Avian Flu Keeps Chickens Home

      For the past four years, Rossville Rustlers 4-H Club member Leah Hudson has inspected her small flock of chickens to pick the best three to enter in the poultry division at the Shawnee County Fair.
     She makes her selection based on which chickens have the most feathers, look the prettiest and are in the best condition. Her judgment has proven pretty good — one year she brought home a purple ribbon.
      This year, however, Leah’s birds will stay in their pens when the county fair rolls around in late July.
      The Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Animal Health, issued a stop movement order on June 9 that targets poultry and other live birds in an effort to prevent the spread of the highly pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza.
      The order resulted in the cancellation of all poultry-related shows and events through Dec. 31 in Kansas, including county and state fairs, swap meets, exotic sales, live bird auctions and other poultry activities where birds of different flock commingle. More than 2,000 4-Hers will be affected statewide.
      “It wasn’t really that much of a shock,” Leah, 12, an eighth-grader at Rossville Junior High, said, noting a positive case of avian flu had been found earlier this year in Leavenworth County.
      While live birds will be restricted from county fairs, egg exhibits will still be allowed.
      Lynette Hudson, Leah’s mother and a leader for the Rossville Rustlers 4-H Club, said she appreciates the KDA’s efforts to try to protect the state’s poultry industry and its decision to pull live birds from the fairs.
      As a parent, it takes that hard decision off us,” she said, adding she also understands the disappointment of senior 4-Hers for whom this year was the final opportunity to show their poultry projects. “But, I’d rather not take (the birds) and get them exposed.”
      K-State Research and Extension staff, county and state fair officials and poultry industry representatives are trying to find ways 4-Hers enrolled in poultry projects can still showcase their work without having their birds present.
      Brooke Gray, 4-H youth development program assistant at the Shawnee County Extension Office, said Extension staff and others are working on options to the regular way 4-Hers participate in the poultry division at the Shawnee County Fair, which will run July 30-Aug. 2 at the Kansas Expocentre.
      “It’s still a work in progress,” she said, adding 4-Hers might create a poster with photographs of their birds, give a talk or complete a project notebook as substitutes for exhibiting their birds.
      Although Gray said she didn’t know how many poultry exhibits were entered in last year’s Shawnee County Fair, Cara Robinson, 4-H project manager for the Meadowlark District of K-State Research and Extension in Holton, said about 30 4-Hers typically exhibit poultry at the Jackson County Fair.
      Robinson said those youngsters are being encouraged to enter posters, notebooks with photos and information, record books or videos explaining their poultry projects at this year’s fair, from July 27 to 31 at the fairgrounds in Holton.
      “The majority of them also have other projects, like food or livestock,” she said, estimating last year’s fair brought in about 2,700 4-H entries.
      Denny Stoecklein, general manger of the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson, said about 1,200 pigeons, chickens, ducks and other types of poultry were on display at the 2014 state fair.
      Stoecklein said the ban on poultry gives the state fair — scheduled Sept. 11 through 20 — the opportunity to educate visitors about the avian flu while offering alternative ways 4-Hers can enter their projects in the poultry division. As an example, he said a youngster could use a stuffed toy bird instead of a live bird during the poultry showmanship competition.
      “People won’t walk through the poultry barn and see an empty building,” Stoecklein said.
      Details on how to handle the poultry ban at the state fair, he said, will be discussed this week during a conference call that will include the state fair poultry superintendent and officials from K-State Extension and Research and the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Animal Health.