DARKE COUNTY — High Path Avian Influenza, otherwise known as bird flu, cases are continuing to grow in poultry in the Miami Valley, with over 2 million new cases confirmed this month.
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Over 1.9 million commercial chickens and 72,282 commercial turkeys in Darke and Mercer counties were confirmed positive for bird flu by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in 11 reports since Jan. 9, according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA).
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All the birds had to be “depopulated.” As News Center 7 has reported with previous bird flu outbreaks, ODA’s procedure is to quarantine the impacted facility and to “depopulate,” or kill, the birds to prevent the disease from spreading.
This comes after over 930,000 commercial chickens in Darke County tested positive for bird flu and were depopulated in December.
The exact location of where these chickens and turkeys were in Darke and Mercer counties was not initially released.
As reported on News Center 7 at 6:00, the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) said the culprits spreading the virus are wild birds who like to hang out near coups.
“Wild birds, geese, any birds flying around,” ODA’s Brian Baldridge said. “We kind of look at them as being a carrier of this disease.”
While traces of the bird flu pop up every once in a while in Ohio, it’s been a growing trend since Christmas Eve.
“In 2024, we had no commercial detections at all right up ‘til Christmas Eve, we had our first detection,” Baldridge said. “And since then, we’ve been very busy and unfortunately, we had multiple detections on farms throughout western Ohio.”
Baldridge told News Center 7 that equipping coups with bio-security and watching flocks can help slow the spread of bird flu.
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