- May 21, 2018
- 34
- 26
- 104
I'm a hobby farmer from British Columbia, although admittedly my parents do most of the work cause I'm a bit of a germaphobe. I live with my Mom and Dad and a back yard full of fowls near the forest, geese, ducks, muscovies, and many chickens, all free range.
I was out for a month to do house sitting for someone, but I heard "the chickens have gotten sick". When I came back, half the farm was gone, there was a pile of lifeless geese in the wheelbarrow along with several dead chickens, the geese we watched grow up just this year, the goslings of our favorite pet goose Denis. The only animals left were 2 geese (including denis), a handful of chickens that also later died, and the ducks, except for a couple that suddenly dropped dead without warning, I assume the illness gave the weaker ones a heart attack.
All the deaths happened quite suddenly, they would get tired and lethargic, some would wheeze and puff up for a few days before dying, others would be fine one moment and dead the next. The geese I've been told had the most flu-like symptoms before slowly dying over 2-4 days, along with bloody eyes.
Come to think of it now, I haven't heard or seen the ravens in a while, there used to be a family of them that would eat eggs we'd leave out, they knew better not to kill the animals, but if a couple chickens died from a mink or raccoon attack, they'd eat the scraps with the vultures. You'd think with all the bodies, they'd be having a feast right now, which I've been worried about cause that could make them sick, but I haven't even seen them. It looks like there's a couple bodies that something's tampered with, but all the recent carcasses are left completely untouched, we have had racoons, eagles, all kinds of birds of prey that would be eating these, there was even a cougar around here. When we had a dog attack, and when the meat birds kept having heart attacks during the massive heat dome that one year, the carcasses would be nothing but scattered bones in a day or two, but there's nothing eating anything now and it's eerie.
Unfortunately, I do see mallards in the pond, and I understand now why they're called pond rats, running around spreading the black death of birds. There are song birds around too, eating the seeds the chickens never got to, which is distressing, but there's not much I can do to decontaminated this place, and I can scare off the mallards, not necessarily the juncos though. I've thought about buying a bulk of high concentration hydrogen peroxide, diluting it to about 3% and then dumping it everywhere the chickens have been, could potentially **** up the yard, but anything to prevent complete extinction of all the chickens in the area, I know people here don't take precautions. In terms of bodies, I think we need a burn pile, or large hole for composting. I'm terrified of reporting the Avian Flu case, because we'd have to get the government in to cull ALL the rest of the domestic birds using carbon dioxide containers, I don't think my family would ever forgive me, and so many of the muscovies are pets to me, Biscuit is my baby, and my mother loves Denis to death, hopefully not literally cause she doesn't protect herself from infection at all, which brings me to the darkest part of this story; the virus has infected one of the mammals too.
Brian, our cat, was only 1 years and 4 months old, was extremely affectionate, trusting, laid back, the only cat I've ever met who loved belly rubs and cuddles, the littermate of Stewie (my other cat). He was a prolific hunter of rats, rabbits, and unfortunately, birds, suffocated to death on his own inflamed lungs packed with mucus. His X-Ray was white, except for one pocket of black near the top of his lung, that was the only place air was getting in, the white part was all fluid. There was absolutely nothing the vet could've done, we had to put him down yesterday.
I'm used to the chickens dying I'll be honest, they get diseases all the time, wry neck, impacted crop, you know the drill if you're on this site, but Brian, he was like a young adult in cat years, could've made it to 15 at least. I knew he was in danger being an outdoor cat, but I didn't think he'd go out like this, he could've fought something to the death, he could've gone out swift and quickly from a car, it would be horrific but miles ahead of slowly drowning over the course of 4 days, starving and dehydrated. Instead of comforting him in his last days, I had to hold him down to inject fluids into him, and force broth into his mouth. My parents hate the vet, and I don't have the money or a drivers license to take him there myself, so we just made due with what we had, with my sister's help cause she's a nurse. It wasn't till he couldn't breath my parents finally took him in, which made me relieved, I thought the vets could save him.
I have so much regret, I haven't been outside in a few days, I have OCD and this situation has caused me to relapse, but there was so much failure and negligence that I can't trust anyone in my family anymore to protect anything, how can someone tell me "everything will be fine" as I sit and watch as everything dies. Months ago I wanted the cats to stay inside for a while because there was a mountain lion in our yard, and you could hear it caterwaul and scream sometimes in the night. My parents kept letting the cats out anyways.
One of our cats died of bird flu and my parents are trying to convince themselves it was just a congenital thing that killed him and the virus had nothing to do with it, my sister who's a nurse told me that too, and now they're letting the dogs and Stewie outside again in the yard everything died in, my niece is sleeping in the bed Brian spent 4 days dying in. I can't ****ing believe it.
This happens often, "guys, there's a family of mink, we should probably keep the birds inside the coops" "guys, we need to lock up the ducks" "we need to keep the ducklings inside the house till their big enough", I have to ****ing wait for something to die before people listen, and they listen for a day before going back to their old routine like nothing happened. Brian had to die so we could keep Stewie inside for a day, now he's outside again probably eating the chicken bodies just laying around, or maybe eating a sick bird, I'm so pissed.
And every time I try to look up advice anywhere, it's only news sites and people saying that the bird flu is a myth created by the government to cause another lock down, cause a food shortage, or force farmers out of business, everyone I know thinks it a myth and I feel like I'm going crazy, it wasn't till recently I managed to convince my mom that what had just happened was caused by a virus, not by energy waves or algae. I really want people to see the real danger in this, have we really forgotten how much diseases kill, how deadly they can get? In less than a week, half of all my animals died, including my cat. Not to mention it's an influenza A virus, and many of its closest relatives have spread to humans and mammals on multiple occasions, it's very likely with the lack of any actual caution, it'll jump to humans, I'm certain it'll happen at some point this next few decades, and no one will care cause Covid cried wolf.
I needed to talk about this, I feel like I have to do something, like warn people who'll listen as much as possible. And also show a personal experience of the disease on top of that since they seem hard to find, other people are probably a lot safer with their animals than we are, and people in the "it's a hoax" mindset aren't going to see it as a flu thing, and maybe people don't want to alert anyone about it out of fear of having their entire farm euthanized. People have to collectively put in effort to prevent the diseases spread, we can't do that if no one cares, or even actively goes out of their way to do dangerous stuff to "stick it to the government". The anti vax/anti virus movement has to be a psyop within itself to cause people to accidently kill themselves and others, leading to their farms getting destroyed, I remember someone in the area had all their sheep die too from a parasite that went ignored, my mom knew a woman who tried to naturally heal her breast cancer, and she died, everyone blamed the vaccine she got, I can't believe it, I feel like I live in the 1700s.
PLEASE take Avian Flu seriously, keep your birds away from wild birds, mallards especially, and don't let your cats hunt right now.
I was out for a month to do house sitting for someone, but I heard "the chickens have gotten sick". When I came back, half the farm was gone, there was a pile of lifeless geese in the wheelbarrow along with several dead chickens, the geese we watched grow up just this year, the goslings of our favorite pet goose Denis. The only animals left were 2 geese (including denis), a handful of chickens that also later died, and the ducks, except for a couple that suddenly dropped dead without warning, I assume the illness gave the weaker ones a heart attack.
All the deaths happened quite suddenly, they would get tired and lethargic, some would wheeze and puff up for a few days before dying, others would be fine one moment and dead the next. The geese I've been told had the most flu-like symptoms before slowly dying over 2-4 days, along with bloody eyes.
Come to think of it now, I haven't heard or seen the ravens in a while, there used to be a family of them that would eat eggs we'd leave out, they knew better not to kill the animals, but if a couple chickens died from a mink or raccoon attack, they'd eat the scraps with the vultures. You'd think with all the bodies, they'd be having a feast right now, which I've been worried about cause that could make them sick, but I haven't even seen them. It looks like there's a couple bodies that something's tampered with, but all the recent carcasses are left completely untouched, we have had racoons, eagles, all kinds of birds of prey that would be eating these, there was even a cougar around here. When we had a dog attack, and when the meat birds kept having heart attacks during the massive heat dome that one year, the carcasses would be nothing but scattered bones in a day or two, but there's nothing eating anything now and it's eerie.
Unfortunately, I do see mallards in the pond, and I understand now why they're called pond rats, running around spreading the black death of birds. There are song birds around too, eating the seeds the chickens never got to, which is distressing, but there's not much I can do to decontaminated this place, and I can scare off the mallards, not necessarily the juncos though. I've thought about buying a bulk of high concentration hydrogen peroxide, diluting it to about 3% and then dumping it everywhere the chickens have been, could potentially **** up the yard, but anything to prevent complete extinction of all the chickens in the area, I know people here don't take precautions. In terms of bodies, I think we need a burn pile, or large hole for composting. I'm terrified of reporting the Avian Flu case, because we'd have to get the government in to cull ALL the rest of the domestic birds using carbon dioxide containers, I don't think my family would ever forgive me, and so many of the muscovies are pets to me, Biscuit is my baby, and my mother loves Denis to death, hopefully not literally cause she doesn't protect herself from infection at all, which brings me to the darkest part of this story; the virus has infected one of the mammals too.
Brian, our cat, was only 1 years and 4 months old, was extremely affectionate, trusting, laid back, the only cat I've ever met who loved belly rubs and cuddles, the littermate of Stewie (my other cat). He was a prolific hunter of rats, rabbits, and unfortunately, birds, suffocated to death on his own inflamed lungs packed with mucus. His X-Ray was white, except for one pocket of black near the top of his lung, that was the only place air was getting in, the white part was all fluid. There was absolutely nothing the vet could've done, we had to put him down yesterday.
I'm used to the chickens dying I'll be honest, they get diseases all the time, wry neck, impacted crop, you know the drill if you're on this site, but Brian, he was like a young adult in cat years, could've made it to 15 at least. I knew he was in danger being an outdoor cat, but I didn't think he'd go out like this, he could've fought something to the death, he could've gone out swift and quickly from a car, it would be horrific but miles ahead of slowly drowning over the course of 4 days, starving and dehydrated. Instead of comforting him in his last days, I had to hold him down to inject fluids into him, and force broth into his mouth. My parents hate the vet, and I don't have the money or a drivers license to take him there myself, so we just made due with what we had, with my sister's help cause she's a nurse. It wasn't till he couldn't breath my parents finally took him in, which made me relieved, I thought the vets could save him.
I have so much regret, I haven't been outside in a few days, I have OCD and this situation has caused me to relapse, but there was so much failure and negligence that I can't trust anyone in my family anymore to protect anything, how can someone tell me "everything will be fine" as I sit and watch as everything dies. Months ago I wanted the cats to stay inside for a while because there was a mountain lion in our yard, and you could hear it caterwaul and scream sometimes in the night. My parents kept letting the cats out anyways.
One of our cats died of bird flu and my parents are trying to convince themselves it was just a congenital thing that killed him and the virus had nothing to do with it, my sister who's a nurse told me that too, and now they're letting the dogs and Stewie outside again in the yard everything died in, my niece is sleeping in the bed Brian spent 4 days dying in. I can't ****ing believe it.
This happens often, "guys, there's a family of mink, we should probably keep the birds inside the coops" "guys, we need to lock up the ducks" "we need to keep the ducklings inside the house till their big enough", I have to ****ing wait for something to die before people listen, and they listen for a day before going back to their old routine like nothing happened. Brian had to die so we could keep Stewie inside for a day, now he's outside again probably eating the chicken bodies just laying around, or maybe eating a sick bird, I'm so pissed.
And every time I try to look up advice anywhere, it's only news sites and people saying that the bird flu is a myth created by the government to cause another lock down, cause a food shortage, or force farmers out of business, everyone I know thinks it a myth and I feel like I'm going crazy, it wasn't till recently I managed to convince my mom that what had just happened was caused by a virus, not by energy waves or algae. I really want people to see the real danger in this, have we really forgotten how much diseases kill, how deadly they can get? In less than a week, half of all my animals died, including my cat. Not to mention it's an influenza A virus, and many of its closest relatives have spread to humans and mammals on multiple occasions, it's very likely with the lack of any actual caution, it'll jump to humans, I'm certain it'll happen at some point this next few decades, and no one will care cause Covid cried wolf.
I needed to talk about this, I feel like I have to do something, like warn people who'll listen as much as possible. And also show a personal experience of the disease on top of that since they seem hard to find, other people are probably a lot safer with their animals than we are, and people in the "it's a hoax" mindset aren't going to see it as a flu thing, and maybe people don't want to alert anyone about it out of fear of having their entire farm euthanized. People have to collectively put in effort to prevent the diseases spread, we can't do that if no one cares, or even actively goes out of their way to do dangerous stuff to "stick it to the government". The anti vax/anti virus movement has to be a psyop within itself to cause people to accidently kill themselves and others, leading to their farms getting destroyed, I remember someone in the area had all their sheep die too from a parasite that went ignored, my mom knew a woman who tried to naturally heal her breast cancer, and she died, everyone blamed the vaccine she got, I can't believe it, I feel like I live in the 1700s.
PLEASE take Avian Flu seriously, keep your birds away from wild birds, mallards especially, and don't let your cats hunt right now.
