Welcome to "Digging Deeper" with "Backyard Farmer."

I'm your host Kim Todd.

And on our program today, we'll be talking about avian flu and how that might affect homeowners, who raise chickens.

(mellow music) We haven't had an outbreak of avian flu in Nebraska for over seven years, thank heavens, but our university is following this issue and offering both, farmers and homegrown chicken owners information about how to deal with the problem.

To discuss this topic today, we have Don Reynolds, professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine and a poultry vet here at UNL, and extension educator Brett Kreifels who actually has a lot of his own chickens.

So Don and Brett, thanks a lot for joining us tonight.

And we wanna really start, I think with just a reminder to people who might not be aware of it, of the big picture, nationally.

So Don, take it away.

Well, thank you, Kim.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to get the message out about avian influenza.

We have a very serious situation on our hands, and I'd like to begin by giving you a bit of an overview of the 2014/2015 outbreak, and compare that to what we have today.

In 2014/2015, we had 50 million birds that had to be depopulated.

We lost that many birds.

33 million chickens, 7 million turkeys.

We had 211 detections from commercial flocks but only 21 from backyard flocks.

And I'd like to begin with showing you a graphic that we have, if we can have that graphic up.

Yeah, this is this outbreak, currently in April, actually April 20th.

So, very recent.

And we've had 138 detections in commercial flocks, but 75 detections in backyard flocks.

Over three times as many that we had in 2015.

I like for us to go to the next graphic, if we could.

And this is the... What we've seen in Nebraska here.

And the yellow represents the backyard flocks, the blue are the commercial flocks.

Now, the one in Butler County, the Eastern, but in the central part of the state, represents two flocks of broiler chickens, and there were nearly a million boiler chickens that had to be depopulated.

Up in the far Northeastern part, in Dixon County.

Those were laying chickens, and there was over 1.7 million chickens that had to be depopulated.

So, we're close to 4 million birds here, in Nebraska that had to be euthanized, depopulated, because of this devastating disease.

Now, I'm not saying that we were fortunate, but we are better off than some states that border us, Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas have really been pelted by this.

Now it's interesting because this disease is carried by wild birds and our next graphic will show you the number of isolations in the various states.

And if you study this a bit, you can see we've had a lot of isolations on the Eastern seaboard.

Now, the virus is known to have entered through Newfoundland and then come down through our Eastern seaboard.

And then from there, populated through these states.

Now, if we go to the next slide, there we have the detections, avian influenza in the United States in commercial birds.

Now the purple represents turkeys.

The green represents laying chickens, and the yellow are broiler chickens.

Now, if we can have the next slide, which kinda...

There we go, it zooms in on the area in and around Nebraska, as I was saying, you can see that Nebraska has been very fortunate.

We've had only two isolations, one in the the broiler chickens and one in the laying chickens, but all those purple dots you see on there are turkeys and it's really devastating.

Unfortunately, devastating the Turkey population, the commercial Turkey population.

Now, if we go on that next slide, now this shows you the epidemiology of the 2015 outbreak.

And the green are commercial flocks, the orange and the blue are backyard and wild flocks.

And as you can see, it started out... And I might say that these are weeks, these represent weeks on that graph.

You can see it just percolated a little bit, little bit in wild birds, little bit in backyard flocks.

And then at the end of March, where you see the green graph starting to increase.

Those are commercial flocks, and through March, end of March, April and May, it just exploded.

And towards the end of May and June it then receded and we no longer had the outbreak.

So you can see, number one, how explosive it is.

And number two, we are in the middle to end of April, so we don't think this is ending yet.

We think we're in the midst of this, we're crossing our fingers, we're hoping if we can get through till June and into summer, that it'll be over, Now, why is that?

It's because the virus doesn't survive very well in heat.

And when we have heat, when we have drier conditions, it's less likely that the virus will be... And the migratory fowl, we have a lot of waterfowl migrating through the central flyways and this is a contributing factor.

So those of us who garden, who are lamenting the fact that it's going to be 93 on Friday, those of you dealing with poultry are thinking that's a good thing.

Well, from the standpoint (indistinct) influenza let's hope that does the trick, so...

Right, one day probably won't do it.

So, I wanna come back to one thing that you mentioned on and that is that threefold increase in the backyard influenza, is it just more flocks or is it, people may have had it and didn't know it and it just killed their birds?

Well, I think there's a couple things that's happening here.

Number one, after the 2015 outbreak, the commercial industry took many steps to enhance their biosecurity.

Now, obviously with all those outbreaks in the the Turkey populations, and there are reasons for that as well, you say, was it effective?

Well, we think it is effective.

It certainly hasn't gotten into our chicken populations, at least if not very much, but unfortunately the backyard people don't know too much about biosecurity.

Many of 'em don't have a veterinarian, they do it themselves.

And we understand that.

And this is one of the reasons we're so happy to have this opportunity to get the message out and tell people what they can do to protect their flocks.

Perfect, so on that note, Brett -since you brought with you, -Yep.

-some future chickens or, -Yes, actually yes.

great scramble eggs, one way or the other.

Talk a little bit about that.

The whole backyard situation.

Sure.

So this is the time of year where people are really getting going with their backyard flocks.

Eggs are starting to flow.

The daylight's starting to get a little bit more so...

But I will stress that even though these backyard flocks are in Omaha, they're in Lincoln, they're all over the place.

They're still not immune to the virus.

We just were talking a little bit today.

I know there's some emails go back and forth -about bird feeders.

-Right.

And we've had some of those questions, -Yeah.

-in backyard farmer too.

I mean, good thing is the wild birds, the song birds do not carry it as much.

They can.

But something simple that backyard flock owners can do is monitor where their bird seat is or where their feeders are?

And maybe for a time being, don't put out any bird feeders if they have poultry.

A lot of times backyard flock owners like to show off their birds too.

Good thing is to refrain from that for a while.

And even if you have, I was talking to someone the other day about indoor birds as well.

So there are high dollar parrots and canaries and all those type of birds.

You need to be mindful of those as well.

If you have poultry, if you know someone who has poultry, you may not want them on your property if you have those high dollar, indoor birds.

And I think one of the things that happened immediately was cessation of all 4-H showing of birds, right?

Yeah, so right now we're just waiting till that May 1st date.

That is the date where the Nebraska Department of Agriculture will give us an update on what's going on with that.

So, any poultry related activity and even auctions that have poultry, they had to put a little moratorium on selling birds or any poultry shows.

The good thing about that is... At least on the poultry show side is, there really isn't any poultry shows this time of year, -which is good.

-Right.

So we're waiting for that May 1st date to see what NDA is gonna decide, if we're gonna have poultry shows this summer.

And like Don said, it just needs to get hot.

We'll kind of see what happens.

Chickens don't like heat, but they also don't like to get the virus either.

-So, -(Kim and Don laughing) we'll see what happens with that.

All right, so this apparently is also the time of year where a lot of schools are incubating chicks -in their classrooms.

-Absolutely.

Has that stopped?

Is that still going on?

It is still going on.

Yep, I've had a lot of inquiries about, should we be worried about avian influenza with embryology?

So that's one of the cornerstones -of the (indistinct) program.

-Mm-hm.

The good thing is, is the virus is not transmitted through the egg.

Now, it could be transmitted on the egg with fecal matter and material on that.

But the good thing is a lot of these eggs that are being put into the embryology program come from flocks, like Don was talking about, that have very strict biosecurity protocols.

So, those are totally fine to use in our embryology program.

Eggs that are from backyard flocks or acreage flocks, 'cause some of our rural counties don't have the opportunity to go to big commercial laying operations.

Breeder operations to get eggs.

You can still (indistinct) use those.

I've been telling people, and my colleagues are on the (indistinct), is if you can sanitize those eggs, wash 'em, very mild bleach solution will kill any bacteria on those eggs.

Totally fine.

-Okay.

-Yep, not a huge deal.

All right, so you also mentioned the wonderful chicken compost.

-Sure.

-And of course, right now we are getting those questions for people who want to use compost on their gardens.

Should people steer away from chicken manure if it is not already bagged and commercially sold?

I don't think so.

Don, what do you think?

-I don't- -Yeah.

I think there's very little risk of that.

I mean there's always a risk that a goose will fly over and have some droppings -anywhere in your garden.

-That's right.

-Yeah.

-But composting is way we actually inactivate the the virus.

-Okay, all right.

-So yeah, I would say, there's no a hundred percents in biology but the risk is minimal.

All right.

So, if a backyard flock owner even if it's three chickens or I can't recall exactly what Lincoln's number of chickens is, 5?

-4.

-4, I was close.

-I had it surrounded.

-(Don laughing) How would they... What would the bird do initially, that might make them think the chicken was ill?

What are the clinical signs -of the disease, yeah?

-Right, exactly That's a great question, Kim.

And as unfortunately, there isn't one or two types of activities or clinical signs that say, "aha, this is avian influenza."

Unfortunately, one of the most common signs is that the birds just die.

And for unknown reasons, and very suddenly, but there are other things, diarrhea, lethargy, droopiness in the birds, the birds don't eat, the birds don't drink, sometimes they have respiratory sounds and signs.

Sometimes they have swollen heads, eyes.

Sometimes they have reddened feet in areas.

However, many of these...

Especially exotic breeds of birds have pigmented feet, -and you can't tell that.

-Right, yeah.

So the other...

This is a problem in backyard flocks, and many backyard flocks, as opposed to commercial, in a commercial setting, those owners, those people that tend to those birds, they monitor those birds very carefully.

So they know on a daily basis, how much they eat, how much they drink, their behaviors, et cetera.

So if they see something doesn't seem right, they know immediately.

Backyard flocks, oftentimes they go out once a day, maybe look, maybe they see all the birds, but maybe they don't.

And they maybe just fill up the feeders and water.

So, we ask the people to be vigilant.

We ask them to have good hygiene, clean you feeders, waters, keep the wild birds away if they can.

Okay, and for our viewers we did put all that great information on screen.

And of course you will be able to watch this on Facebook, and YouTube and all of our great social media and web outlets, if you need more information on it.

I wanna come back again to symptoms.

And this is an odd question, maybe.

I was at one of the grocery stores in Lincoln and here, standing in the parking lot, just wandering in the parking lot was a Canada goose, just (laughs) wandering in the parking lot.

I don't know how else to describe it.

Was that just a lost goose or is that one of the odd symptoms of something?

Well, that's a good question, because the first detection that came in the state of Nebraska was a wild goose from Holmes Lake.

And it was acting odd and whatever, and it had that detection.

So it's always possible.

Let's hope not.

And let's hope with the warm weather in the parking lots, that the virus wouldn't survive.

-Right.

-But I think that it's bringing up a great point that you can have exposure potentially to that virus walking through a parking lot and dragging it home.

So we have to be careful.

Especially of the wild birds again, or some strange bird like that.

All right.

And one final question before we close and you mentioned sanitation, and scouting all the things that we all know you should do in the garden world as well.

What should a homeowner, who has perhaps lost their little flock, what should they do?

Should they totally abandon everything that they have built for those birds and start over?

-Okay.

-What makes sense?

Yeah, okay.

Some real good questions here.

What should they do if they think they may have avian influenza?

-Right.

-And we say, don't be embarrassed to call someone, get some help.

Don't say, well, what if they don't have it, that's okay.

Well, we will be happy if we find that they're negative.

-Right.

-So, call your veterinarian, if they have one.

If they don't, they can call the state veterinarian, Department of Agriculture, they can also call, there's a USDA number.

And we put it up on the... And if all else fails, so to speak, you can call me and I'll make sure you get help.

Okay, so let's say they do have it.

They, being the state and federal people will come out and they will confiscate the birds, euthanize the birds, they will clean up, et cetera.

The people then at that facility, it'll all be disinfected.

They can wait a period of time and they can start over again.

All right, good, so for those of us who actually really enjoy either the eggs or the chicken, there is light at the end of this flu tunnel.

-Right.

-Absolutely, that's perfect.

Now there's another important point I wanna leave here before we go and that is, this is a zoonotic disease.

So, there is a potential that people could get sick from this disease.

-Interesting.

-Not very likely.

And those that have gotten the disease have not died or had mortality.

They have a typical cold through like symptoms.

And it's not very transmissible between people, but there is that potential.

And in these areas where there are detections, the public health people do monitor those people just to make sure that everything is okay.

Good to know.

-All right, excellent- -They cannot get it from eating chicken -(Brett and Kim laughing) -or eating eggs.

Perfect, I'll keep that in mind, -in the morning for breakfast.

-Okay, very good.

All right, and unfortunately that is all the time we have tonight for Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer.

Thanks to Don and Brett for coming in and talking to us today, we will be back next time with another in-depth horticulture discussion.

Do be sure to watch Backyard Farmer live, every Thursday at 7:00 PM central on Nebraska Public Media.

Thanks for digging deeper with Backyard Farmer.