A report from the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) revealed several similarities between incidences of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in dairy cattle in Kansas and Texas.
State agencies have reported that three dairies in Texas and two in Kansas have had confirmed cases, but WOAH, in its March 26 report, included information regarding “at least one dairy farm in Kansas and at least one dairy farm in Texas.” The counties where the farms are located that WOAH reported on are Seward County, Kansas, and Hartley County, Texas.
Regarding the situation in both counties, WOAH stated: “Commercial dairy milking cows experiencing an unexplained morbidity event with some later-lactation cows exhibiting decreased lactation, low appetite and other clinical signs.”
In each case, HPAI H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b from bovine origin samples were confirmed at a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Veterinary Services Laboratory.
WOAH did not provide information concerning sources of infection, but the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), earlier stated, “based on findings from Texas, the detections appear to have been introduced by wild birds.”
WOAH stated that HPAI was confirmed in eight cattle in Texas, while in Kansas the presence of the virus was confirmed in one cow.
The two affected counties are also somewhat geographically close. Liberal, the Seward County seat, and Channing, the Hartley County seat, are approximately 200 miles apart when traveling by highway.
With the confirmed presence of HPAI in cattle, two livestock species have now been affected in the United States. Earlier this month, WOAH reported that 10 goats in Stevens County, Minnesota, had been struck by the virus. That same farm in late February had the virus appear in a backyard poultry flock, involving 20 birds.
The last time HPAI was confirmed in a U.S. commercial poultry flock was March 12, when a flock of 31,200 commercial meat turkeys in Hutchinson County, South Dakota, was infected, according to APHIS.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.
