Gehri Bhagi (Bathinda), March 8
Panic has gripped this village, near Bathinda, with more than 3,000 birds having died due to an unidentified disease at a poultry farm. Veterinarians of the Animal Husbandry Department have launched an inspection of all poultry farms within a radius of 3 km of the farm.

Department officials have ruled out the presence of avian influenza virus in the dead birds, but they feel that birds’ death might be due to some other deadly virus “because the birds did not react even to the antibiotic medicines given to them,” Dr Darshan Singh, deputy director of the department told The Tribune today.

The poultry birds started dying last week. When this correspondent visited the farm, only 40 birds were left alive. These too were visibly suffering from the disease.

“Samples have been collected from the poultry farm and sent to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory, Bhopal. We don’t think it’s the case of avian influenza because the virus affects humans as well whereas the family of the poultry farm owner was unaffected by the disease,” Dr Darshan Singh said. Teams from the veterinary and animal husbandry departments have been visiting the farm ever since they got to know about the death of the birds.

Animal Husbandry Department officials have said the birds had nasal discharge, eye discharge, sneezing, riffled feathers and many more other symptoms. All birds were one month old.

Poultry farm owner Jagsir Singh, who has suffered a loss to the tune of around Rs 2-3 lakh in the death of the birds, said: “All this started almost a week ago.

On the first day, three birds died and I immediately contacted the microbiologist at the Veterinary Polyclinic in Bathinda. But the birds did not respond to the antibiotics given to them. On the second day, 78 birds died while the toll went up to 1,000 on the third day.

The next day 500 more birds died and by the end of this week, almost all birds had died. We thought that the death of the birds was due to some deadly virus because the they did not even get time to react to the medicines given to them.”

“All of my birds were fully vaccinated and all kinds of precautionary measures were taken ever since I started this poultry farm in 1999.

“From time to time, I have been taking guidance from the Animal Husbandry Department, Punjab Agricultural University as well as other veterinary doctors.

“Till date, mortality percentage at my farm was just 4-5, which is considered normal,” he added.