ducks

The first outbreak of bird flu in Pope county has been followed by one in Stearns and another in Lac Que Parle.  Like the first, these second two are being blamed on the wild ducks.  Many turkeys have died, trench fulls of them.  Growers and their vet school enablers are busy congratulating themselves on restricting the outbreak in each case to one building only.  But curiously, there have been no reports of large numbers of dead wild ducks lying around.  What does it mean?  Ducks that infect the turkey flocks do not die in huge numbers, evidently.  Is it the environment they live in?  Is their food better?  Immune system more functional?  Does it help that their immediate environs is not "duck only" in the way turkey confinement works?   These are the sorts of questions livestock agriculture would be asking right now if it had not already decided several decades ago that agriculture was a mature science, and that everything about it worth knowing was already known.  Arrogance! 

Jim