Siouxland dairy farmers work to keep cattle safe from bird flu

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU)– Currently, more than two dozen herds have been infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (also known as bird flu), and experts say the virus doesn’t pose a threat to bovines.

“It’s been found to be a flu that was from an avian origin originally,” Phillip Jardon with the Iowa State Extension and Outreach Program said. “We do not know how it spread from animal to animal, but it looks like there’s probably some spread from cow to cow just from some of the herds that have had it.”

To protect their cattle, dairy farmers are doing everything they can to ensure they’re safe.

“The main biosecurity you’re going to see is farmers watching who comes on and off the farm, whether that’s a human or an animal,” Western Iowa Dairy Alliance Executive Director Kylie Nettinga said. “Secondly, if a cow does show symptoms perhaps, I know our farmers are going to call their veterinarians and work very closely with them to insure that those cows get better.”

“It’s really difficult on a dairy farm, where the feed’s stored outside, a lot of the cows are outside, it’s hard to keep them totally from birds,” Jardon said. “But there’s some things we can do to help discourage the birds. There’s things you can do to distract them with noise and false predators, some of those are more effective than others.”

Even if cattle catch bird flu, experts say it’s more of an inconvenience for farmers and their herds.

“The cows go off feed and they go down in milk production,” Jardon said, “but after about a couple weeks they’re back fairly to normal, and there have been very few or no deaths from this. Whereas in poultry, it does cause a lot of death.”

“I really don’t see this affecting our milk supply and the quality of your milk, because our cows are recovering from this and we are always pasteurizing our milk before it goes to our consumers,” Nettinga said. “There’s just literally no chance that you could attract avian flu from drinking milk, it’s just not possible.”

While efforts to contain and stop the spread of the virus continue, officials say they’re more concerned about it spreading to other animals as well as people.

“This virus is good at evolving and becoming more pathogenic, but there doesn’t seem to be any indication right now that it’s doing that,” Jardon said.

Currently, 21 states, including Nebraska, have implemented restrictions on dairy cattle imports from regions where HPAI infections have been reported.

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