Chickens-Biosecurity Concerns

One thing I haven't seen much of (but I will admit I don't read the links all the way through) in previous links here, is biosecurity.

The US has been lucky, in the past half dozen years, to have no major outbreaks of any form of avian illness. (The rest of the world has not been so lucky.) The last major outbreak was 2015, and it made a national impact (eggs topping $3 a dozen), because so many commercial producers were affected.

I strongly believe (and there is a lot of science to back this up) the virus arrived by way of migrating birds.

Personally, I believe it affected so many commercial flocks because (I suspect) the producers were ignoring a couple specific rules about nothing (including workers) that enters one flock should enter any other flock.

But dozens of backyard flocks were also infected, and I suspect at least some of them were victims of migrating birds passing the virus directly into the farm where they were kept.

Here are three links to articles on biosecurity. All say about the same thing, but due to the nature of the Internet, one or more links may cease to work at any time.

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/smallfarms/backyard-biosecurity-poultry

https://www.thepioneerchicks.com/8-biosecurity-tips-for-backyard-chickens/

https://www.fresheggsdaily.blog/2012/07/backyard-biosecurity.html

Hopefully all of the veteran homesteaders are already doing most of this, but for anyone new to the endeavor, it is better to get  the security in place before the next  virus hits, than try to get measures in place in the middle of a world wide outbreak. (Something Covid-19 should have taught us.)