Five Ways You Can Keep your Bird Livestock Healthy and Flu-Free

One of the most important things you can do in helping to prevent your livestock from the avian flu, is to watch for the signs of the disease and to be on the look out for unexpected deaths among your birds. It is vital to have a clear idea of what the avian flu really is, how it operates, and how you can prevent it.

If you do discover signs and symptoms of the avian flu, report them immediately. Detection as soon as possible can make a great difference to your livestock.

Practice backyard bio-security diligently. For starters, try to limit the amount of traffic on your property. Always remember to disinfect shoes, clothes and hands to stop the possibility of spreading the disease. Once the flu is known in domestic poultry, it is very contagious. A bird infected with the flu excretes the virus in high concentration in their feces as well as in nasal and ocular discharges.

The virus is spread from flock to flock by the moving contaminated birds and through contact with contaminated equipment, egg flats, feed trucks and service crews, and other methods. The most frequent way that the virus is spread is through fecal to oral transmission; however, H5N1 is able to live on inert objects such as bird feeders, baths, and houses.

If there has been a highly pathogenic avian flu outbreak in your area, and you have a birdbath, you may want to take some safety measures when cleaning your birdbath. Always wear the appropriate coverings such as gloves, an apron, and rubber boots. This is so that you can prevent direct contact with bird bath water, feathers or bird feces. The water in your birdbath should be changed often to protect the health of the birds using the bath. It is vital that you take proper care of your birdbath, as bird flu viruses can potentially stay alive for days or even up to a month in cool water and wet feces.

Farmers should also protect their birds from contamination that can occur from people. One of the most frequent breaks in bio-security for Avian Influenza, is from people bringing in infected materials (clothes, shoes, soiled hands) to where animals are housed making them vulnerable to the disease.

To help prevent this, farmers should:

- Not permit stranger’s access to where the animals are housed;

- Offer protective clothing to people visiting the flock, as well as boots;

- Offer baths with disinfectant for boots (use a pre-disinfectant bath to wash off the organic mater first);

- If possible, all farm workers and visitors should take a full shower and use clothes from the farm before entering areas where poultry are housed; Clothes used on the farm, should never the farm.

- People, who bring in others to work on their farms, should make certain that these workers do not own their own poultry.

- When visiting infected areas, animal health officials should be very aware that they, through their work in epidemiological investigations or vaccination initiatives, could actually be spreading disease and infection.

- The producers should always be aware where there food and water for the animals comes from and check and know the origin of their feed and water and check its quality on a regular basis.

Farmers also need to be aware of contamination from materials. Disease can enter the flock through contaminated equipment or instruments such as lorries/trucks egg trays, cages, or feeders. The reuse of equipment or the use of used equipment.

To help prevent contamination from materials, farmers can:

- Clean and disinfect equipment and instrumentations that they use. If a cooperative group brings in certain equipment on a regular basis, get them to disinfect before they are used.

- Note that porous materials, such as wood and fiber, are harder to disinfect than synthetic materials.

The most common method for a disease being introduced occurs when animals that are diseased are mixed with vulnerable animals.

To prevent the spread of the flu from animals to animals:

- Make certain the animals being introduced are healthy. If at all possible, a health certification should be obtained.

- Vaccinate only animals that are already healthy.

- Create a quarantine area where the new animals are separate from the current poultry. Also use different workers to handle the different animals. If this is not probable, make sure to handle or feed the new animals last.

- Come up with devises to separate wildlife from poultry production farms. Also, devices that will eliminate the access of cats, dogs, rats and other vermin to where the poultry are raised are helpful.

There is a notion known as "all-in-all-out" among bio-security that is thought to be a great safety devise. It essentially refers to the barring of introducing new animals, and equipment or feed, once production has started. This is though to alleviate health risks to the growing broilers. When poultry has reached the age for market, they are removed. This allows the workers to clean, aerate, remove old feed, and disinfect premises before vulnerable new chicks are brought in. By doing this, if, a disease was to enter the flock, the process of removal, cleaning, and disinfection is already recognized and can be quickly applied with the farmer not having to face much down time.