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- Eight Cache County dairy herds tested positive for bird flu, prompting quarantines.
- The bird flu, fatal to poultry, is less harmful to dairy cattle, officials say.
- Dairy and poultry owners are urged to monitor herds for disease symptoms.
LOGAN — Eight commercial dairy operations in Cache County have tested positive for bird flu, according to officials with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
The announcement comes a week after mandatory testing was put into place for all dairies in the county, where officials began taking weekly tank samples. "Initial samples from all Cache County dairies were sent to the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Logan," a press release sent out Wednesday says.
The eight positive dairies have been placed under quarantine, meaning no cattle are permitted to move on or off the facility grounds — except if going directly to slaughter, according to the release.
The bird flu was first detected in March at a Texas dairy, though it had been "circulating in poultry and wild birds in the United States since 2022," according to the ag department website. The disease has spread to 14 states since, according to Caroline Hargraves, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
A commercial poultry flock in Cache County tested positive for avian bird flu earlier this month, forcing the culling of an estimated 1,852,900 chickens, according to the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food's poultry flock outbreak online dashboard.
Data on cattle herd detections have not been updated on the website.
State veterinarian Daniel Christensen said they "don't anticipate any major impacts on the food supply and the overall impacts to individual dairies are relatively minimal. This disease is not as harmful to dairy cattle as it is to poultry."
The bird flu, which is fatal to poultry, is "often transmitted by wild birds to domestic poultry," according to Hargraves.
The department is encouraging dairy and poultry owners to watch herds and flocks for signs of the disease, which include decreased milk production, thicker milk, decreased consumption, dehydration and fever in dairy cattle. "Most dairy cattle recover within a few weeks," he said. Not all dairy cattle will show symptoms, however.
In poultry, symptoms include "high death loss among flocks, nasal discharge, decreased appetite or water consumption and lack of coordination," Hargraves says.
Resources to help prevent the spread and obtain financial assistance for testing and prevention can be found online, at www.ag.utah.gov/dairy-cattle-and-avian-influenza.
