tortoise
Wild Hare
From State Veterinarian Dr. Bob Ehlenfeldt:

Keep your chickens, but keep them safely.Backyard poultry and the world
The Wisconsin State Journal ran a story in a recent Sunday paper detailing how to start your own backyard chicken flock. Under the heading of "Health and nutrition," the writer said "Chickens have relatively few health problems, most of which can be avoided by keeping their coop and run clean and dry."
I'm sympathetic to her urge to produce something on her own. After all, I'm the guy with a vineyard in my backyard. But her navet made me a little nervous, because she represents a movement. Every month or two, there's another report of another Wisconsin city considering an ordinance to allow backyard chickens.
But here's the part that makes me nervous. Taiwan just banned poultry from Nebraska because a backyard chicken flock showed up at an exotic bird market with low-pathogenic avian influenza. Nebraska found the case via routine testing at the market, and then found two more infected flocks whose owners had bought birds from the original one. Note: No commercial flocks were involved, yet those international trade doors started slamming.
This time it was low-path AI - no human health risk, little risk to commercial flocks. What happens when it's high-path H5N1, the strain that's been killing people along with birds in Asia? What about the fact that salmonella often arrives with chicks infected in utero, and can be passed to humans in eggs they handle?
Backyard flocks are open to wild birds, including wild waterfowl -- the reservoir for many strains of avian influenza. I imagine this writer would say her chickens don't mingle with wild waterfowl. But Madison is built on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, with waterfowl flying overhead all the time. A co-worker who lives on the isthmus sees ducks wandering around her yard every spring, looking for nest sites.
This all makes me nervous, too, because it's not only chickens. We have all kinds of people with good intentions wanting to raise their own food or just live the country life, with a cow or two, some goats, some pigs, some horses. Often they are not aware of biosecurity measures, or don't believe they need those measures because they're small-scale. They also don't know, or don't believe, that they're risking their kids' health, their neighbors' health, their animals' health -- and the financial health of farmers who need to make a living with their livestock.
Not every big farm is well-run, I know, and we have room in Wisconsin for all sizes and kinds of farms, including this new breed of farmers. But somehow we need to convince them that bacteria and viruses don't distinguish between small and large flocks and herds. We need them to realize that they may well be more vulnerable than big farms that have the resources to practice good biosecurity and hire veterinarians.
There's a lot riding on a few chickens.