Trying to imagine a farm with 1.8 million laying hens is difficult at best. However, that’s the size of the Weld County table egg facility that has spent the week working with the Colorado State Veterinarian’s office to destroy all 1.8 million birds as a result of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. It’s worthy of note all birds were destroyed humanely and according to the best practices set forth by the American Veterinary Medicine Association.

Since March of 2022, there have been nearly 200 incidents reported by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, ranging from wild birds and other wildlife to commercial farms. In total, 7 million commercial poultry have been destroyed since 2022 in Colorado alone. In poultry, to control the spread of disease and to ensure the welfare of poultry, they must be euthanized. Once detected, no products or animals leave the facility so there is no risk to consumers.

Conversely, in dairies, which have also been hard hit, cattle can be isolated and the symptoms are quite mild. Pasteurization — notably, the pasteurized milk ordinance has been in place for 100 years — kills the virus. This technology can be used on milk products or even eggs when they’re pasteurized as a liquid egg product.

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Colorado currently has the highest number of reported cases of HPAI. Dr. Maggie Baldwin, the Colorado State Veterinarian who has been up to her eyeballs in HPAI detection, reporting, control and management, said Colorado doesn’t likely have the highest number of cases of any state, but does have the highest number of reported cases. This, she said, speaks to the cooperation between her office and producers. This is all the more important because dairy producers can integrate best biosecurity practices and protect not only other dairies, but also the state’s poultry and pork producers.

Biosecurity is, as I’ve written extensively in the past, vitally important in agriculture. Short of enclosing agriculture operations in their own glass domes, producers have a slew of biosecurity measures that can be implemented depending on the risk to the particular operation.

HPAI is certainly not the only disease producers want to prevent on farms, but it is the headliner at this point. In the most stringent situations, personnel can be required to shower into facilities and wear site- or even barn-specific clothing and boots. All trucks and equipment entering the facility, from the feed truck to the trash truck, are washed before entering, and barns are closed to unauthorized personnel. Employees in contact with poultry, for example, are not contractually allowed to own their own poultry at home to minimize disease introduction.

There are, however, some wild cards.

Not every farm has its own feed mill, where rations are mixed and loaded into a feed delivery truck and transported to on-farm bins. This poses some risk that can be managed with truck washes but ration ingredients can also periodically contain viruses. Feed is a difficult vector to manage, but necessary, nonetheless.

Personnel introducing disease is also a risk, as well as unauthorized personnel. There is a Colorado-tied animal rights extremist group that prides itself on their “rescues” of farm animals. The extremists video themselves trespassing onto private property, the big corporations are favorite targets, enter barns and steal livestock under the guise of rescue.

In the process of trespassing and traipsing through barns, the thousands of animals in the barn are then exposed to all manner of disease and, honestly, bad behavior, though the former is far more serious.

In dairy cows, the earliest indicator of HPAI is decreased rumination in farms with individual animal monitoring systems. Cattle and other ruminants have four stomach compartments that allow them to digest things like grass that a non-ruminant is unable to convert to energy. If you’re looking for heroes with superpowers, look no further than cattle who can take grass and turn it into steak. Voila!

I learned this week many Colorado dairies have rumen-monitoring systems on individual cows, allowing them to monitor rumination activity. In short, the cattle people observe chewing their cuds are chewing feed that has been partially digested and is chewed again to be better broken down to allow the nutrients to be accessed. Baldwin said one dairy farm with rumen monitors observed so many cows experiencing reduced rumination activity, they initially thought the system was malfunctioning. Another dairy that milks 1,000 head of cows, had 300 cows pulled from production and their milk was not ending up in the milk truck headed for town. There’s no doubt the disease, even when symptoms are mild, is financially devastating. Baldwin did say that monitoring and early reporting allows the dairy producer, their herd veterinarian and her office to implement safeguards immediately to reduce production impacts and the risk to animal wellness and welfare.

In short, ag producers are going to great lengths to be good neighbors and to protect the most abundant, affordable and safe food supply in the world.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.