Bird flu restrictions

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Hannah Wynne Richards — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:20:20 GMT

Par for the course for DEFRA

Wynne

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Marie Kubiak — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 08:05:39 GMT

I heard about it on Radio 2 on the way in to work! I can understand the decision to use media and make widespread public notification the priority though. Alerting vets and using us to disseminate info to bird owners would be much slower. A brief tip off on Tuesday would have been appreciated though!

[quote user="Emily Rainbow"]Apparantly exotic species are exempt. i rang and enquired as we do Zoo work too. Most are undercover apart from flamingoes/penguins so hopefully ok.[/quote]

I would be very cautious making this statement- certainly after long discussions with our APHA vet and reading the documentation there is no exemption. The advice we were given is to follow the order but not to a situation where welfare is compromised. So our flamingos are not shut in but netting has been used to cover the enclosure and prevent wild bird access to their enclosure. Elsewhere we have foot dips, mandatory PPE, are covering mesh aviaries with perspex, ponds drained, waterfowl moved inside with fibreglass ponds...

If AI is found on the zoo site then a huge number of birds (including lots of critically endangered species) will face culling. We are not prepared to take any risks.

Marie

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Emily Rainbow — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 07:12:23 GMT

Yep we had about 15 calls before our official notice!

And a client that had a visit from defra telling her to shut her chickens away on Tuesday morning before she knew anything about it!

Apparantly exotic species are exempt. i rang and enquired as we do Zoo work too. Most are undercover apart from flamingoes/penguins so hopefully ok.

Just a bit of warning would have been appreciated!

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Busybee — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 20:43:22 GMT

[quote user="Sarah Keir"]It took ages for my official email to arrive, found out in BBC 24 hours previously.[/quote]

Me too. In typical MAFF/DEFRA/APHA style, I only received the notice at 9.30am Wednesday morning despite the BBC reporting it earlier. And the restrictions were meant to have been in place since Tuesday!

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Hannah Wynne Richards — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 17:23:01 GMT

I read it in the newspaper

Wynne

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Claudia Niehoegen — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 17:18:03 GMT

I was in North Germany 3 weeks ago. The news were dramatic: Several flocks of up to 9000 geese being culled, dead water fowl in lakes, all cats to be kept indoors and dogs to be kept on leads. On TV, radio, in newspapers. In the UK I haven't heard anything about it in "normal" news.

RE: Bird flu restrictions

Neil Wheadon — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 16:32:03 GMT

Nigel Gibbons (Head Vet for DEFRA) was at pains to explain that welfare comes first. So if you have backyard chickens then make adequate provision, so don't just shut them in a darkened box for a month. The advise seems to be to prevent contamination of feed from migrating birds.

As a result our 3 chickens are under house arrest in the extended wire run of the egloo.

Neil