As we in Canada are faced with a deadly Avion Influenza (AI) in all sectors of the poultry industry I am reminded of the time when I faced a very similar situation where we were hit with AI back in 2014/2015 in Belize where we had a layer and broiler farm. I thought I should perhaps put this on paper as many of you are wondering what will become of your farm.
Disclaimer
Can we claim that our water treatment saved our farm? Absolutely not; this was not a clinical trial. However, we feel it helped.
In December of 2014 when a routine test was done on a broiler breeder farm less than 1/2 of a mile from our farm, they discovered they had detected a virus. As this was the first time that the poultry industry in Belize had been confronted with this, it took a while for them to isolate the virus. So, in Jan of 2015 it was confirmed that this farm and by now a few other farms had contracted the H5N2 AI virus. It was a low pathogen virus, but we were told that this virus could mutate and that it could become a high pathogen virus. Any barn that tested positive was going to be depopulated. I remember sitting in the meeting saying to myself, what can I do to protect my birds? I contacted Zak Motala from Puroxi Pure Water Global Inc out of BC, Canada right away since he had been helping me and others with water treatment using a hydrogen peroxide-based product, Oxy Blast, along with certain acids for pH control for about 2 years. Because of the fact that Oxy Blast breaks down to oxygen and water we had the liberty to go high in PPM without causing adverse effects.
Zak gave me a special protocol above and beyond what we normally used for water treatment in our birds. As soon as I got home, I started the recommendations. We ramped up bio security where we would block off the barn yard area so no one could get close to the barn and we ensured our foot baths were up to snuff using Oxy Blast. I will share the recommended protocol with any of our customers who are interested in knowing more about it.
The poultry association started a routine testing of all layer and broiler breeder farms every 3 weeks where they would take 30 birds out of the barn and draw blood samples for screening. We didn’t know how long this would go for.
You can find more information about our story and how we started to deal with Zak at https://www.puroxialberta.com/2020/10/my-story/
Many barns in a 3 mile radius were depopulated in the following months. The raid was on and I had doubts if what I was doing would actually work, but I said, “what do I have to lose trying something nobody else is doing?” The breeder farm mentioned above was depopulated, and soon afterward a layer barn less than 250 meters was depopulated too, and this farm’s driveway went right by my layer barn. In Belize they mostly have open barns, and when the closest neighbor’s barn got depopulated I thought to myself, “where will the rodents go for feed now, my barn?” So for 7 months the poultry association systematically came to test my layers every 3 weeks without a single sign of a flu found in my birds.
In February of 2015, just after a month of knowing what we were dealing with, the hatcheries called me to announce that I would be getting new chicks. I felt this was the worse timing for new birds, not knowing what would happen to my layers yet and to the poultry industry in the area. My cousin Denver had committed to raise my pullets, but the concern was that his nearby neighbor had lost his birds too. I asked Denver if he would be okay to let me set up a brand new water treatment system in his pullet barn, to which he agreed. I gave him product to disinfect his barn along with injection pumps, a sand filter, and product. After 3 months Denver brings me my birds, and I asked him what differences he saw in this flock compared to what he had seen in the many previous flocks that he had raised. He said that he had never seen such a low death loss and he was able to achieve the target weights better. Denver paid me for all the equipment because he didn’t want to see that leave his barn. In Belize the pullets are raised on the floor with sawdust on it, and it is a given that these birds have to be dewormed as soon as they come into the production barn where they are kept in cages. Since farms in North America were reporting that this water treatment was effective in killing worms and parasites, I felt I should prove it to myself to see if this was really true, so I asked the vet from the feed mill to come and open up a few birds to see if there was any trace of worms. To his amazement he did not find one worm in the birds he opened. This flock of birds turned out to be the best flock I had ever had. Stable production and performance.