High-path avian flu hits four Midwestern states

Friday, May 15, 2015
By Paul Martin

Robert Roos
CIDRAP News
May 14, 2015

Highly pathogenic avian flu has scored six more hits in the Midwest, including Nebraska’s second big layer chicken farm, South Dakota’s first affected layer farm, and two farms each in Minnesota and Iowa, state officials announced today.

The Minnesota sites are egg-production and turkey farms, while the Iowa outbreaks involve two pullet farms.

Nebraska sites close together
The Nebraska outbreak involves a farm that has 1.8 million layer hens and is close to the big layer farm stung by the state’s first H5N2 outbreak, announced 2 days ago, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) said today. The two sites, both owned by the same producer, are in Dixon County in the northeastern part of the state, close to Iowa and South Dakota.

“Having a second farm in Nebraska confirmed to have [highly pathogenic avian influenza] is unfortunate but not completely unexpected. This follows the pattern we’ve seen in other states when it comes to the spread of the virus,” said NDA Director Greg Ibach in the agency’s announcement.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has declared an emergency to provide the NDA and other state agencies with appropriate resources to respond to the avian flu situation, the NDA said.

The other infected Dixon County farm housed 1.7 million layer chickens. Before the outbreaks, the state’s total population of layer hens was about 9.45 million, according to earlier reports.

Largest South Dakota outbreak
In eastern South Dakota’s Moody County, Dakota Layers, an egg farm with 1.3 million chickens, has been struck by an H5 virus, the Associated Press (AP) reported today. It is the state’s first layer farm infected with what will probably be confirmed as H5N2, the story said.

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