Over 1,000 chickens have died due to a mysterious fever at Thepa and Jimsikri villages of Bihar’s Siwan district in the past one week triggering fear of a possible outbreak of bird flu, official sources said today.
The chickens were found dead in the poultry farms of two villages due to mysterious fever last week, the District Animal Husbandry Officer, Dr Ravindra Kumar,told PTI.
A post-mortem was carried out by a four-member medical team which found that the chickens had died due to bacterial infection apparently due to unhygenic conditions in which these birds were kept and fed by the owners, he said.
Dr Kumar said that a report has been sent to the district magistrate and the Animal husbandry director at Patna.
The serum of the dead chickens will be sent to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) at Bhopal or Kolkata for further investigation, Dr Kumar said.