Avian influenza: Over 81K birds culled in nine days

Panchkula, January 17

The culling operations got over at three poultry farms in the Barwala-Raipur Rani belt on its eighth day on Sunday after the confirmation of avian influenza in the region.

A total of 81,878 birds were culled at Siddharth Poultry Farm, Nature Poultry Farm and Narender Poultry Farm to break the chain of infection. As many as 3,008 eggs were also destroyed since January 9. Confirming the development, Deputy Commissioner Mukesh Kumar Ahuja said the culling operations in the infected region of 1-km had been completed in nine days.

In an earlier notification, it was stated that around 1.66 lakh birds will be culled at five farms. However, the Panchkula administration later excluded two farms. On the basis of remeasurement, the administration had claimed that their locations were outside the 1-km radius of the two epicentres.

Even as bird flu has already been confirmed by the Jalandhar-based Northern Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at four more poultry farms in the Barwala-Raipur Rani belt, their confirmatory reports from Bhopal are still awaited.

The DC said they were still awaiting reports from the Bhopal lab on confirmation of bird flu in more poultry farms. He added that samples collected from 16-17 poultry farms of late would be sent to the Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar where these would be tested for bird flu. — TNS