Livestock protection and isolation

Livestock protection and isolation

Are your animals or premises registered with the National Animal Identification System? If so consider them gone in the event of a pandemic. Yes it is voluntary but soon may become mandatory. In the event of a pandemic it probably would be. Currently on the list of animals the USDA wants registered are cattle and bison, poultry, swine, sheep, goats, cervids(deer and elk), equines (horses, mules, donkeys, burros), and camelids (llamas and alpacas).
Now consider what animals that can possibly be used for food consumption that are not on the list. Hint: I raise rabbits. You might want to invest in some for food production for your family. It's a healthy meat and currently not on the NAIS list. Also they can be isolated from other animals with relative ease in an enclosed building. Down side is they need air conditioning in summer in many areas of the country. Even without them being on the NAIS list however a large well known herd of rabbits would likely be confiscated for the greater good so I would not advise having too many. Start out with a trio (2 does & 1 buck) or two and you will have plenty even for a good size family. If you don't know much about rabbits I suggest you go to the ARBA website: http://www.arba.net/ I don't raise a breed that is raised for meat but Californian, Florida White, and New Zealand are common meat breeds as I recall.

For more info about NAIS go to this website: http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov...

"When the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

- William Beebe, 1906

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by: Poppy @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 23:39:22 PM UTC

Hi welcome to our forum ;-)

Thanks for posting, and don't worry about doing it wrong.  If you are not sure, just give us a shout, someone usually has an answer.  ;-)

When isolation is dicussed as a primary method of safety, there are few references to provide specific details. How isolated is isolated? How far does the airborne virus travel from its host?

I am assuming you are talking about protecting livestock from the pandemic virus.  The basic question really is it depends on what virus is causing the pandemic and whether it is capable of infecting certain species.  This may look like stating the obvious but influenza viruses can be very species specific.

There is no certainty that the next pandemic will be caused by H5N1.  That said, this virus as you rightly pointed out can infect birds, which can be a potential source of transmission.  However, 2 other considerations over-ride this one, IMHO.

First, by definition, a pandemic is caused by a new flu virus being spread h2h.  Which means that the biggest source of pandemic virus is any human contact.  Secondly, the prepandemic form of the virus may still exist in birds but once it is adapted to humans, which is a requirement for a pandemic to happen, it doesn't tend to go back to infect avian species again, ie the host switching appears to be a one-way street.  (JK Taubenberger, personal communications) Exactly why, is still under investigation by scientists.  

The biggest threat therefore is from human to your livestock.   The 1918 virus, for example, appeared to have gone from human to pig shortly after its emergence.  There were historical accounts of swine outbreaks from later that year all the way through the 1920s, I believe.

Most PH sources suggest something like 3-5 feet as the normal range for droplet transmission.  There is no clear evidence that it is 'airborne' in the sense of being capable of transmission over greater distances.  

Depending on how the virus evolves, cats have the potential to be a major concern, because, again stating the obvious, it is a mammal.  We already know that H5N1 can transmit from cat to cat.  In a pandemic, the risk of a human-adapted pandemic virus being able to transmit between different mammals, cats, human, livestock, dogs, is certainly bigger than that from birds.  We won't know until then, whether cats and dogs or indeed even rodents can be transmitters.

Sorry, I'm sure you were looking for more certainty than that, but the science is emerging and there's just a lot that we don't know.



All 'safety concerns' are hypothetical.  If not, they'd be called side effects...

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by: SusanC @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 00:54:07 AM UTC

Hi and welcome!

other sites you might also find helpful are here:

http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki...

OIE and FAO sites are useful.

I have seen no livestock reports other than poultry and pigs.
See also:

http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki...

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by: DemFromCT @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 01:07:36 AM UTC

AI susceptible species

Swine and poultry (for food production) are the primary concern in keeping livestock.  Horses are susceptible to certain strains.  Cattle can contract various respiratory viral diseases, but not HPAI.  

Smoke/dry fish, beef, chicken, turkey, etc and store as a backup food source.  Susceptibility of farm swine and fowl to human-adapted HPAI is hard to estimate, and depends on a variety of factors that underlie influenza infection mechanics.  Presuming that the pandemic is a human-adapted virus, if you aren't sick, chances are they won't be, either.

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by: Oracle @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 01:16:31 AM UTC

About cats and dogs as avian influenza tranmission vectors

Dogs haven't been known to contract avian-type influenza virus until very, very recently (late 90s); it was first adapted to horses and then passed onto a dog (first case reported in Italy).  The virus has adapted to domestic/feral canines; unlike parvo-virus, however, it has not been documented in wild canines (wolves/coyotes).

There is no avian influenza strain adapted to cats specifically. At this point in time, cats do not 'get' influenza - except in specific locales where large numbers of wild or domestic fowl have contracted HPAI, and died, and felines have consumed infected fowls.  A 'cat-model' has demonstrated that deliberately (intranasally or dosed food) infected cats can spread influenza virus in close quarters with other cats, and if they receive a large dose from eating virus contaminated meat, they will get sick, developing systemic infection.

Rodents are not known carriers of influenza, although they, like cats, could conceivably contract viral infection from eating contaminated bird flesh.

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by: Oracle @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 01:33:07 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Very difficult to be helpful without knowing certain specifics...

like the size of your farm and what you are raising, or intend to raise.  Also, being unsure of how much experience you have farming may make my comments less helpful.  In general, I would suggest that if you are in the U.S. the best source for you is probably your agricultural extension agent.  I can give you some basic biosecurity measures that are recommended where I live, though.

For poultry specific examples, locally, we are instructed to keep different kinds of poultry/birds separated, ie. not housing ducks with chickens, etc.  Also, don't let pets roam freely on your property or let them mingle with livestock.  Keep all poultry housing at least 2000 feet from any structure inhabited by humans to prevent contamination by flies.  They may have had contact with manure.  It's a good rule of thumb for all your livestock, really.  You don't want those same flies landing on your bologna sandwich.  Keep poultry separated from wild birds and cover their feed.   A garbage can with a lid is a good choice for storing feed, but you probably already knew that.  I kept my feed inside a closed shed as another barrier to contamination of feed by wild birds.  When I kept chickens, I kept them in a movable enclosure with a wire mesh covering to keep wild birds out of their space.  Never feed poultry on the ground.  It's a waste of food.  Plus, it keeps them from pecking at the soil so much, which may harbor pathogens. Make sure that where they feed there is a solid roof overhead.  This will prevent contamination by wild bird droppings in the feed.  Regularly clean and sanitize any structure that chickens inhabit, as well as their feeders and water founts. Controlling flies is extremely important in all forms of animal husbandry.

I don't have any idea how long you have been farming, and a lot of the above is probably elementary to you, but I thought I'd throw it in there just in case.

Here's a couple of links, one with a general checklist created by the USDA.  The USDA website, by the way, is a great place to start looking for publications with the information you need.  I haven't found anything specific about buffer distances related specifically to animal health there yet, but it's probably there somewhere if guidance exists for family holdings.  
http://gallus.tamu.edu/Extensi...
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/b...

Here's the entry for AI in the Global Invasive Species Database, which gives some good information about how it is dispersed locally.
http://www.issg.org/database/s...

When you say "isolation" are you are referring to isolating new healthy animals for at least 14 days (30 days for poultry) prior to housing them with established livestock?  Or isolating sick animals?  Either way, you may want to consider that it is not just aerosolized pathogens you are trying to contain, but also any organic material ie. soil, manure, and wastewater runoff.  Preventing cross-contamination by using the same equipment, like brooms, shovels, etc. is something you want to pay special attention to.  If you have a sick animal you should care for the healthy ones first.  That way you are always wearing clean clothes while attending the healthy, and you can bathe and disinfect after tending to the sick animals.  While distance between different species has a role to play in your plan, specific distances may be less important than having a combination of measures in place to prevent disease transmission, like grassy buffer areas to absorb wastewater runoff between enclosures or paddocks. Or, preventing overgrazing, which can disperse more dust in the air that can be carried in the wind for some distance.  Accumulations of manure can harbor AI for up to 100 days in the right conditions, thus preventing such accumulations by not having more livestock than the land will accomodate is important. If you have a large farm, the recommended buffer distance between swine units or farms in Victoria, Australia is 3 km.  On an established or small holding, that might be difficult or costly to arrange.  Sure would help with odors though.  LOL

As SusanC said, during a pandemic, limiting the people allowed into production areas of your property will likely be most important, regardless of what kinds of animals you raise.  Sick people should never be allowed around your livestock.  When it is necessary for someone to enter your production area, you should provide clean clothes, handwashing facilities, clean rubber boots, etc. for visitors.  

For a fairly comprehensive biosecurity plan, here's a good link.
http://www.albc-usa.org/docume...

Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!

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by: flubergasted @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 07:23:04 AM UTC

excellent links

I have to add them to the wiki when i have a few moments.

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by: DemFromCT @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 11:50:17 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

More specifics about the livestock

I live in South Dakota. We live on 63 acres and raise a good portion of our own food. Therefore, we have a milk cow, beef cow (and calves), goats, hogs, sheep, horses, chickens, geese, ducks, guineas, turkeys and peafowl. I recently ordered more chicks, so by summer we'll have about 300 chickens. We just a a dozen or so each of the other birds, except turkeys. We just have two. But the ducks and geese are laying now and will soon set. Ditto the peafowl. We'll have dozens of babies in May or so.

Our plan has been to have our extended family here, and also to make arrangements to feed and care for our single, elderly neighbors.

However, I'm finding holes in our plan. If it is unsafe to do outside chores and/or if we have no possiblity of keeping our stock free of disease, then I have to really rethink things. It would take significantly more supplies than we currently have stocked to feed us all!

I've been farming/homesteading for 28 years, so I'm pretty familiar with the basics. Really tight biosecurity is a new thing to me, though, and I need to knwo what I'm dealing with in order to formulate a workable plan.

Our livestock are all co-mingled. All of our birds a free-range. We have three barns and a large chicken coop, but with such a small number of critters, it's easier at chore time to have them all in roughly the same area. We just use two of the barns ... The hoof stock (except the hogs) are all together. The birds and the hogs share another area. I guess I'm going to have to change that ...

In all my years of farming, I've never had any serious disease of any kind. I've always felt that letting the animals range was the healthiest. I hate confining them to barns. Clean pens and/or good pasture has always been the best method for us.

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by: Andrzejek @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 21:08:18 PM UTC

Going outside will be okay.

If there's an H2H pandemic, and if there isn't also B2B avian influenza in this country, you should be fine going outside on your farm.  That's my layman's/non-farming conclusion from what I've read.

If bird-to-bird avian influenza comes here, that's the time for more stringent biosecurity, with separations between animals, especially ducks and their pond from other animals (or from just the other birds?) and with the bleach water and brush for your boots outside each animal's area.  (In my opinion.)  And cats and dogs kept away from the other animals, in case they eat a dead bird and catch AI.

With H2H, that's the time to self-quarantine, including separating family members who arrive after it starts (for a week or 10 days or ?).  Also with attention to car tires about to drive onto your property, or is that just for B2B quarantines?

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."  Flannery O'Connor

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by: Jane @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 21:23:13 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Oh, I forgot to say

That my questions about isolation were really two-fold. Is my family safe here on the farm assuming we have no contact with "outsiders"? Will the type of flu that we could contract possibly be transimissable to our livestock? Would it be able to go from people to animals/poultry? I know my hogs can get colds from us ...

So is isolation from people (social distancing) really that effective and if so, what exactly does that mean? How "distant" is "distant"? Ten feet? A quarter mile?

We have several family farms within our group and some are extremely isolated (no one literally for miles). But those places aren't set up well for livstock or really large numbers of people for more than a week or so (without us killing each other). My farm has neighbors about every mile or so, but it is most suited for livestock and eventual re-supply, but second-best in our family group for housing people.

Can we be outside if there are no people around? Would it still be transmitting from wild birds? There a big difference in planning if you can utilize outdoor areas for children to play as opposed to having to keep everyone indoors.

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by: Andrzejek @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 21:29:41 PM UTC

here's the state of the art

3 to 6 feet is probably fine for social distancing. In the rare case of small particle aerosol spread, 20 feet or more should do it. No one knows what percentage of flu cases are transmitted via small particle aerosols (we don't know as much about flu as you'd think).

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/...

I don't know that absolute answer, but transmission to animals from humans seems unlikely (pigs/swine possibly an exception).

And in a pandemic it's not wild birds to fear, it's humans with a human adapted virus.

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by: DemFromCT @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 21:50:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Isolation

A requirement once you desire to begin SIP is to allow NO ONE in the house who was not there at the beginning.  There will be a period of time 3-14 days before you find out if an outsider has the flu. (We use those dates from other viruses in the past). We do not know how much time, since the virus has not mutated enough to go H2H2H.

So either you set a rule that NO ONE comes in or you have to set up separate living quarters for them. This includes  family member's who leave the farm to go to the doctor or any place where they will be in contact with others even if they return 1 hour later. It has to include separate dinning, cooking, sleeping, toilet, and living areas.

Notes:

The spread has not been determined if it is by touch or airborne.  Again it depends on how this virus will work.

A major problem will be it may take a month to figure out all this information and then get the News out to all.

  No warning - no way to fight - no way to win!  
We need help in our local communities to survive. Remember that quote:    "...No man is an island..."

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by: RICHARD-FL @ Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 22:49:35 PM UTC

another link NABC

National Agricultural Biosecurity Center
http://tinyurl.com/3yx74x

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by: Chesapeake @ Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 15:16:16 PM UTC

It sounds like you're kind of already beginning to see what you need to do.

Farmers are some of the most practical people I know.  I'm sure you will work it all out in time.  Nothing we do is ever 100% risk free.  I could go out to ride a bike and get into an accident.  There's a chance I would be killed, but I can increase my odds of a good outcome by wearing a bicycle helmet to protect myself.  Biosecurity is a universal precaution that will protect you and yours from more than just one pathogen.  There is no way to be sure that the next pandemic will even be caused by H5N1, but in practicing biosecurity and making it routine, you increase your odds of coming through whatever it may be with the least battle scars.

If it were me, I would separate and pen the chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys.  The turkeys shouldn't be hard to manage with only two.  I would consider letting the guinea fowl continue to free range so long as they have no contact with other poultry.  Having guinea fowl is like having an alarm system.  If it's their habit to hang around the yard, I'd have to think twice about it, though. I'd also separate the swine from everything else.  In fact, I would move them farthest away from the house.  There are a number of reasons it makes sense.  First, swine are likely the best suited to defend themselves against predators.  Second, with children around the chances are good that at some point they will become interested in the livestock.  I would want swine to be the least accessible for both health and safety reasons.   You know your animals better than anyone, of course, but I don't have to tell you that a lot of behavior is avoided because we can see the signs of an animal becoming defensive or agitated.  Unfamiliar children might not be as perceptive.  Third, it has been my experience that of all the livestock that can manage to somehow get loose, hogs are usually the most destructive when they do.  I'm assuming you're planning a sizeable vegetable garden.  If they somehow got loose, and it happens no matter how secure you make a pen, that could be devastating.  All that has to happen is for someone to forget to close a gate.  Since trips to the grocery store are not on the agenda, it might be worth a few more steps.

When it comes to poultry, I agree that sunshine, ventilation, and enough space to engage in natural behavior is best for their health.  That said, it might be kinder in the long run to confine them to pens.  There is less risk of predators/theft and you can keep them separated from wild birds and their diseases.  We already have low-path H5N1 in the U.S.  There is no natural law that prevents it from mutating to a high-path strain here the same as it did in China as far as I know.  Nor is there any reason to believe some other virus can't spring out of nowhere and do the same thing.  Biosecurity makes sense now.  Pens can be plenty roomy, and a wire mesh cover over the pens can keep wild birds out of their space.  Under an "all-in, all-out" philosophy, you could put the chicks that are coming in a separate pen from your existing flock.  

http://wildlifedisease.nbii.go...

I'm definitely not trying to tell you your business.  It's just what I would do in your place.


Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!

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by: flubergasted @ Sat Mar 22, 2008 at 00:43:32 AM UTC