Less than 24 hours after a deadly infection of bird flu was confirmed at a turkey farm north of Des Moines, nearby farmer Bud Wood packed about 3,500 of his rare baby chicks into boxes and put them in a truck.
With the delicate birds just hours old, the president of Murray McMurray Hatchery hit the road around 1 a.m. on a Saturday to drive through the night to a friend's farm in Texas "just to have them in a safe place," he said.
Breeding chickens that are the valuable genetic source for egg-laying hens have gone into hiding as the outbreak of bird flu in poultry has developed into the worst animal-health emergency in U.S. history. Some have been relocated as far away as Brazil.
Wood's breeding stock includes chickens with genetic lines that date back to the early 1900s. Some of the breeds are so rare, he said, that if they were ever wiped out by the flu, "even to find them and build them back up to bigger numbers would take a long time."
So when turkeys about 8 miles from Wood's hatchery in Webster City were infected, he scrambled to relocate his most precious birds.
Wood made a "Noah's Ark" list of breeds he had to move to safety, including male and female White Cochins that look like snowballs with masses of downy feathers, and Anconas, a breed with lustrous black plumage that originated in Italy.
He plans to keep the chickens in Texas through spring while he monitors the virus in the Iowa epicenter.
Bird flu has killed more than 48 million chickens and turkeys nationwide since December, with most of the losses affecting egg-laying hens in Iowa, the top egg-producer in the United States. Egg prices have soared as a result.
China halted imports of all U.S. poultry products this year because of the outbreak, while other global buyers have imposed more limited restrictions on trade.
FALL'S MIGRATING BIRDS POSE NEXT CONCERN
Poultry breeders and hatcheries want to keep the flu away from their chickens, which are bred to produce hens for commercial operations and backyard coops.
Breeders and hatcheries are relocating parts of their flocks even though Iowa has had a month free of new infections.
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