HYDERABAD: Bird Flu scare is back. Alerted by death of about 500 to 1,000 chickens in a poultry farm located in Hayathnagar mandal in Ranagreddy district, animal husbandry department suspected it might be a case of bird flu. A team of veterinary doctors were rushed to the farm on Thursday to conduct postmortem, collect samples from the dead and live birds at the farm.
In April, bird flu was detected in a poultry farm located in Thorrur village of the mandal. Lakhs of birds were culled to contain the infection.
Incidentally, the farm where fresh deaths of chickens were reported on Thursday is located beside Thorrur village.
The samples are slated to be sent to the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal, on Friday. Officials of the department said that the Union government instructed the samples could be tested only by the institute located in Bhopal, and not by any other institute.
Director of the department Dr D Venkateswarlu, said that anything about the infection can be confirmed by NIHSAD.
When bird flu hit the state in April, area within one kilometer radius of the infected farm was declared as infected zone, and 10 km around it as surveillance zone. Poultry birds in the infected zone were culled, eggs, and feed served to the birds was destroyed, as part of measures to contain spread of infection.
The department was scheduled to collect samples for coming few months from poultry farms located in surveillance zone, to check for infection.