What I Learned From My Awful Experience with Avian Flu

[AGeese]

I hope you weren't singling me out as I'm not one to name call or shut people down. I was just surprised you thought this thread was deteriorating, seems pretty tame to me.
I didn't, and still don't, see where you took a snippet from one of my posts.

People tend to polarize simply because they have different ideas, opinions and beliefs. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing and value everyone's thoughts and their right to express them, as well as other people's right to counter them. It's always good to view all sides of an issue whether you agree with them or not.

I think tend to think of being polarized as being frozen in a belief system. No worries, I specifically didn't want to quote you outright and if you didn't notice great as I was brushing broad.

It is interesting how two people can read the same book and come up with a different point of view. For instance although you seem to be looking in the same direction I was going, I didn't really notice a religious lean, if I may quote:

and then the number of posts with a political or religious leaning

All this aside, and forgive me for my lack of time spent pouring over the source material on these medieval laws, but now that dogs are reported catching it and carrying it where is the line drawn? If they can kill your pet birds then how is Fido different?

I'll tell you right now, if they're gonna start killing the family pets as in dogs and cats, ain't no one going back to a vet. At least not a vet leashed to this system.

 

[MichelleSoto]

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.

How very terrible, God bless! My heart hurts for you- when I lose my chickie mamas it kills me, I can't imagine.

 

[Krugerrand]

I think tend to think of being polarized as being frozen in a belief system. No worries, I specifically didn't want to quote you outright and if you didn't notice great as I was brushing broad.

It is interesting how two people can read the same book and come up with a different point of view. For instance although you seem to be looking in the same direction I was going, I didn't really notice a religious lean, if I may quote:



All this aside, and forgive me for my lack of time spent pouring over the source material on these medieval laws, but now that dogs are reported catching it and carrying it where is the line drawn? If they can kill your pet birds then how is Fido different?

I'll tell you right now, if they're gonna start killing the family pets as in dogs and cats, ain't no one going back to a vet. At least not a vet leashed to this system.

Funny you should mention the dog angle. I was thinking the same thing. If this were a dog/bird flu there would be FAR more resistance. But, alas it's not.

In many ways this is the unfortunate result of having animals deemed livestock as 'pets.' There are a number of people with pot-bellied pigs as pets. I have no doubt if this were a swine/bird flu, pigs would get put down just as quickly.

Only two things change politicians minds (and thus change laws) money and votes. There are not enough poultry owners pushing for a change to get the laws changed. And, the money is not there as the Big Poultry money is firmly on the side of cull and reimburse with tax dollars.

I lean on the side towards sympathy of the workers. On one hand they MUST be numb to this after doing it so much. And, their major 'customer' is Big Poultry who have zero emotional attachment to the flocks anyway. Their loss is their insurance deductible. And, as mentioned before, these people do not have years of experiencing as personable vets; they just do not know how to deal with people in these situations. And, while one could argue common sense should prevail ... THEIR common sense is likely hardened by the job they are tasked to perform.

Is this the BEST practice? I'd guess not, but I'm also no expert. I also see that government bureaucracy gets easily anchored to 'old science' and 'the way they do things.' And, in cases like this where the big money is vested in status quo, there's no incentive to re-evaluate the 'science.'

Personally, I'm prefer smaller government. My motto is 'do you want the person you voted against having the power you want to give the person you voted for?' That said, these agencies are not the 'Big Government' power brokering agencies. In fact, I would find wildlife protection to be among the most true to their honest intentions ... even if they can big bone-headed and misguided. And, of course, if you try and fight ANY form of government, you'll find it's power pushing back quite swiftly. (At a very young age I was on the receiving end of threats from the meter maid for walking in front of her and feeding quarters into expired meters.)

And, one more reflection on the 'politics.' I find that we have a tendency to treat out politics like we do our sports teams. Notice how the refs always hate the team you root for and favor the team you're playing against? Nobody cares when their local player get arrested for terrible crimes: innocent until proven guilty! But, people are ready for quick judgement against players from other teams. The same it pretty much true with politics. I don't care if my candidate has an affair ... but if the one for the 'other team' does, that person should resign or be removed from office. I don't care if my candidate takes money from special interest ... but the 'other team' better not do it. It really quite sad.

 

[Frances L]

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help." ~ Ronald Reagan (1986)

 

[Geena]

It is interesting how two people can read the same book and come up with a different point of view.

Yes it is, and we all can't help but to approach things from our own perspective, at least from the get go.
I know FL Bullfrog is working on a self sustaining Gamefowlx project so I'm not surprised he would like to see a natural immunity resolution to HPAI, and that would be wonderful.
Storm has a great analytical mind so of course he has delved into all the various statistics and studies, and comes at it from that angle, which is extremely helpful.
Blindly believing everything you are "spoonfed" is a very bad idea, but so is discarding useful information just because you have a problem with The Man.
I can see both sides of the coin, and most certainly don't have the answers, just adding some of my own thoughts to the conversation.

 

[21hens-incharge]

This thread has run its course.

A reminder that political content is not allowed on BYC. Please follow this link if you need clarification.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ged-content-not-allowed.1409117/post-23130919


Thank you to all who contributed in a helpful and supportive way.

BYC staff