Has anyone heard anymore about that duck die off? Have they determined the cause yet?

Oh God, thy sea is so great and my ship is so small.

Its all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack!

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember: Amateurs ... built the ark and Professionals ... built the Titanic.

seems i heard it was an obvious poisioning by bad grain. (don't remember the germ that the grain had).. something common i think. cnn probably has something about it

jeff

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) -- Two thousand mallard ducks in Idaho likely died after they ate moldy grain and contracted a fatal infection, scientists said Thursday.
Paul Slota, a wildlife expert with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center, said a fungal infection known as aspergillosis was the likely killer.
"The results are certainly consistent with that diagnosis," Slota said.
Dave Parrish, regional supervisor for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said further tests would be conducted.
The preliminary finding eased fears that the massive mallard die-off, which experts say is unprecedented in Idaho, was linked to bird flu.
Birds can contract aspergillosis after feeding on waste grain and silage pits during bad weather, according to the National Wildlife Health Center. Large-scale, rapid die-offs among waterfowl have chiefly affected mallards, it said.
An estimated 2,000 mallards died between Friday and Wednesday near the agricultural community of Burley, about 150 miles southeast of Boise.
State fish and game officers Wednesday retrieved carcasses from a stream clogged with dead and dying mallards.
The stream is surrounded by farmland and a cattle feedlot, potential sources of the moldy grain, officials said.
Concerns over the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu and an extensive national monitoring network prompted officials to submit samples from Idaho to labs specializing in detecting avian influenza and drew the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into the investigation.
A similar aspergillosis outbreak killed 500 mallards in Iowa in 2005, the wildlife health center said. Moldy grain was the culprit in that case. The disease is not contagious.
from cnn.com

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/139/story/44238.html



"Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much......It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf." -- Walter Lippmann

i am sorry, but that just does not seem right, the toxicology levels, would have to be off the scale. could it be from some thing else. .. hate to say this , but the fowl migrate and then died... sounds like something else to me., but i could be wrong....
they need to find out the migration patterns or where else they have ate and trace back to the source