SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Bird flu was busy in South Dakota and in some surrounding states in December.
According to the USDA’s avian flu tracker, as of Friday, more than 400,000 turkeys in South Dakota and more than 4 million egg laying chickens in northwestern Iowa were impacted by the flu.
Bird flu was detected in egg laying flocks in Sioux County on Dec. 6, Dec. 11 and Dec. 17, including in a flock of 4 million. The flu was also detected in O’Brien County on Dec. 17 in a flock of about 350,000 birds.
Bird flu was detected in a turkey flock of about 41,000 on Dec. 3 in Spink County. The most recent detections were on Dec. 17 in Bon Homme and Charles Mix counties.
According to the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks Department, the first case of bird flu was detected in a flock in Beadle County in 2015.
Bird flu has also been detected in dairy herds. The USDA tracker said as of Friday, seven herds had been impacted since June in South Dakota. Nine herds had been impacted in Minnesota and 13 in Iowa.
The disease or a variation of it, has infected humans. A case in a man was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, Dec, 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases, the CDC said.
