Small Flocks. Big Challenges

Like many of my veterinary colleagues, the only experience I had with poultry medicine was through a small handful of lectures and practical sessions in veterinary school that were mainly focused on managing infectious diseases in large commercial flocks.  Otherwise, chickens were just something you cooked for dinner or questioned over their motives for crossing roads when you were in need of a terrible joke. I never expected that these small animals would have such a large impact on my life almost 15 years later.

In this article, I wanted to share the story of how a Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures (SFFF) project to help the New Zealand commercial poultry industry prepare for exotic disease outbreaks ended up being the catalyst for creating AkoVet as a platform to share animal health and welfare information for New Zealand.

The survey that started it all

This particular storyline starts back in 2014 when a new antibiotic-resistant strain of Campylobacter jejuni (Sequence Type 6964), a bacteria responsible for many cases of foodborne illness in humans, was identified on poultry carcasses at a processing facility in New Zealand.  Within a matter of months, the strain was found on broiler farms across three out of the four major supply companies. This shouldn’t have theoretically been possible since the companies all maintained largely separate supply chains and had biosecurity measures to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases between farms.

This naturally led to many more questions about how the bacteria was managing to make its way across the country and what this might mean for the commercial poultry industry if a much more contagious disease like highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) ever crossed the New Zealand border.

It was also roughly at this time that I managed to make my own way across the New Zealand border to start my new role as a lecturer at Massey University in early 2015.  With my background in modelling the spread of livestock diseases through transmission networks, I joined a collaborative project with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand (PIANZ) to survey commercial poultry producers in 2016 about their biosecurity risks and practices to understand how their farms may be epidemiologically linked through the movements of birds, people, equipment, and wildlife.

With about 30% of poultry farmers in the industry responding, the survey results showed that there was a lot more variation in the biosecurity measures that farmers were taking to protect their flocks than we had originally thought (see Greening et al 2020).  When we later compared the genetic relatedness of the Campylobacter jejuni strains found on farms against the patterns of how those farms were connected through movements and geographical locations, the main risks for transmission were most likely from feed transport and other undefined mechanisms of local spread (see Greening et al 2021a). More concerningly, when we did further simulation modelling work to look at how quickly an exotic disease could spread across the country through these networks, most regions ended up being affected in relatively short periods of time (see Greening et al 2021b).

Future-proofing the New Zealand Poultry Industry

Although New Zealand was and currently is free from most major infectious avian diseases, including HPAI, we recognised that (1) there was a significant risk of the country experiencing a disease outbreak through the high volume of people, animals, and products that cross over the border every year and (2) having a system in place that can reduce the time it takes to detect a disease outbreak and help government agencies determine the most effective means of deploying resources to bring the outbreak under control could end up saving millions of dollars as well as millions of animal lives.

As a starting point, PIANZ and the Egg Producers Federation of New Zealand (EPF) wanted to explore the possibility of having commercial poultry producers fill out a modified version of the 2016 survey every year so that we would have the most up-to-date information on the industry demographics and biosecurity practices to support disease preparedness and response actives.

In late 2018, we jointly submitted a research proposal to the Sustainable Food & Fibre Futures (SFFF) fund that aimed to work with the industry to co-design a national poultry health information system. The proposal was accepted in 2019 as the two-year SFF 19-051 project Future-proofing the New Zealand poultry industry against biological hazards. The original research programme was divided into two phases: (1) gauging stakeholder interest in developing a national poultry health information system with a particular focus on understanding the motivations and barriers to participation and (2) if there was sufficient interest, finding a sustainable means of implementing and maintaining the system long term.

What we found in Phase 1

As part of the initial research work for Phase 1 (Oct 2019 through Dec 2020), we interviewed commercial poultry farmers to learn more about their views towards collecting and sharing essential poultry health information in a national database. For most farmers, the primary motivation to participate in a national database system would be to meet their regulatory requirements of having a Risk Management Plan (RMP) and Whole Flock Health Scheme (WFHS). Most farmers felt that the commercial industry was already well-placed to respond to disease outbreaks but flagged concerns that backyard poultry keepers may be a bigger risk since they often didn’t provide their birds with the best care and didn’t know how to recognise disease problems.

At the time, we knew very little about what was going on with backyard poultry populations because individuals in New Zealand who keep fewer than 100 birds on their property are not required to register their flocks in any centralised database, and there are also no national organisations that represents the collective interests of backyard poultry keepers. However, anecdotally, we knew that veterinarians often saw significant welfare issues with birds, and there were potential public health risks from people consuming eggs contaminated with drug residues or lead.

Since our main research activities were stalled due to the COVID chaos, we decided to run preliminary surveys of backyard poultry keepers and backyard poultry veterinarians in early 2021 to get a better sense of the situation and potential implications for the commercial poultry sector (see Greening et al 2022).

The responses from backyard poultry keepers showed that they faced significant barriers to accessing veterinary services for preventive health care and sick bird care including difficulty finding veterinarians who are willing to treat poultry and owner reluctance to spend money on treating birds that sit in a space between being production animals and food animals. As a result, many backyard poultry keepers turned to the internet, social media, and discussion forums for information about poultry health but reported finding it difficult to know what to trust or how to apply the recommendations to their flock. From our brief exploration of content on popular discussion forums and social media, there are many cases where the advice being provided is incorrect and may lead to significant welfare problems.

Many veterinarians in the survey indicated that one of the major barriers to providing clinical services to backyard poultry clients was that they didn’t have the appropriate training and skills to feel comfortable treating birds. The cases were also more emotionally draining since the birds were often severely ill by the time owners brought them in for treatment. They ended up being euthanised because there was either nothing that could be done at that stage or owners were unwilling to pay for treatment.

Since surveillance for exotic diseases in backyard poultry populations largely depends on keepers identifying sick birds and then either directly notifying the MPI disease reporting hotline or taking their birds to a veterinarian for examination, these findings suggested that exotic diseases may easily get missed.

Shifting the focus of our SFFF project

In July 2021, we held a virtual workshop with key stakeholders from government and industry to discuss the initial project findings and figure out the next steps for Phase 2. The key outcome was an identified need to develop more innovative approaches for engaging backyard poultry keepers to improve the health status of their flocks and to rapidly identify disease issues that could threaten commercial production systems.

One of the strategies that other countries have adopted to collect more information about backyard livestock populations has been implementing national databases that allow keepers to voluntarily register details about their flocks to support disease surveillance, preparedness, and response activities. However, these initiatives have struggled to achieve good uptake from backyard producers for many reasons, including the lack of trust in government agencies and failure to provide appropriate incentives to motivate participation.

So what could we do to make things different this time?

Poultry Intel Campaign

As a result of this meeting, we submitted a project variation request on 15 Sep 2021 to focus Phase 2 on developing better resources for backyard poultry keepers and veterinarians and exploring novel strategies to increase engagement with a voluntary registration database.

Under the branding of Poultry Intel, we designed and ran a national campaign from 10 May 2022 to 15 Jun 2022. A project website (www.poultryintel.org.nz) was created to provide the general public with more information about the project objectives and the five main ways to get involved.

Registration

Completing a 5-minute survey asking for basic contact details, location in New Zealand, reasons for owning backyard poultry, and level of support for developing a national poultry health information system

Have your Say Survey

Completing a 15-minute survey to provide feedback on the resources and functionalities that would be most valuable to include in a national poultry health system

Preventive Care Survey

Completing a 30-minute survey to share information about how they are currently caring for their birds and what measures are in place to prevent common poultry health issues

Sick Bird Survey

Completing a 30-minute survey to fill out information on the history, clinical signs, treatments, and outcomes for the last time one of their birds was ill

Interviews with New Poultry Keepers

Participating in a 30 to 60-minute semi-structured interview to share their experiences with starting a new backyard poultry flock and what challenges they faced

The campaign generated a lot of interest across the country, with a total of 750 backyard poultry keepers and 49 veterinarians engaging with the initiative.

In the Have Your Say Survey, respondents were asked to rank their top choices for extension resources and functionalities to incorporate into a national poultry health information system. The choices were assigned a weighted point value to identify the top five resources to prioritise.

Backyard Poultry Keepers (92 Responses)

Veterinarians (49 Responses)

There were 51 backyard poultry keepers who completed the Preventive Care Survey and 34 who completed the Sick Bird Survey.  The most common theme from the free-text comments was about being unable to find reliable information to diagnose and treat their own birds and uncertainty about an appropriate time to take their birds to a veterinarian. It was also really interesting that several people said they actually found it valuable to complete the surveys since they hadn’t previously been aware of everything they needed to include in a flock health care plan or the common signs of illness for backyard birds.

We were also able to chat with 12 backyard poultry keepers who had all started their flock within the last 6 months, and there were several key themes that kept cropping up. One was related to uncertainty around the status of backyard poultry in society since they don’t quite fit into either the production animal or companion animal categories. This created tension over how much was considered reasonable to spend on veterinary services when a bird became ill.  Most people also reported difficulties finding reliable information about how to care for healthy and sick birds. As a result, they would often gather information from a number of different sources and then follow the recommendations that seemed to appear consistently. A major complaint about the online resources was that they were often created overseas, and the recommendations were very general, making it difficult for them to apply the information to their unique situation. New backyard poultry wanted easy access to reliable resources that would empower them to provide better care for their birds. 

Backing our backyard poultry

Overall, the national campaign demonstrated that there was strong support and interest from backyard poultry keepers and veterinarians in launching a national poultry health information system. SFFF very generously allowed us to submit even more milestone variations so that we could focus the final year of the project on developing a new portfolio of resources including:

Our excitement, however, was very short-lived when we soon realised that we had a major problem – where would these resources live, and who would maintain them after the SFFF project ended?  We didn’t want to waste everyone’s time, energy, and money on creating something that would just die off within a few months, as has been the unfortunate fate of many other big research and extension projects in New Zealand.

So, we paused the development process and embarked on a noble quest to find an existing organisation with the interest, resources, and capability to tackle this noble challenge.  And we failed. Miserably.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it

At about roughly the same time as we were looking to re-home the backyard poultry content, I found myself facing similar challenges with a ton of other resources, educational modules, and software tools for herd health planning, companion animal medicine, and veterinary epidemiology I had developed over the past decade.

And the seed of an idea started to germinate. Ever since I started working in New Zealand, there has always been talk about the need to create a centralised platform to collate animal health and welfare information in New Zealand. However, we never seemed to be able to make any substantial progress towards it because there was no single organisation that had the scope within their core business activities to handle all the different species, subjects, and components.  What would happen if we started a new organisation with this as its singular mission?

Somehow, I ended chatting to both Seton and Kat about this in late 2022.  We realised that we had similar aspirations and complementary skill sets, which meant we might actually be able to pull it off.  We floated the idea past SFFF to see if there would be any issues with us managing the Intellectual Property from the poultry project, and we got the green light to go ahead. The next step was reaching an agreement around IP ownership with Massey since these resources were largely created while I was an employee.

As soon as that went through, we incorporated AkoVet as an NZ Limited Company in August 2023 to have a legal entity to start applying for additional funding to get the system up and running.  We were very fortunate to be steered in the direction of Sprout Agritech and applied to join Cohort XI of the Accelerator programme in September 2023. Describing the experience as life-changing may be the biggest understatement of the year because it gave us the confidence and skills to turn this idea into something we could make financially sustainable long-term. Thanks guys!

It’s taken a little bit more work to resolve some additional conflicts of interest with our current employment roles, which is why we’ve been flying under the radar for the past 6 months. But we’re now back in business and ready to start working with animal owners, veterinary professionals, and industry experts to build some amazing resources to support Aotearoa’s animals.

Table of Contents