My first feelings were of deep guilt, knowing that if I had kept my birds quarantined inside they would not have contracted HPAI. They would reimburse us for the value of the birds, a poultice on the wound of loss. ![]() The USDA required a fallow period of 150 days before we would be allowed to add new poultry to our farm, but it took much longer to process my feelings. It would take several weeks to get used to that silence. The morning had started with a honking, frolicking flock of almost a hundred geese, chickens, guineas and ducks. Even without injury, the unhappiness of the cooped-up geese was evident-and how long would goose lockdown last? Humanely quarantining our birds would require either major infrastructure upgrades, or a downsizing of the flock.īy the end of the day on April 5, 2022, there were no living poultry on our farm. I considered this, but our flock of geese was at the height of their mating season, fighting and setting their pecking orders for the year, and birds would be injured in an enclosed space for a long period of time. Information on HPAI suggested quarantining domestic birds: no interacting with wild flocks, shut your poultry in their coops indefinitely. In February 2022, a warm winter kept the pond waters open, and flocks of hundreds of migrating ducks used our farm as a stopover on their migrations north. The rise in popularity of backyard poultry in recent years means even more intermingling. However, some speculate it is small farms and homesteads that have led to the proliferation of HPAI because free-ranging birds interact more with wild birds. They took to it instantly, swimming, bathing and splashing all day in the new open waters-as did passing wild ducks.Īs news of avian flu began to bubble in the winter of 2021-22, commercial flocks in the Midwest seemed the most affected. I had become The Goose Lady.īecause goslings imprint easily, most of the geese in our flock saw me as “mother goose” and our bonds were strong, with birds running to my side when I stepped out of the house.įor years, we kept our geese and ducks happy with water troughs and buckets, but in 2021, we dug out a farm pond for the birds. So, I started jotting down notes and making records of their care.īy 2016, when we moved to Liberty, Maine, we had a flock of more than 20 geese (and an additional 30 or so chickens and ducks), and my first book, The Modern Homesteader’s Guide to Keeping Geese, was headed to the publisher. As I fell in love with these birds, I realized there was very little information on keeping them-my best research being an out-of-print book that I had to get through an interlibrary loan. My family had kept chickens when I was a kid, but geese were a new experience for me and I spent hours searching the internet for details on their care. The goslings imprinted on us, and all summer they followed us and settled in our laps when we sat down. We had ordered five chicks and two goslings. Our first poultry arrived in a peeping box at the post office in 2013. The carcasses were then bagged in plastic and taken for secure disposal by the state. While they worked carefully to ensure the birds were not stressed, I could tell from the anxious honking of the flock that they understood the situation. The officials would capture them and put them in a confined box where carbon monoxide was applied, resulting in a quick and painless death. ![]() ![]() The next day, officials arrived to euthanize our flock. “I am afraid it is positive,” said Rachael Fiske, assistant state veterinarian in Maine. It took a few days for the test to process, and then I got the phone call. If it was positive, our entire flock would be euthanized to help prevent the disease from spreading. If the test was negative, nothing would happen to our birds. The State Veterinarian informed me that it would send a representative to test our flock. Symptoms of HPAI include sudden deaths, sneezing and swollen heads. California’s ‘Local Food Producers’ Hope Proposed New Label Will Boost Support
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