FarmProgress: With the herd closed and all his heifers spayed — no outside bulls needed — Nathan Brearley hoped his 500-cow dairy farm in Portland, Mich., would be spared the strain of bird flu that plagues dairies.
He was wrong. Almost six months after the infection on his farm, the milk still hasn’t recovered.
“I was very surprised. “I’ve never seen another disease spread as far in cattle as we did,” Brearley said during a recent webinar on dairy bird flu, hosted by the Pennsylvania Center for Dairy Excellence.
…Brearley said the first signs of trouble came in April when SmaxTec installed on his cows, which keep track of temperatures and other health conditions, started sending high temperature alarms to his phone and computer. Part of the herd looked sick.
“Looking at the data, the average temperature was 5.1 degrees above normal,” he said. The outside cows were even higher because of the heat.
The cattle were tired and motionless. Water consumption decreased from 40 liters to 5 liters per day. He gave his cows aspirin twice a day, increased their water intake and injected them with vitamins for three days.
Five percent of the herd had to be culled.
“They didn’t want to get up, they didn’t want to drink, and they were very dehydrated,” Brearley said, adding that his staff worked around the clock treating about 300 cows twice a day. “There is no time to think about the test when it comes. You must heal. You have sick cows, our job is to take care of them.”
Tests eventually revealed that his cows did indeed contract H5N1. But how they got it, he said, is still a mystery.
Brearley said a hatchery a mile away tested positive for H5N1 and had to release millions of birds. The birds were composted in the air vents outside the area, “and I could smell that.”
The farm averaged 95-100 pounds of milk per head with 4.0% butter and solids before breaking. In the first three weeks of infection, milk production drops to 75 pounds per head and recovery is slow.
“Honestly, we haven’t recovered since then, although my diet has stabilized,” Brearley said. “I can’t go back to our base again.”
Breeding was also challenged. Right off the bat, his cows aborted their calves.
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