Vancouver backyard chickens practise social distancing from wild birds amid H5N1 risk

Josh and Holly Hergesheimer, owners of four chickens which live in their backyard in Vancouver, B.C., Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns)

Lumpy Eye the chicken has made plenty of friends in her East Vancouver neighbourhood over the years, said owner Duncan Martin, with passersby regularly greeting her in the yard outside their home.

But now the seven-year-old Bovan Brown hen is being kept in isolation in her coop, to prevent her coming into contact with wild birds — and H5N1 avian influenza.

“We consider ourselves at probably the smallest end of the spectrum of keeping chickens, with one at this point, but we tend to keep her in her run, so she’s fully protected,” said Martin.

Martin is among Vancouver’s urban poultry enthusiasts who are taking care to keep their flocks safe and healthy as deadly avian flu sweeps through dozens of commercial flocks across B.C., resulting in more than 8.5 million birds being culled.

But there’s also the risk of human infection — the first human death from bird flu in the United States was reported last week in a person from Louisiana who had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock.

In B.C., Canada’s first domestically acquired human case of H5N1 involved a teenage girl who became critically ill in November, and was only released from hospital on Jan. 7. The cause of her infection is unknown.

Pinder Rehal, a City of Vancouver spokeswoman, said bird flu represents a “real and present risk” to backyard chickens, although no infections have yet been recorded among the city’s 184 registered flocks.

The number of flocks has boomed since the city first allowed backyard chickens in 2010.

While it’s unclear how many backyard flocks have been infected with avian flu across Canada, Canadian Food Inspection Agency data shows there were outbreaks last year in 15 “non-commercial” poultry farms, referring to premises with fewer than 1,000 birds. These included four in B.C. among the total of 54 infected flocks in the province.

B.C’s chief veterinarian, Dr. Theresa Burns, urged owners of small or backyard flocks to stay vigilant and implement preventive measures, such as keeping their birds' environment clean and dry.

She said the “very safest thing” would be to keep chickens indoors without access to the outside environment, where they might encounter the virus shed from wild birds.

Burns said anyone with a backyard flock should make sure to change their clothes and shoes and wash their hands thoroughly after walking in a park, or visiting another property with backyard birds, while poultry feed should be managed to make sure it doesn’t attract wild birds.

Burns said North America is being heavily affected by avian flu, particularly along the Pacific flyway migration path along the west of the continent.

She said the most heavily contaminated substance is bird feces, and H5N1 is very good at surviving in cool, wet conditions.

Surveillance of wetlands in B.C. had shown some to be “very heavily contaminated with the virus.”

Although waterfowl including geese and ducks are most affected by the avian flu, small songbirds could also carry the virus into someone’s backyard, Burns said.

Martin said he and his partner keep Lumpy Eye separated not just from other birds, but from their pet cat.

“And if we’re out tending to her, just taking care of her or feeding her something, we always wash our hands and change our footwear and clothes,” said Martin.

Fellow East Vancouver chicken fanciers Joshua and Holly Hergesheimer have been watching the skies to make sure other birds don’t get too close to their flock of two Rhode Island red hens and two Ameraucanas. Four hens is the maximum allowed in a Vancouver backyard flock.

“When we see crows or seagulls out, we try to move them away,” said Joshua Hergesheimer, adding that “the best is always to monitor.”

“Usually the issue would be mixing with other flocks. We don’t go to any bird shows. We don’t take the chickens anywhere.”

Hergesheimer said they keep on top of the latest regulations and also regularly check their four hens — Pancake, Mocha, Blizzard and Hazelnut.

“We spend time checking their health, make sure their beak is OK and the crest, the top part. If it’s very red, then that means they’re very healthy. So, we check the wings and the feet just to make sure everything is OK,” said Hergesheimer.

Burns said her team has been educating people who work with poultry or wild birds on how to reduce their risk, which “for the general public is still considered very low.”

She said anecdotally, they are seeing fewer sick and dead wild birds now compared to 2022, when H5N1 also spread widely.

“We suspect that they are starting to develop sort of population-level immunity, and that will be helpful in hopefully causing this strain to fade away and be replaced by another strain in the coming years,” said Burns.

But she said there was still a possibility of mutations that make H5N1 more infectious to mammals or cause other problems. Experts fear mutations could change H5N1 into a virus capable of causing a human pandemic.

“We still have to work and have very high vigilance and prepare as much as we can for a situation where things don’t go as we hope,” said Burns.

In East Vancouver, Martin has full confidence that Lumpy Eye will make it through the H5N1 outbreaks.

“She’s a real survivor,” Martin said. “She’s been through some hardship and loss of her friends. So, I think if we take a few precautions, she’ll live out her life nicely in the backyard.”

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 16, 2025.