Tuesday, February 17, 2015

California chicken farm has avian influenza

A 114,000-bird flock of chickens in California has suffered an outbreak of a highly-pathogenic strain of avian influenza, strain H5N8.

It’s the same strain that took down a Foster Farms turkey flock in California in January.

It’s also the same strain that has shown up in a number of backyard flock outbreaks, all of them along a flight path for migrating waterfowl.

This latest outbreak is the furthest south; it’s in King’s County in the San Joaquin valley.

Canada’s poultry industry has been hard hit by trading bans following outbreaks on 11 commercial farms in the Lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia.


The local poultry industry figures that situation should be cleared up by June.