Hickman’s Family Farms loses 95% of Arizona chickens to bird flu

A West Valley farm and one of the largest egg producers in the U.S. confirmed on Friday that it has lost nearly its entire chicken population in Arizona due to bird flu and will be forced to reduce staff.

“I’m here today to tell you that we’ve lost 95% of the chickens we have in the state,” said Glenn Hickman, the Hickman’s Family Farms’ president and CEO, explaining that staff tried to contain the situation to one farm.

He says hens at one of the farms began showing symptoms two weeks ago. Swabs were sent to the University of Arizona for analysis, and bird flu was detected.

“We shut down all traffic between farms and all personnel; everything we possibly could do to isolate that farm, and it didn’t work,” Hickman explained. “We’ve been slowly losing the other three farms plus our replacement pullet flock over the past two weeks.”

This is a tragic situation for the farm, the birds, and the entire industry. It also shows the speed with which avian influenza can move within a production system, even prior to clinical signs and laboratory diagnosis. I won’t pretend to make wise judgements regarding biosecurity conditions at any of the farms; obviously this virus got through whatever was in place at multiple farms. NVSL has not yet reported 2 of the 4 infected layers, nor the pullet farm to date.

The owner refers to the virus spreading despite steps they took at the later breaking farms to prevent infection. One of the really discouraging factors with influenza is its relatively long preclinical incubation period on a flock basis. The virus can infect and single bird, replicate and spread for several days before enough bird are affected or die to trigger observation and testing. In the mean-time regular management activities persist - feed deliveries, supervisory inspections, egg pickups, worker rotations, etc. Any potential crossover activities between related flocks are risks for viral spread prior to any clue that a flock is incubating HPAI. All too often, attempts to cut off spread from infected to potential contact flocks are “too little too late”.

As relatively short as a 24-48 hour preclinical incubation may be for individual birds, diagnostic cycle time still stretches out on a flock and system basis to make cutting off systemic spread really difficult with flock clinical illness-triggered centralized laboratory testing for HPAI. Once again, I’d make a pitch for more routine numerous cheap environmentally-based "Pen-Side Tests”, looking to flag influenza RNA PRIOR to any clinical signs. Finding a few false positives is a small price to pay for the opportunity to catch a valid HPAI infection 3-5 days earlier to allow more rapid quarantine and humane depopulation of asymptomatic infected birds.

Glenn Hickman is exactly right regarding the necessity for protection with vaccine. He also needs to determine and publicize the source of the virus (dairy or wildlife) that infected his initial flock. However, the entire industry should also push hard to develop approved highly sensitive and specific tools to diagnose infections days earlier in infected sites. The latest technology is damned good and should be validated now to flag official testing earlier! In this case it might have prevented several downstream infections by finding the first one more promptly. With HPAI, diagnostic time is always of the essence!

John