After keeping our birds under cover all last winter, I was hoping that bird flu would not make an appearance this winter; but it has and is apparently even worse. So once again our eight chickens and four ducks are all locked up together at home, instead of working hard in the garden and allotment.
Up until now, the ducks had been free ranging at home, including in the veg patch to clean up bugs and slugs; as they don't eat many vegetables--unlike chickens--my chard and cabbages are still intact. Hopefully they got plenty of slugs as they probably won't get another chance at them until the summer. As for the chickens, I had hoped they could stay all winter at the allotment, where I had begun digging up grass for them. I won't have much motivation to dig grass now, or even to visit at all for that matter.
Thankfully none of our birds have ever contracted avian influenza, because the whole flock would need to be culled. It's spread by wild birds and is very transmissable between them and domestic birds, though they say it's very rare that it makes the jump to humans (though very dangerous when it does). Part of the reason they can't stay at the allotment is that we can't follow their strict biosecurity rules; the rules are for good reason, as if any birds tested positive on the site, all birds on the site would be culled. I don't want that to happen to mine, nor to be the cause of it for others.
