Deadly avian flu wipes out poultry flock at farm in Burton, B.C.
Global News
“Friday night, I found a couple on the floor that didn't look right. I thought, ‘OK, this seems to be going past the ‘stress’ phase.’ Then they started dropping, literally, dead."
Peggy Ife knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the chicken run on her Burton area farm on April 21.
“We saw a (dead) bird here and a bird there, about five or six,” she said. “We thought something had got into the yard. And we found a hole in the fence. So we thought that was it.
“We cleaned up the birds and put the others back in the coop.”
But the next day, the birds were still exhibiting stress signs — some showed no interest in eating, or were huddled in corners of the coop.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I call them ‘my girls’ — I spend enough time with my kids.”
Then more started dying.
“Friday night, I found a couple on the floor that didn’t look right, and I thought, ‘OK, this seems to be going past the ‘stress’ phase.’ Then they started dropping, literally, dead,” said Ife.
By the time the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors arrived the next Monday morning, she had lost nearly 60 of her 70 birds.