A veterinary disease expert says producers should not let their guard down when it comes to protecting livestock from avian influenza.
Dr. Keith Poulsen with the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory says that for birds, most of the focus is in South Dakota, Ohio, and the Tennessee River Valley and he’s encouraged by the low number of new infections so far this spring. “Hopefully, we’re getting through that as migration is ending, the birds continue to move north, and the weather is pretty supportive of that, so we know that the virus is still in the environment just because we’re seeing dead birds but we’re not seeing it in our domestic poultry.”
Wisconsin has had one infected flock so far in 2025 in Sheboygan County in April.
As for H5N1 in dairy cattle, Poulsen says the epicenter right now is Idaho. “We move a lot of lactating cows into Idaho from the southwest, and whether or not there’s kind of a slow burn on those farms, and when you introduce naive animals, it’s like new kids going into a new daycare or school, they’re going to come up with everything that’s already there.”
Poulsen says the virus is still an issue in California, where environmental conditions and the close proximity of dairies in the Chino Valley added to their problems. “Just because we don’t have as many new cases in California, those veterinarians and the herd owners are talking about how we still have flu on the farm or we still have positive cases, they’re just not new cases, so it all depends on how you look at that data.”
Poulsen says as the temperatures rise, he’s expecting California to see the same H5N1 resurgence as Idaho has experienced.
Poulsen says the number of new H5N1 cases may be lower, but the virus is not gone. “It’s not going away, and everytime we think it’s going away, it really comes back and our animal agriculture industries, whether it’s poultry, swine, or dairy need to maintain vigilance for this.”
Poulsen says every animal coming into the farm should be tested, farm biosecurity should be stepped up, and extreme caution should be used when moving animals for show or sale.
Source: Brownfield Ag News / Larry Lee
