The Poultry Epidemiologist
called last week and made arrangements to come out at 10AM on 6 February,
so we left the birds penned to make them easier to catch for testing. I
took the day off from work to help. |
As usual, Alton Williams
from the Texas Veterinary Medicine Diagnostics Laboratory at Texas A&M
University was right on time. We left the pasture gate open for him
to just drive on in. |
Just arrived, he's getting
his equipment ready.
He sprays his boots with
disinfectant or puts disposable plastic covers over his boots to minimize
the possibility of spreading any infections from one farm to another. He
prepares the test plate, marked off with squares by placing a drop of blue
test antigen (kept in a cooler) in each square on the plate. |
Justine and I caught the
birds one at a time and handed them to the inspector to test. Each bird
is held by the wings, and a tool called a "needle and loop" is used to
pierce a vein at the first joint under the bird's wing. |
The loop part of
the tool is then used to collect a drop of the blood and mix it with one
of the drops of antigen on the test plate. The bird is then released to
range. |
If a bird is infected with
Fowl Typhoid or Pullorum, the antigen will cause the blood to begin to
coagulate within 15-20 seconds. If no coagulation is witnessed within
that time, the bird is not infected. |
The testing took about
2 hours. A sampling of birds (about 1/3 to 1/2) of each breed was
tested, because our flock contains more than 500 birds (about 1,100 total).
Alton has a laptop and printer in the van and printed out our certification
as soon as testing was completed. |
All done until next February,
2002. All our birds tested negative for Fowl Typhoid and Pullorum
for the third year in a row. Click HERE
to see a copy of our 2003 Test Certification. |
NPIP
Flock Testing
