YORK –– Avian influenza may not be driving up egg prices and prompting culling of poultry stock like it was more than four years ago, but the disease remains in Maine and some experts said chickens are not the only livestock still at risk.
Its technical name is HPAI, a variant of the common bird flu H5N1, and local, state and national experts have said that it’s still here, both in Maine and nationwide.
“This strain has actually persisted, so it hasn’t died off like it has in the past over a year or two,” said Kristen Lamb, executive director at the Center for Wildlife in York.
The disease first emerged nationwide in late 2021, and appeared in Maine in early 2022. The disease spread fast, prompting some poultry farms nationwide to cull birds. The disease also drove egg prices higher than $5 per dozen.
Since then, Lamb said the center has taken more than 1,000 swab samples from area birds to be sent for testing, and more than 100,000,000 birds have died or been culled nationwide due to the disease. Even now, she said, the center is still finding birds testing positive.
Lamb is one of several wildlife centers and other organizations sending data to state and federal officials to help monitor the disease. Tegwin Taylor is a wildlife health biologist and veterinarian with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. She said on May 1 the department confirmed the disease was found in a red-tailed hawk in Biddeford, and just last week there was a case of the disease found in a common eider duck in Phippsburg. Its persistence after more than four years, she said, is unusual.
“This strain is definitely different compared to most avian influenza strains that we’ve dealt with,” she said.
Lamb said the center is seeing avian influenza in raptors such as owls and other predatory birds, but waterfowl are also common carriers of the disease, and it’s not just birds that are at risk. This variant of the disease has been known to spread to other species. Data from the USDA has shown it has jumped to cattle and pigs in about 20 different states since the 2021 outbreak.
Some of those states only reported a single case over the past five years, however, and Taylor noted none of those cases were in Maine.
“We haven’t had the impact that other states have had,” she said.
Still, the influenza has been detected in Maine in fox kits and seals, and both Taylor and Lamb acknowledged that people who keep small chicken coops on their property remain at risk.
“When wildlife and domesticated animals are interacting, there’s a risk on both sides,” Lamb said.
The best protection, both Lamb and Taylor said, is to keep chickens isolated from wild birds such as waterfowl with proper fencing and netting covering free-range areas. Owners should also make sure their birds are brought in at night.
Taylor said some birds can be sick without showing symptoms, but she encouraged anyone who did see any birds behaving strangely or find large numbers of dead birds to report their discoveries to state officials using this form on the department’s website.