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‘This is a poultry farmer’s worst nightmare’

It’s every livestock and poultry farmer’s worst nightmare—a deadly disease with the potential to wipe out an entire operation.

Turkey growers across Minnesota, Iowa and surrounding states are living that nightmare as the highly contagious H5N2 avian influenza virus continues to spread across the region.

Turkey grower Katie Olthoff of Stanhope, Iowa says they’re doing everything they can to prevent the disease from infecting their flock.

“We’re always sort of a little crazy about biosecurity, but that has become even more extreme lately,” Olthoff says. “We’re not allowing any visitors in our buildings, but we’re also not allowing visitors on our farm at all.  We’re just trying to keep any foot traffic or other traffic off the farm.”

Farming has always been challenging, but Olthoff says they’ve never faced a threat like this.

“If it were to pop up on our farm, we would probably be at least 12 months without any income from our turkeys,” she says. “That’s pretty big deal for us. We’re just six years into our farming operation and we’ve loved every minute of it.  We always knew that this risk would be there, but having it this close to home has really opened up our eyes to really the realities of farming.”

The Olthoffs are independent producers.  They have three turkey barns, each containing 20-thousand birds.

AUDIO: Katie Olthoff