Re: Poultry keepers in Holland and Germany?

Jill. <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> We have had some seemingly conflicting news reports over here in the past
> couple of days about your governments response to the Asian Avian influenza
> threat and wondered if you could bring some "real" experience to the subject
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4172182.stm
>
> Am I right in thinking that the response to shut in free range birds at this
> time of year has been common in the past years but this was to protect
> flocks from carrier ducks migrating from the south - Italy especially?
>
> What information are you being given?
>
> --
>
> regards
> Jill Bowis
>
> Pure bred utility chickens and ducks
> Housing; Equipment, Books, Videos, Gifts
> Herbaceous; Herb and Alpine nursery
> Working Holidays in Scotland
> http://www.kintaline.co.uk


Hi Jill,

no time to watch the telly ;-)

My preferred source of information about AI was and is

http://www.promedmail.org/

Highly recommendable.


I live in Lower Saxony, and the only time we had to keep our birds
indoors was during the outbreak of AI in Holland, when for a short time
there was one farm in Germany, close to the Dutch border, where the
virus was found and the birds were killed. There seem to have been rigid
controls further west, but not here in the utmost east of L. Saxony - we
were too far away from that place.


Since then we didn't have to shut them in again. The government now are
watching the Russian incidents closely, and have also intensified their
monitoring of wild bird migration. Whenever they should decide that the
risk is getting too high, we'll have to keep them shut in again, but not
yet.

<http://www.verbraucherministerium.de/index-0008EA9071E212FCA3EA6521C0A8
D816.html>

(aah, how I love those poetic file names ;-)

We live close to the river Elbe which is visited by huge numbers of
migrating water birds. While the remark that "dead birds don't migrate"
has given me food for thought, I still think there is (and has always
been) some real danger of (low pathogenic) Influenza A virus being
carried here by wild waterfowl. I don't think there is a lot of contact
between them and domestic fowl, but should it get introduced into local
poultry populations it could of course change into the highly pathogenic
form.

Poultry outdoors should therefore, logically, be at greater risk. It
still puzzles me, though, why AI in 2003 struck the great big poultry
farms first and hardest, in spite of all their biosecurity, and all but
a few hobby breeders' flocks tested negative.

I do doubt a bit that just keeping birds indoors will really prevent
anything, if a highly pathogenic AI virus should indeed come. If it
found its way into the big poultry farms, it won't stop at smallholders'
coop door. Seeing how most people keep their poultry, I very much doubt
they will even use a different pair of shoes inside the coop, let alone
dips or the like.

For the "normal" LPAI viruses, the risk is no greater or less than it
always was, and certainly doesn't justify keeping all birds confined for
one half of the year.

Nuele (D)
.

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