The culling of birds in Thorrur village finally came to an end on Friday evening, with 1,60,071 chickens having been culled by the Animal Husbandry department, along with 2,30,928 eggs and 200 metric tonne of feed being destroyed in the five farms where operations were taken up.
The five farms where culling operations were carried out were owned by Balakrishna Reddy, Kondal Rao, Janardhan Rao, Krishna Rao and Hanumanth Rao. The Avian Bird flu was detected at the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) in Bhopal on Monday, and the State government was notified. After that, all birds in a kilometre’s radius were also culled as per Central directions. The samples were sent to the HSADL by Balakrishna Reddy, owner of Srinivas Reddy farms, after thousands of birds began dying suddenly. Though culling operations are over, the Animal Husbandry department is yet to ascertain the cause or source of infection, said a senior official. The bodies of the dead birds were buried in the farms itself.
“It will be very difficult to find out the source, because we are 99 per cent sure that it came from an outside bird, like a swan or a crow. So we won’t be able to know how the disease spread,” explained the official, and added that no other infected birds were found in the other four farms, where birds were culled.
Balakrishna Reddy had on Thursday told The Hindu that loses incurred due to the culling of birds at his farm were Rs.2.5 crore, and feed worth Rs.40 to Rs.45 lakh was also destroyed.
