Amy...I believe what Nick is saying is that what he has read is all flocks with wildbirds around are infected....he did not say he had any sick birds, he said just the opposite, only 1 loss from botulism suspected.
Nick, you cannot be sure unless your birds are protected from wildbirds and you practice completely insane bio-security. There is only so much you can do without spending every waking moment and each step you take, monitored and recorded. The officials do not MAKE you do anything...they will tell you the only way to get rid of it is to cull the flock, burn the bodies and remove all the soil they were on etc etc. and not to put chickens in that area for x amount of time. The choice you make is your own.
I look at it this way and it is a matter for personal consideration and personal choice....
I can only guarantee no wildbird feces getting near my birds if I put them in a fully self-contained building with all ventilation openings sealed with hardwire cloth. If I build a run completely covered with screening or hardwire cloth an infected bird can land on it, deposit feces and it either falls through or gets washed through by the rain and I have an infected flock that quick. So neither is a good choice for my birds so I opt to allow them to be chickens, ie range, see sunshine, fresh air, scratch, eat bugs, kill mice and snakes, swing on my front porch swing or whatever else chickens want to do...they are healthy and happy. Now, their natural lives could be cut short by something they get into but at least I know I let them be chickens and I would rather do that than to make them live in a sterile enclosed contained building where they would not be happy or allowed to be chickens.
So...you let them be chickens and do what you can on the bio-security end....watch your shoes, people around your birds and etc etc. And enjoy them and let them enjoy their lives. That is the choice I make for my birds and myself. But on the other hand, I am responsible enough to care about other's birds such as...before I went to Cynthia's, I bought a new pair of jeans, new socks and a new pair of shoes....I put them in the car and actually put on the shoes in the car so they never touched my ground here. I am not sure, I may have actually left them at Cyn's or I tossed them in the trash when I got back here but I cared enough to do everything I could to make sure that nothing from here went there. I cannot even imagine how sick I would have been had I taken so much as a microbe from my ground to hers and Suede had gotten sick or any of her birds. But reality is...you can only do so much short of insanity and what I consider cruelty to your birds.
Speaking of birds....Sarah and I are in hatching madness....I have been incubating eggs for her and us....I just took some silkie eggs to her house to go in the hatcher and I missed one, so today when I went to check the temp and hunidity of the eggs in my bator I found this waiting for me
She had some hatch at her place yesterday and also some of these today....large fowl showgirl wannabes
I also wanted to share an update with you of my mottled orps I got from Sarah a few weeks back....I will have to get a pic of the older one who is predominately black with white markings now but this is the younger of the two...
And as this is the sdwd thread....ahem Ms Fattie on the porch swing where she swings each day and leaves her egg when she leaves
