'Sprint' to vaccinate the poultry flock of 7 million heads

Soc Trang is one of the localities with a large total flock of poultry in the Mekong Delta region. The province’s poultry flock has nearly 7 million heads with an annual meat output of over 23 million tons. However, 96% of farming households are still small-scale. The risk of disease outbreaks during the period of seasonal change is very high.

In Dai Hai commune, Ke Sach district, in order to reduce disease risks, many households have turned to investing in upgrading the barn facility to make it more solid and developing a large-scale poultry farming model with a population of less than 2,000 heads/farm.

In particular, the District Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Station assigned staff to implement the work of monitoring and preventing bird flu outbreaks at each farm and instructing farmers to apply measures to ensure disease safety.

According to Mr. Luu Minh Chi, Head of the Ke Sach Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Station, farmers are mobilized to apply the quarantine farming measure and clinically monitor newly arrived poultry flocks. At the same time, farmers are also instructed to strengthen the caring and raising stages, thanks to which the poultry flock can improve their resistance.

In addition, the specialized branch also regularly controls the transportation of animals and animal products imported into the area and carries out the periodic disinfection month. To be more specific, since the beginning of the year, the station has deployed two campaigns of general cleaning and disinfection, especially focusing on the market area of Ke Sach town, where poultry samples positive for H5N1 bird flu used to be detected.

Besides raising poultry in cages in low-lying localities of Soc Trang province, such as My Tu district, many farmers take advantage of the field area to raise ducks in the fields to replace the autumn-winter rice crop.

In order to ensure the work of disease management and surveillance, the District Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Station coordinated with the People's Committees of communes to review and grasp information on farming households and the number of freely raised ducks to effectively deploy vaccination for poultry. As of the end of August 2023, the vaccination rate for poultry throughout My Tu district had reached 104% of the plan. Of which, over 743,000 chickens and ducks were vaccinated.

According to the results of monitoring the circulation of bird flu viruses, since 2022 in Soc Trang province, none of the H5N1 and H5N6 bird flu viruses have been detected in surveillance samples. However, the virus is characterized by a very complicated transmission route, so smallholding farming practices do not ensure disease safety, especially the disease that can be transmitted from poultry to humans if exposed through raising animals or eating infected poultry meat.

The Soc Trang Sub-Department of Livestock Production and Animal Health recommends that farmers comply with regulations on having poultry vaccinated. The farming barn must ensure hygiene and be regularly disinfected to kill pathogens. People need to wear masks when exposed to poultry, regularly wash their hands with soap, and not eat poultry that is sick or has died of an unknown cause.

Mr. Nguyen Van Muoi Hai, Deputy Head of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine (Soc Trang Sub-Department of Livestock Production and Animal Health), assessed that in recent years, the situation of poultry farming in the province has changed positively. It can be mentioned that the number of small-scale farming households has reduced and shifted to concentrated farming farms associated with ensuring biosafety practices in livestock farming.

Like many other infectious diseases, vaccination is an effective disease prevention and control measure for the poultry flock. In addition to bird flu vaccination, farming households need to have their poultry flocks vaccinated against common diseases such as Marek, Gumboro, fowl pox, cholera, fowl cholera for chickens, hepatitis, cholera for ducks, etc. Farmers need to follow the vaccination schedule recommended by the local veterinary agency to ensure economic efficiency. At the same time, the local veterinary agency recommends farmers not raise different types of poultry on the same farm, take measures to import together or export together, and keep the poultry that are newly entered into the flock in isolation for at least two weeks.