An estimated 100,000 backyard chicken locations are at risk as Newcastle disease spreads in California. Efforts to educate owners have mostly failed. This has created the need to euthanize all chickens in entire neighborhoods to stop the spread of the disease.
All of L.A. County and parts of San Bernardino and Riverside counties have been under quarantine for months . . . To stop the spread of the virus, more than 1.2 million birds . . . have been euthanized in heavily affected areas . . .
Source: Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2019. Link. Authorities have made the most progress in eradicating the disease in communities where bird owners have banded together to increase biosecurity, which includes keeping birds indoors and limiting contact with other bird owners as well as pledging not to move their birds. In those communities, the virus load has stayed low.
It’s an invisible disease. It travels in the wind. The host vectors are known but not clearly identified. Some bird species can live with this and become transmitters, but this particular virus is very, very targeted to chickens, and it’s just scary.” – David Will
INSIGHTS: On a coop-to-coop basis, the emotional dynamic is admittedly challenging. However, Annette Jones, DVM, explained, “The problem is, when one person doesn’t follow directions because they think they’re doing the right thing or don’t know what the right thing is because we haven’t reached them, that puts everybody back.”