Silkie Questions

[Sonoran Silkies]

Whoa--WHAT END outbreak? When? Where? Why hasn't it been in the news?

 

[destiny_56085]

I hope to catch ya on the phone one of these days Connie.

The END outbreak was this summer up here. Initially they found a lot of dead gulls and cormorants on a lake over by Appleton. The MPTL sent out a notice on Aug. 28th. I have the articles on www.bcppa.com. I originally saw it on the local news a few weeks earlier.

 

[Smoky73]

Well, after everyone I have talked to the last few days for vets, total of 4 different vets, I cannot and will not meet the requirements to do New Ulm and I tell ya, I am passing on to any CO people the info about the show. I am not redoing my Pullorum testing just because its 43 days instead of the allowed 30 days, and not paying $200 + for a health certificate with new pullorum testing when the vets will draw blood on any other animal considered "livestock" but not a chicken, so I can get the dang cert. Certificate for any other livestock was quoted to me at $15-20. The vets (5 vets from the one local office) not 1 is willing to draw blood on the birds.

Sorry MN, but you lost a lot of entries there. Maybe next year they will get this to a normal and reasonable level. My biggest gripe is if I would have known this a month ago, I would have not taken the time off of work to go and would have requested different days off to attend a show with reasonable rules and regs.

 

[destiny_56085]

Hey Cara.... I can totally sympathize there. We are going to lose alot of out of state entries because of this. This is not my ruling or the specific rules of just our club. This is the MN Board of Animal Health. If we want to have our show at all, we have to follow their rules or be shut down. I got a nasty phone call this morning from one of the head people in the MN State Poultry Association too. Their show is 2 weeks after ours and apparently the state vet hadn't contacted them yet pertaining the new rules. This was all news to them too. The state vet had first called us on Monday Aug. 30th. I spent all day on the phone with our club officials and they decided that letter needed to be put in our program. I called the state vet on tuesday before I typed that letter and got it word for word from his mouth on the new regulations they were imposing on us. I called you immediately before our programs were in the mail last week too to warn you.

What really irks me is the inconsistency on the MN BAH website. The one page I sent you is current with what the vet's demands were. They follow exactly with what they told me over the phone last week. Well when you go to the page specifically for exhibition poultry, they hadn't updated it yet and this is where all the confusion lies. I was just on there this morning and there was a page that said that they still took the NPIP 9-3 form and/or a Statement of Origin form. It also said that waterfowl was exempt from testing. I went back on this same website tonight and it came up totally different. This is what it now shows...which also follows what the vet told us last week. http://www.bah.state.mn.us/bah/rules/import-regulations.html

The deal with the CVI (certificate of veterinary inspection) is also pretty harsh. Its very hard to get a local vet to touch a bird around here either. Getting the state vets is not only expensive, but take a long time. When I got NPIP certified this spring it took about 4 months from when I applied til when the vet finally got out there to inspect.

 

[ultasol]

I hope this isn't the way more states will go as people hear stories in the news about salmonella and the bird flu in asia. Frankly, they need to be more worried about the auctions, swaps, and commercial producers than exhibition poultry. You know what I just **love** is the exemption for poultry being shipped to slaughter, or to market/auction for slaughter... because, yah know., those trucks are so closed/filtered and protected from outside air as they go barreling across miles and miles to get to the processing plant.

Did they find that a domestic flock was the origin of the END outbreak, or was it carried in by migratory birds?

I hope this is only temporary in MN. Now, if you take your birds out of state to show, are there any barriers to reentry to the state Amy?

 

[Brody's Broodello]

Virginia is very strick. You have to have current papers within 10 days (I believe) you also have to have a permit to bring birds into the state, a state vet is at every show, and if you don't have eveything up to date they test your birds on the spot.

 

[destiny_56085]

Here is the link for the article on END from the board of health.... http://www.bah.state.mn.us/bah/releases/nr2010-08-26.html

I saw it on our local news that over 500 birds were found dead on a lake about 80 miles from us. All were wild waterfowl and it was just one of those short blips that the media doesn't give much coverage to. About mid-august I had some people e-mail me that had previously bought birds from me years ago. They were just wondering what to do or if I had any idea what was going on. These people live by Lafayette, New Ulm, and on the south side of Sleepy Eye. They were just now having birds with respiratory problems or just dropping over dead. All 3 had something in common....they free range their birds, live close to marshy wetland areas, and could have come in contact with wild birds very easily. I remembered this broadcast and pulled up more info on Newcastle. It sounded just like the symptoms these people gave me. The one from Sleepy Eye took a few birds to the vet in Springfield and they did a culture to find Coryza. The one from Lafayette sent birds in to the state vet for necropsies and we haven't heard any more back since. On Aug. 26th the MN BAH printed that letter and we recieved it 2 days later. I'm pretty sure it went out to all poultry producers here in MN. They claim its only in wild waterfowl populations only. They urged strict biosecurity and to be carefull about mingling your birds with any wild ones.

The Avian Influenza was on the turkey farms here in southwestern MN last year. The salmonella was in 2 major commercial egg farms in IA this summer. They have been very strict with quarantining and I doubt this will affect our exhibition flocks at all. As for pullorum typhoid testing on waterfowl, this is the first year they are cracking down on it for birds coming into MN. I asked our show secretary more about it and he claimed it would because it is present in alot of wild flocks already. He also claimed when we start testing waterfowl for exhibition we are also going to run into alot of false positives. We have always shown our African geese and this is the first year they are making us band and test everything. Not fun on those huge birds....

That law about birds going to slaughter also baffles me. You think they would want those birds disease free before they hit the food chain. I'm not sure about the laws for re-entry into MN either. I have 2 family members that are testors and our farm is NPIP. Hopefully that is good enough for most states.

 

[Smoky73]

Quote:
Still none of it helpful as a 9-3 form is for sale birds, chicks or eggs. Getting the NPIP testing here is easy unless its showing season and they do go to all the swaps and shows to check birds for AI already. Colorado is NOT a clean state but they are working on that status.

 

[ultasol]

How do you get certified to do NPIP testing?

It is something I would be interested in.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
Every state does it their own way. In some states, only state employees can do the testing; in others, just about anyone can. Call your state agriculture department and ask.