(800) 853-2651
SHOP NOW

BIG issue with bird flu

D

David G

Well-known Member
Bird flu has hit Iowa hard, they estimate about 25 million poultry are effected.

I am in the middle of a large project with one of the super farms that got hit, I am afraid every day. It looks like the US could lose a large portion of the egg and poultry industry this year. I think when it is over the super farms will be gone, and the large operators will have many smaller laying facilities to mitigate their risk.

The authorities think migratory birds carry it, but it seems like there might be more doing it.
 

Don't like hearing that - in my county and the adjacent one to the north we have both egg & poultry facilities (BIG facilities, 8 buildings per, each about 200' long. Most are Foster Farms, I think)
 
read the reply about the 200 foot building,..they put up 2 a few years ago near me that's 600 feet each...chicks go in one end and fryers come out the other
 
Just like it is with people; dense concentrations of population can cause outbreaks of disease.
 
We had that problem here a few years back. I visited with a turkey grower and he had it under control. 1) No outside vehicles allowed in 2) First thing we walked through was the manure storage 3) We could look into the growing facility but not enter.
It worked he did not get the flu in his birds.
 
Several small homeowner flocks have gotten it also. Likely quite a few have, they just don't get reported......

Its a big deal.

Most of the big outfits have limited entrance, showers, etc for decades now, odd it would break out like it has.

Then there is the goofball state legislator from Edina, mn, that wants to make jokes about it on the State Floor. Geez, with political leaders like that, who needs enemies.....

Paul
 
We were talking about that last night, is there an flock insurance that works like crop insurance? On the news they said because of a reduction in exports the domestic supply will not be affected too much.
 
Another confusion is that the states seem to report any barn affected as the total capacity of the barn, like a 1.1 million bird loss.

When actually the barn only was half full, or 500,000 birds. We aren't quite getting the right numbers.....

An issue is getting the barn cleaned up and back on line, that is some lost time there.

Paul
 
Just limiting the entrance to the farm is not enough to stop it. They have been limiting entrance to the local farm for weeks now. They are now cleaning out around a million dead birds. The question now is-- What is California going to do for eggs? It has been reported they are very short on eggs now, because of a piece of legislation killing the sale of eggs in the state. Will they start costing $1.00 per egg or more there? Am not trying to hijack this post but---Anybody in the know have any feed back on this? might start another post with information.
 
My son-in-law and daughter raise 120,000 turkeys a year in central Iowa. So far they have escaped the rath of the bird flu that has hit parts of northwest Iowa and areas of Minnesota. The flu is transmitted by wild migrating waterfowl. Through their feces it's believed. As the feces dry and turns to dust the virus becomes airborne. The USDA has found the virus in the dust on the outside of the curtains on the buildings.The virus doesn't affect the wild birds. Geese,Ducks, ect. There is currantly no antibiotic for the birds yet, but they are working on it. Warmer weather is supposed to eventually kill the virus. But it may resurface when migrating bird move back south out or Canada and northern Mn. Only to be mixed with infected birds in Mexico or where they my congregate for the winter. There is no insurance for a farmer to protect his flock. The gov. had $80 milllion dollars set aside for a indemnity payment to help the farmer recoup some of his loss. Sadly that money is already gone.From the time the flock has been eradicated due to the illness until my SIL and daughter could put a flock to market weight would be almost 18 months.1 year before new birds could be located on his farm and 5 1/2 months to market weight.. My daughter writes a blog on www.onthebanksofsquawcreek.com. Her website might ask you to sign up for a newsletter, but you can close that window and procede. She has some info there and you could also try www.iowaturkeyfederation.com
 
I was curious, they destroy the infected flocks.....

They never mention just how they do that? Where do the dead birds go?

You wouldn't want to haul all that to a rendering works, and spread the ooze and dust a few 100 miles along the way? Burning 100,000 birds on site doesn't sound like a pleasant experience for the neighborhood. And my county at least, frowns deeply on burying single critters, much less an entire flock.

Where do they go?

Paul
 
It is rampant here in my part of NWIA. We are heavily populated with turkey sites and though i dont have anaccurate count i can safely say most of them are hit with the bug. A local chicken laying farm with 5.7 million birds has it in three barns. This farm has an egg processing facility that breaks eggs and ships them out as pasteurized liquid eggs as well as whole eggs.

The people who talk bad about big factory poultry farms dont realize how much local income is generated from them. Thousands of daily labor jobs are in jeopardy here. Small trucking companies that rely on this industry are left with nothing to haul, no grain, no DDG's, no bean meal, no lime, no 'egg maker' is hauled in and no egg products are hauled out. Office staff is laid off, local fuel suppliers haul less fuel, feed haulers who have money invested in their trucks have less tons to haul. The local trucker who hauls liquid eggs has those tanker trailers sitting still. What else can he haul in those expensive specialized food grade tankers? There is a lot going on here.
 
The infected Turkeys are smoothered with a foam containing some kind of chemical. But most infected birds will die within 48 hours.The Turkeys are composted in the barns under their own litter. When the litter is deeemed virus free after several months the litter can be spread out and used as fertilzer on crop fields. The heat created during the composting period will kill the virus. Then the barns get washed and disinfected, tested again for the virus and then new litter(saw dust and oat hulls) about 12" deep is reapplied before the barns are ready for a new flock.
 
There was a problem with bird flu here in Ca not to long ago. the farmer was throwing the chickens in a wood chipper to kill them, as recommended by the local vet. A lot of people got up set with that. Very quick death for the chicken. He almost got in some hot water over that. Just how do you kill thousands of chickens humanley? Stan
 
Foam? Last week TV news showed MN National Guard troops delivering water to infected turkey farms near Willmar, MN to make a suffocation foam that would smother the flocks. The details were sketchy.
 
The chicken farm near me uses cages so there is no wood chips, peanut hulls to compost with, only manure. I hear they are looking at trying to buy every corn stalk bale they can find to add to the compost. A local cellulosic ethanol plant has way, way more stalk bales than they need because of production problems. Maybe the two can get together with the bales and make at least a little lemonade out of a lemon. Sometimes one person's problem can help solve someone else's problem. Yesterday I went by a local large feed mill and there were six semi feed trucks lined up at their wash bay. My fuel man told me the last time he delivered fuel to the chicken plant his whole truck was drenched with disinfectant before he was allowed to leave. The roads going past some of the turkey sites are closed. Fertilizer can't even be delivered directly to a field on those closed roads. It's being treated very seriously but they are losing the battle. One report said the bug can ride along on dust that comes out exhaust fans and can travel for miles. Those of you who have been around poultry know how fine the feather dust is and how well it floats in the air.

The authorities are supposed to be visiting every farm site to check barnyard fowl. They haven't been to my farm yet. I have 15 chicks closed up in a tight building that they will check when they come. I was going to give my old semi-retired hens to a friend but a turkey building broke within 6 miles of where he lives and he wasn't allowed to bring in any new chickens for his barnyard so I had to euthanize the hens and bury them in a field.
 
I have large flocks here in central MN, is is a little scary, but big growers are doing a good job trying to control this. Still have small flocks being sold on craigslist, so the media has not done a good job of letting the public know how serious this is.
 
So the extreme strong winds we've had the past 2 months aren't helping this deal at all then I'd guess! Been nutz with the winds by me, all day
long, 3x so strong it blew dirt it cut visibility. Very un normal winds for here.

So, the govt is going to send folks around to look at all the birds? While I know they will do the hazmat stuff and all,it seems like that becomes a
pointless vector for spreading of the disease; folks roam from poultry farm to poultry farm, not really accomplishing anything useful?

Back when Dutch Elm disease went around, some university folk came around and visited groves in the neighborhood, took some elm core
samples, and put tags on trees in a small circle.

Couple years later turned out they didnt clean their equipment as good as they should have, while it didnt get our trees that way, several new
outbreaks of Dutch Elm could be traced back to those tree cores the U made.......

Paul
 
I enjoyed the movie 'Fargo', yea the chipper might be a tad messy and more so puts some ooze into the air I would think? You don't want the mess up in the air.....

I donno, smothered in foam to suffocate, or tossed in a chipper, I might prefer the chipper......

Paul
 
Strange the national news is keeping this hush hush or does not know about it yet ? Maybe Baltimore has all their attention ?
 
Paul I thought about that too. Do i even want that inspector on my farm? These chicks i have are for the granddaughter's 4H project but i seriously doubt if the fairs will allow poultry when fair time rolls around.
 
It's on the news every night here in the middle of the mess.

Did you hear much about the piglet virus that has been going around for a little longer? Was a bigger deal about a year ago.

Frankly, everyone involved found out the national news media has its own agenda, it doesn't pay to try to explain things. They right their sensational slant to sell soap, not to report news..... The general public gets all flustered, and thinks chicken or eggs or pork is go a make thrm sick - when that is -not- true of either of these issues. Not at all!

Then we get people in politics, like our Minnesota State Congressperson here in the YouTube link. We can't really figure out -what- he was trying to say or accomplish, his own party had to shut down congress for the day to get his babble off the floor. I have no idea where this fella was trying to go, but he is voted in to run government.....

And so, rural America ends up happy if the national news people just stay away.

Paul
Idiot politician on bird flu
 
I haven't heard of sending inspectors to healthy farms, only to the already infected farms. There are 84 infected farms so far in MN.

I could be wrong, but I have a hard time believing all the infections could only have been caused by wild birds. Similar to the Hog Cholera and Psydorabis epidemics, the initial outbreaks might have been natural, but much of the spread is could likely be assisted by people, domestic animals, trucks and equipment.
 
Bigger has nothing to do with it. The virus is non-discriminating, big or small it doesn't care.
 
The fella i wanted to give the chickens to was visited twice by inspectors after the first outbreak in our county. I don't think they have time to knock on every door now.
 
I work for the company that Fixerupper was talking about at one of their other farms. Can't go into work without getting the tires on my car sprayed with disinfectant. They've gotten much more serious about keeping the process room employees apart from the barn workers. Just issued the barn workers new uniforms and boots and built decontamination booths for them to shower & change in. Redid the drive ways to stop the barn workers and plant workers from parking their cars together. Poured a bunch of concrete walkways to keep employees from waking in the mud and added a bunch of tile & culverts to get rid of any standing water

Don't know how effective they'll be I have 3 employees that share a house and car with 3 barn workers so they cross contaminate at home and we still only have one front office and smoking area everyone tracks through

Ironic part is this company started just before the last bird flu epidemic in California and it ended up financing 10 years of growth on about 5 years.
 
(quoted from post at 07:04:08 05/07/15) It is rampant here in my part of NWIA. We are heavily populated with turkey sites and though i dont have anaccurate count i can safely say most of them are hit with the bug. A local chicken laying farm with 5.7 million birds has it in three barns. This farm has an egg processing facility that breaks eggs and ships them out as pasteurized liquid eggs as well as whole eggs.

The people who talk bad about big factory poultry farms dont realize how much local income is generated from them. Thousands of daily labor jobs are in jeopardy here. Small trucking companies that rely on this industry are left with nothing to haul, no grain, no DDG's, no bean meal, no lime, no 'egg maker' is hauled in and no egg products are hauled out. Office staff is laid off, local fuel suppliers haul less fuel, feed haulers who have money invested in their trucks have less tons to haul. The local trucker who hauls liquid eggs has those tanker trailers sitting still. What else can he haul in those expensive specialized food grade tankers? There is a lot going on here.
Click to expand...

OK don't take this the wrong way. The people who are against the big bird operations care little about infrastructure or jobs. They either care about disease, quality of life of the birds or quality of the finished product. That's it. That's sum total about thier care or concerns. On another note. In the day before the BTO there were about 3 million farmers in the U.S. With the corespondent infrastructure to keep them farming. When the farm economy crashed most of those farmers and the supporting network collapsed at the very time our country could ill afford to have all those jobs go away. No one cared then either. Kinda funny but the small town schools around here are crying about enrollment. Back in the 70's 85% of the students were either farm kids or thier parents worked in an AG related business. Now those figures are less that 15% and there are few jobs so fewer people.

Rick
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

H
O/T Duke Power looks like a no win situtation
Replies
10
Views
1K
JMOR
J
jon f mn
Anyone like corn fed venison? LOL
Replies
13
Views
3K
Jeff B.
J
A
Australian adventure update
Replies
6
Views
1K
buickanddeere
B
S
Run BAMBI....RUN!!
Replies
8
Views
3K
barnE
B
A
Funny story, Hope it isn't true... Kinda long
Replies
10
Views
1K
Jrry
J
Tractor Parts Tractor Manuals

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Copyright © 1997-2024 Yesterday's Tractor Co.

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website, including design and content, without written permission is strictly prohibited. Trade Marks and Trade Names contained and used in this Website are those of others, and are used in this Website in a descriptive sense to refer to the products of others. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy TRADEMARK DISCLAIMER: Tradenames and Trademarks referred to within Yesterday's Tractor Co. products and within the Yesterday's Tractor Co. websites are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Yesterday's Tractor Co., our products, or our website nor are we sponsored by them. John Deere and its logos are the registered trademarks of the John Deere Corporation. Agco, Agco Allis, White, Massey Ferguson and their logos are the registered trademarks of AGCO Corporation. Case, Case-IH, Farmall, International Harvester, New Holland and their logos are registered trademarks of CNH Global N.V.

Yesterday's Tractors - Antique Tractor Headquarters
Website Accessibility Policy

Back
Top