefly infectious just before and during the emergence of symptoms which is a mild to moderate fever and typical signs of sickness which may last for a day or a few days before the individual recovers and is no longer infectious.

In an individual with a severe immune response the body’s immune system recognizes a foreign invader and begins to produce too many immune cells “cytokines” which causes extreme system wide inflammation that begins to damage organ cells and a fever that pretty much cooks the body. In certain humans this is what COVID did, trigger a cytokine storm, a similar event happens with birds infected with some strains of IBV “another corona virus,” and some strains of bird flu like HPAI. When this happens in birds the lungs and airsacks can fill with liquid, kidneys and other organs swell and become dysfunctional, and the face and wattles swell up, some are get encephalitis.

In a situation with a immunodeficient individual if their immune system isn’t functioning at all they often succumb to it fairly quickly and die. If their immune system is active but isn’t functioning as it should, when these individuals are infected the virus pretty much has free rein in them. It can hang around and feed off the host’s cells and continue to replicate while being given ample time to learn from the individuals meager immune response which is working just enough to keep them alive, these individuals are prime training ground and spreaders for disease, this can include the elderly, the very young, or chronically ill. In humans it’s key these people are vaccinated but vaccination isn’t all that effective for them because they don’t have enough of an immune response to the vaccine to learn from it enough to fight the pathogen they’re being vaccinated for, it’s more important those that they associate with take extra precautions around them.

In the strange case of bats, they’ve evolved so that they don’t really have an inflammatory response to disease, their immune systems approach pathogens with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer and only target a pathogen when it’s starting to adversely affect them, because of this in a healthy bat they can live with ebola, rabies, corona viruses, and flu viruses in them, spread it for months to years without any symptoms themselves. Good for the bats, not good for the rest of us.

 

[casportpony]

Closed for staff review,

 

[casportpony]

This thread has been cleaned up and reopened.

Let's remember to keep this thread on-topic, family friendly, and please, no politics.

-casportpony

 

[NewcoopNewpoop]

Here are my precautions: none. Business as usual. (I only have 2 hens).

 

[ManOverBoard]

Maybe some one has already asked this, but how do we know when it's safe to let the girls range again?