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because they cant control the spread of the virus. There is too much risk having survivors that could be virus carriers. the flu would spread to new comers, or even worse to nearby poultry farms.

this is in many cases mandated by authorities.

Unless you are talking about breeder, most farmers buy eggs which are breed specifically for what they want (eggs or meat). Most commercial breed are three breed cross, mother and father different, breed this chicken again to get what you want. They use very specific breed to obtain the result they seek. They would need to do this with the parents for many generations to get a stable breed again. Not that easy to do and they might not have the sae exact traits they want.

Way too much risk, also it is usually recommended by the health departments. And the stable or where they are kept in needs to be sanitized, with surviving birds you can't be sure you get all of it which would endanger humans and birds alike. Also they usually just buy chicks or eggs and feed them until big enough which does not take long. Compared to nursing ill birds back to health it's probably more cost effective.

I kind of get that, but what hope do we have of ever breeding chickens which are no as susceptible to bird flu if we just kill them all? Surely, some would survive that have greater immunity. At this point it seems almost inevitable that most farms are going to be hit.

Yes but wouldn't resistance to bird flu be a desirable trait as well? I would think some chickens would survive out of millions infected.

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I imagine there are research farms for which immunity is a business and they are interested in “breeding” survivors. But for a commercial farm this wouldnt make economical sense.

In any case all these virus are like the human flu, you can catch them year after year because they mutate.

As someone else posted. Also note that many of these farms dont run the whole business cycle from egg to fully grown chicken. Some farms will be breeders, some will buy the small chicken and are just interested in growing it.

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It definitly would and they might be doing it, but it is a very long process since it involve multiple breed. They would need to find out how to make children of the children resistant. They never breed the chickens they sell. They mix a+b= c than c+b= d where d is the final breed, but they always restart at c+b, never breed d with d or the result would be different.

I knew a guy which did that with bees for varroas and he lost over 90% of his bees. It took him years to come back, but his hives now deal better agaist the varroa, but he is a crazy one.

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Selective breeding doesn't seem like a great strategy here in the first place, as viruses probably have a vastly shorter generation time (and hence a faster adaptation rate) than chickens.

Unfortunately, this Highly Pathenogenic Avian Influenza has a 90%-100% mortality rate among infected poultry. From that kind of loss, the odds of you getting birds that will be breeding quality in sufficient numbers to be able to replicate the resistant traits well would not be worth the risk of it jumping species.

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They kill them because they cannot control the spread of the flu/virus. If you kept the ones that survived they could actually carry the virus. If you got new stock it could get them sick. It also can be mandated by the authorities I recommend doing some research online about how it is mandated.

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Bird flu isn’t a one and done illness. Ask an immunologist for a clear answer.

In most cases that I am aware of Avian flu is fatal or nearly so.

It's impossible to serilize the barn while keeping a few survivors alive so it's safer for disease control to kill off the entire barn and treat it (usually sanitizing foam or high heat followed by allowing the whole barn to decompose in place for months before cleaning it out.

The thing with trying to apply evolution to modern systems is that it requires shitloads of death and failure for a solution to be stumbled upon. Most people and businesses are better off with just managing issues themselves.

Its less about the genetics and far more about the conditions. If humans were literally stuffed into cages with other humans and not allowed room to move, then all those cages were packed together into warehouses, we would have similar health issues.

Just check out what happened on the slave ships for example. Its terrible what we put other living beings through.

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I agree that those things suck, but this virus also affects small and free-range producers, as well as wild birds (though not always with as high a mortality rate), so it's not the conditions that lead to the 90-100% mortality rate.

It is next to impossible to clean out the housing sufficiently, which is why you can't get new birds in the same place. 120 days empty, IIRC. The extra frustrating thing is it comes in from wild birds, even to places with birds housed indoors only, not outside areas.

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I think you might be half missing the point - the conditions are practically the best case scenario for engendering the creation of extraordinarily virulent diseases, and with such a huge population to infect nearby, high lethality doesn’t have the reproductive evolutionary disadvantages it normally does where the host needs to survive long enough to transmit.

No, I get that, but I'm saying that unfortunately for this one that horse has already left the barn, so to speak, so if the system changed tomorrow it would be just as bad as far as this virus is concerned. The same mortality rate would apply to those newly-freed chickens. And since it infects other species of fowl (ducks, for example) with less lethality it actually has all the advantages of a lower mortality rate while still being able to infect and be more lethal to chickens, whatever their living situation.

I absolutely believe we need to stop keeping animals of all kinds in conditions like that, to be clear, for this and many other reasons. That's why I got chickens of my own.

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The birds being grown for meat or for laying eggs do not have good enough genetics to be used as breeding stock for future generations.

You can imagine a family tree containing every chicken used for large scale meat/egg production.

At the top of the family tree is a very small flock of pure bred master breeders. These live in a lab environment and are guarded 24/7. These birds have been very carefully selected to have the purest genetics and it’s been an ongoing process for the last 30 years. You can’t find a more perfect bird anywhere else. That small flock is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the bottom of the family tree are the common birds that are being grown for meat and laying eggs.

There are 8 or 9 levels of family tree from top to bottom. Each level multiplies the population by as much as 200x, but at each level down the genetics worsen.

The bottom layer of the family tree’s population is about 60x the population of the previous layer. The bottom layers population is many times the population of all the other layers combined. Due to statistics it’s almost always the bottom layer of the tree that gets hit with avian influenza. Those birds’ genetics are so diluted they are not worthy of spreading their genetics to future generations. It would take 30 years of breeding to purify the genetics to take out all the tendency for splay legs and imperfect breast meat and all the other things that are selectively bred for.

Sometimes a second from the bottom flock gets avian flu. That can really mess up the whole system. For example say you lose a broiler breeder barn with 25,000 birds. Losing that one barn of 25,000 birds has a trickle down effect that will result in 5 million broilers not being grown. That broiler breeder barn could have produced 25,000 broiler chicks a day, and that barn will be off-line for 28 weeks (how long it takes to grow a broiler breeder flock to breeding age).

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The risk of it spreading is too high, resulting in massive deaths of birds across broad regions, possibly worldwide, instead of trying to keep it localized and damage to a minimum.

It's similar to how we treat cancer. We kill all the cells in the local region around the the tumors to keep it spreading. This is harmful to the healthy tissue, but if the cancer spreads then there's little point.

See, that term “I would think” rubs contrary to statistical tests conducted at research farms.

The process that you are asking makes no sense to a farm that wants to “grow” a chicken by a few pounds to get the meat.

Identifying infected animals from no infected, segregating them, and then monitoring them needs manpower and equipment that they don’t have. And not interested in purchasing.

And then you have doubts for any asymptomatic infected chickens. This is an industry that feeds humans. No one takes that level of risk. No one.

An analogy is the old Windows xp era habit of wiping the hard drive instead of “finding” and isolating the virus. Companies that relied on data being their service, have back up chickens that get replaced instantly to keep the production line going.

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Its like the coronavirus, when the pandemic started. Each and everytime someone reported that "a case" appeared, I was certain that there were actually 10 more than that. Once a virus shows up in a population, you'll only notice some people showing symptoms within a certain amount of time, while others simply haven't displayed signs of infection yet.

At some point, Containment of the disease can only go so far, unless you're willing to use ever more force to keep people in place (since they'll characteristically refuse to do what they're told), or just straight-up kill them to save the rest of the population.

But, people aren't chickens.

Former chicken farmer here. Not only do they destroy my flock but they will euthanize any flock within a certain mile radius. So if my neighbors farm gets it, mine is destroyed. It's very deadly to chickens and contagious, that's why we take bio security so seriously. My farm is off limits to anyone other than myself and a flock advisor and the feed trucks, picking crew etc. We also have bleach pans at every door we have to step onto before entering the houses. Also any "visitors" have to sign in and wear over shoes as to not contaminate the houses. Plus they leave the euthanized flock in the house in a big pile to compost for a while to make sure the Temps get high enough to kill any remaining viruses. Point is that getting bird flu once will pretty much bankrupt a farm because you can't have a new flock for 6 months or so.

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When you say they euthanize your flock, who is it? A government agency?

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Thank-you for your detailed backing information. I had no idea your industry had so many precautions—for the longest time it seems the only “press” your sector got was reduced profits paid by the mega-chicken-processors based in Arkansas. My 1st Pandemic inoculation was 1968/Hong Kong flu. I pictured, in my head, some weird virus spontaneously appearing in some broken-down pre- 20th century poultry farm.

No problem. I live on the delmarva peninsula and most of the farmers here are family farms. They take their flocks seriously and put a ton of care into them

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Humans haven’t managed to develop immunity to flu viruses yet (and we don’t kill all the humans that get infected - in fact we go out of our way to keep them alive), so what makes you think birds would be different?

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Mass euthanization is coordinated by a government agency. Lots of people will be involved.

Where mass euthanasia is required, the chosen euthanasia methods must consider the animal welfare implications while meeting biosecurity requirements and minimising the risk of disease transmission.

It requires someone trained to handle the materials and equipment. Another person to confirm each animal has been euthanized. That can be veterinarians, but it can also be slaughterhouse workers or others skilled in the trade.

During a mass outbreak there is often a labour shortage of skilled experts. Third party non-government experts may be called in.

Recommend methods for mass chicken euthanization is filling an entire shed with carbon dioxide gas, then any survivors are hit with a non-penetrative captive bolt gun.

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I'm confused, the survivors of any avian four would not have any virus. They would, actually, have immunity to the avian flu and thus be more safe than those who didn't have any protection to begin with? Although this can't be passed onto new members, aren't they "golden eggs" (no pun intended) because they will survive even if another virus spreads through the farm? Explain

Your logic is right. But note farms kill their birds quickly after the flu is detected, infected or healthy. They cannot test all birds, so there could potentially be some birds that got the virus before and survived, or inmune ones. But because of the risk involved all are killed.
So there is little time to actually have survivors.

Ahh okay and another thing I hear being mentioned is it being SPREAD to another farm? How is it being spread if the birds are stationary.

Checkout u/mtv2002 reply higher in the post. Farms might have common personnel, equipment, visitors,etc. after all its a business. So many ways to spread the virus through various surfaces. Not a virologist, but air transmission might be possible.

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