Chickens strut around in their pen outside Franklin Community High School’s agriculture classroom. Students are taking precautions to ensure an outbreak of avian flu doesn’t spread to the birds.
DAILY JOURNAL FILE PHOTO
The recent outbreak of avian flu has reached Johnson County, and the Johnson County 4-H fair’s poultry show is in limbo.
Officials with the Indiana State Board of Animal Health said April 26 that a flock of 41 chickens, ducks and peafowl in the Bargersville-area tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza. The Board of Animal Health said the site was quarantined and the animals would be euthanized.
The outbreak isn’t the first from the new avian flu strain in Indiana, but was the first infection found in domestic poultry.
Avian flu is often carried by wild birds, such as starlings or sparrows, and transmitted to poultry. The flu is so contagious and harmful to birds that if one member of the flock gets it, the entire flock has to be euthanized, said Angie Gibbs, poultry project leader for Johnson County 4-H.
The risk of bird-to-human transmission is next to none, and there have been zero human cases reported, she said.
“Sometimes there are no symptoms, you can have birds die for seemingly no reason and sometimes they get a blue-ish tint to their skin, like if someone was not able to breathe, and sometimes they have really bad diarrhea,” Gibbs said. “A big indicator is if you have wild birds dead on your property. If you find three or four dead starlings or sparrows, it’s a good indicator it can be there.”
The Indiana State Board of Animal Health has exercised a high level of caution when it comes to avian flu. All 4-H activities involving birds were discontinued in February, when the first bird flu cases were found in Indiana, she said.
“There’s been no decisions on exhibitions at the fair. We’ve not been told ‘no,’” Gibbs said. “The only restrictions right now, is we can’t have live birds at 4-H club meetings and can’t hold any workshops with live birds. We’re supposed to have a showmanship workshop where we would practice showing poultry and we have to practice with stuffed animals because we can’t have live birds.”
There would likely have to be a period of a few weeks before the county fair without a bird flu case in Indiana if the Johnson County fair is to feature birds, she said.
The last time the Johnson County Fair went without a poultry show was in 2015, in the midst of another avian flu outbreak. Things aren’t looking as bad now as they were that year, Gibbs said.
“Right now, nationwide, it’s about half the affected amount of 2015. We’ve seen about 50% of how many birds were infected or being put down now (compared to 2015), so at least that’s promising,” Gibbs said.
Franklin Community High School’s farm isn’t yet feeling the effects of avian flu. The school holds about 160 birds in a pen attached to the high school, which will be used for its farm-to-table program, said Alicia Geesey, the school’s agricultural science teacher and FFA advisor.
“It would be challenging for us,” Geesey said of a possible outbreak. “It’s a project for our students and also, raising that meat, we’d like to utilize that meat at our school cafeterias and the fair this summer.”
Geesey and FFA students are doing their best to isolate their birds and are taking steps like covering their shoes before entering the enclosure to protect the flock, Geesey said.
“One of the biggest ways the flu is passed is from bird-to-bird direct contact. Our birds are in a pen and no wild birds can get into our waters or feeders. It limits the potential for spread … The state of Indiana is saying Canadian geese are big carriers and a lot of geese traverse the high school grounds,” Geesey said. “We’re keeping a close eye on any potential symptoms in our flock, and so far, we haven’t had any … We’re not bringing any other birds in and none of our birds are leaving.”
