As the H5N2 avian flu sweeps through Wisconsin, we have had a flood of customers in the store who want to talk about it. They include experienced chicken keepers and the merely curious. And we’ve had conversations with WMTV-15 and Rob Schultz of the Wisconsin State Journal.

All of the talk so far has been about where H5N2 comes from (mostly migratory waterfowl) and how to keep your flock safe. But, as Rob Schultz’s story pointed out, the avian flu isn’t a health crisis for people, since it can’t be transmitted – or hasn’t been so far. And it’s not even a health crisis for poultry as a whole. But it has the potential to become an economic crisis for the farmers and producers who stand to lose hundreds of thousands of turkeys and chickens.

Which brings us pretty quickly to the Devil’s bargain of modern agriculture – the immense concentration of genetically nearly identical birds, cattle, hogs, grains and nearly every other thing we raise for food and our reliance on monoculture, factory farms, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and a constant flow of antibiotics - to supply our needs.

In that sense, the H5N2 flu is a reminder that, in the long run, backyard flocks aren’t the problem; they’re part of the solution.

Nobody is suggesting that backyard chickens are in any position to feed the nation. The USA consumes 9 billion chickens and 50 billion eggs each year. The vast majority are produced by about 30,000 farms operating under contract to approximately 40 major national poultry companies.

However, keeping backyard chickens does help show us a different path to food sustainability. The backyard poultry movement helps to enrich and maintain genetic diversity among chickens. Who knows when a gene from a heritage hen may come to the rescue of the entire poultry industry?

The second reason is that, once we become aware that the meat we eat comes from individual animals, not just a Styrofoam package in the supermarket, we quickly become more careful about what we eat and how much. Do we really need to consume 30 chickens (83.6 pounds) each year for every man, woman and child in the country? Maybe we could – and should – eat less meat.

We don’t need to explain the advantages of sustainable agriculture to our CLUCK blog readers. As the movie Food, Inc. graphically shows, we would be better off for many reason if we could reduce our reliance on factory farming.

But we do want to make the point that, when you read about the avian flu, or discuss it with your friends, the real significance of the news is not just about this isolated outbreak of a particular virus, nor is it just about taking biosecurity precautions. H5N2 is rather an alarm bell ringing at the center of our food system.

To misquote John Donne, it’s ringing for us. We should listen.

Should you be worried about the H5N2 avian flu?

As of this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that Wisconsin has had three outbreaks of bird flu, including a flock of 40 birds in Juneau County. The flue is deadly to poultry, but not dangerous to humans, at least so far, so our attitude is: be careful, but not worried.

Biologists think the virus most likely spread has been spread by wild birds, including ducks, and they’re worried it could spread further this fall when wild ducks fly south for the winter. H5N2 avian influenza has turned up since December in poultry farms and wild birds in the Pacific and Central flyways. So far, the flu has been found in 11 states.

There’s not much any of us can do to isolate our backyard birds from their wild cousins and the diseases they may carry, but all of us can practice good bio-security in our own environments to make sure we are not inadvertently spreading a disease to our neighbors' flocks (or vice versa), and to make sure we aren’t bringing bacteria into our homes.
• We wash our hands after handling our chickens or picking eggs
• We keep our eggs in the bathroom or laundry room, not in the kitchen.
• When we wash our eggs, we do it in the bathroom sink, not the kitchen sink.
• Our barn shoes stay outside, or in the entryway, so we don’t bring anything into the house.
• And when we visit our friends’ flocks, we’re especially careful not to step anyplace we shouldn’t.

Sanitation is also the reason we don’t let people touch our chicks or chickens at the store. Since many of our customers are chicken keepers, we don’t want to take a chance that a virus will go from our flock to theirs, or the other way.

So for now, we're not worried. But if we get more information about N5H2, we will pass it along.

This is the time of year when a lot of people are thinking about getting chickens and the time when hatcheries have the most varieties available. But what to get? There are hundreds of breeds, but most are either not cold-hardy enough to handle a Wisconsin winter or too fragile or flighty for beginning chicken keepers.

Everybody has a personal preference and the best chicken for your backyard flock might not be the same as your neighbor’s. But there are a few things to keep in mind before ordering your chicks. Here are some questions put together by a national chick supplier. You might want to ask other questions as well, but these make a good start. Check the original website for more.

1. Do you want to raise egg layers or meat birds? Poultry guides identify several breeds as dual-purpose, but my experience has been that the meat from dual-purpose birds is inferior to meat from broilers. Different chicken breeds lay different colors of eggs. If you have an egg color preference choose a breed of laying hen accordingly.
2. How much space do you have? Bantam breeds are mini birds; great for small spaces. They require a minimum of 1 sq. ft. indoor space, 4 sq. ft. outdoor space per bird with 6 ft. flight height. Standard size hens require a minimum 1.5 sq. ft. indoor space, 8 sq. ft. outdoor per bird with 3 ft. flight height.
3. How harsh is your climate? Cold hardy birds are bred to live comfortably in the chill of northern winters. Breeds with smaller combs are less likely to get frost bit. Some breeds have extra feathering as beards or on legs to help keep them cozy.
4. Are you interested in preserving a heritage breed? The Livestock Conservancy defines heritage breed as a historical livestock breed, rugged and naturally adapted to the local environment over time. For the most part these are animals that thrived before industrial agriculture. The conservancy maintains a conservation priority list for endangered poultry breeds on their website, LivestockConservancy.org .
5. Which breeds catch your eye? The best breed for your backyard is undoubtedly one you want to look at and interact with every day. My fascination with hatchery catalogs is in part because I love to look at full-color glossy pictures of all the beautiful bird breeds. I attend The Ohio State Fair for the sole purpose of checking out the poultry barn champions.

Whatever chick you pick, all chicks require heat at 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit in a bedding-filled brooder for the first two weeks of life. Decrease the brooder temp by 5 degrees each week thereafter. Special chick feed is formulated for quick growth and easy digestion. Fresh, clean water every day is critical.

Last but not least, make sure to wash your hands before and after handling chicks. Salmonella is spread by direct contact with animals that carry the bacteria. Good hygiene and biosecurity will keep your birds and your family healthy.em>

In case you missed Nicholas Kristof’s column in The New York Times, a new video taken by an undercover investigator for Mercy for Animals, an animal rights group, reveals that as many as 700,000 chickens die horrible, inhumane deaths each year in American slaughterhouses, mostly by scalding.

According to Kristof, Matt Rice, the director of investigations for Mercy for Animals, noted that federal rules on humane slaughter apply to cattle, hogs and sheep, but not to poultry — even though birds amount to 95 percent of farm animals killed each year in America.

Kristof tells the tale better than we can, so we will just leave you with a couple of paragraphs from his column and invite you to read the his column at nytimes.com.

“Workers grab the birds and shove their legs upside down into metal shackles on a conveyor belt. The chickens are then carried upside down to an electrified bath that is meant to knock them unconscious. The conveyor belt then carries them — at a pace of more than two chickens per second — to a circular saw that cuts open their necks so that they bleed to death before they are scalded in hot water and their feathers plucked.

Even when the system works as intended, the birds sometimes have legs or wings broken as they are shackled, the investigator said. Some chickens aren’t completely knocked out by the electric current and can be seen struggling frantically. Others avoid the circular saw somehow. A backup worker is supposed to cut the throat of those missed by the saw, but any that get by him are scalded alive, the investigator said.