And next, they encounter a concept like bio-security.ĭr. Kids wander through a county fair and fall in love with a 4H chicken, that's normal. Each person has to make a decision what he or she is willing to do in terms of bio-security.ĬHADWICK: Bio-security. Bradley, are you saying that there basically should not be any more such thing as a barnyard chicken?ĭr. Often backyarders, they like the idea of having free-roaming chickens, but that's not best for the safety and the protection of the birds.ĬHADWICK: Dr. I'm delighted that she has all her birds in confined, protective housing. BRADLEY: Oh, I'm very impressed with Jenna's set up. Bradley, what do you think about these chickens?ĭr. and so, you're kind of keeping it more contained so with avian flu we're a little more prepared for it.ĭr. We have a set of just backyard shoes that come back here. CHADOVICH: You worry about, you know, your shoes. And it's a lot, the sturdy shed, the individual raised cages inside, the daily precautions against introducing germs. You can hear them in the neighborhood.ĬHADWICK: Jenna is showing Francine what she's doing to keep these birds safe from avian flu. Down the street, I believe there's some chickens. CHADOVICH: The people behind us have chickens. They can learn to do tricks, though she doesn't specify which ones.ĬHADWICK: This place must be loud at dawn. CHADOVICH: Walking through the fairs, I just see all the kids with their animals and I'm like, you know what, that's what I want to do.ĬHADWICK: She got into 4-H. This is a normal-looking yard behind a neighborhood house. And behind is a White-frizzled (unintelligible).ĬHADWICK: There's a rooster with a spray of head feathers that suggests Rod Stewart's barber.ĬHADWICK: This is not a farm. CHADOVICH: She's over there sitting on her eggs, which she kind of separated on her own. JENNA CHADOVICH(ph): In the middle pen there is a Black-frizzled (unintelligible).ĬHADWICK: These chickens belong to Jenna Chadovich. BRADLEY: See you've got a Polish over there, a White-crested Polish. BRADLEY: But yes, backyard flocks can be more vulnerable if the people do not keep their birds confined and in covered pens.ĬHADWICK: And this is what has Francine down in Fontana, hundreds of miles from her office at the University of California at Davis.ĬHADWICK: She's passing through a gate here and into a backyard, a dog pen on one side, a long chicken coop on the other.ĭr. Our commercial poultry is under cover.ĬHADWICK: Big chicken farms she means, with barns like warehouses.ĭr. BRADLEY: Certainly we know that birds that come from Siberia will migrate as far as Alaska so they can co-mingle with birds that do migrate through California. There are a lot of neighborhood chickens.ĬHADWICK: So, doesn't that mean that we are vulnerable? Yard chickens might get sick from migrating birds and we could get sick from them?ĭr. So, there are chickens everywhere you look or listen.ĬHADWICK: Okay. So you think San Francisco, there can't be chickens in San Francisco. BRADLEY: They were astounding with the tonnage of chicken feed that sold on a weekly basis.ĭr. How many are there, for instance? Researchers once tried to calculate local numbers from chicken feeds sales in San Francisco.ĭr. But it's hard to know about backyard chickens.
A lot of experts think that bird flu will spread to backyard chickens, or back balcony chickens for that matter, from wild birds, and that it will take off from there. They lived in condominiums and they would keep two chickens in a cage on the balcony of their condominium.ĬHADWICK: Birds.
BRADLEY: I've had clubs in downtown Oakland - we called them the condo chicken kids. FRANCINE BRADLEY (Poultry Specialist, University of California, Davis): Many years ago every county had a poultry farm advisor and I'm the one poultry specialist left in California.ĬHADWICK: She'll swat a word for emphasis or pause sometimes in the strained, patience of someone often misunderstood. Here, on phantom front lines, Francine Bradley is an army of one.ĭr. But don't panic yet.ĬHADWICK: If we do wind up in a battle with bird flu, it's probably going to start in a place like Fontana, near the desert edge on the vast grid cluster of Southern California. And with chickens somewhere is practically everywhere. And a White House report out this week warns that if the virus evolves so humans can pass it on, millions might die.īRAND: Many experts say migrating birds will bring the flu to this country soon, probably by infecting a flock of backyard chickens somewhere. At a conference in Singapore, an American researcher said the current virus is the worst he's ever seen. There is more frightening news about bird flu.
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