While the deaths were caused by avocado (persin) toxicity, this case study provides a working example of how reports like this are urgently assessed to rule out an Emergency Animal Disease.
It all began when the Agriculture Victoria duty veterinarian received a call via the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline from a backyard poultry farmer reporting that seven of their 18 ducks had died that day, all within minutes of each other.
The duty veterinarian asked the owner to carefully double bag all deceased animals and store them in a secure area, and keep all remaining live poultry isolated from wild birds until an investigation was done.
These initial steps help reduce the risk of disease spread, while an investigation is under way.
The Agriculture Victoria on-call District Veterinary Officer was notified, who went to the property to conduct a post-mortem, collect information and samples to rule in or out Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and determine the actual cause of the deaths.
When the DVO arrived at the property, the owner of the poultry explained that seven ducks had died in the past 24 hours.
The ducks were co-housed with 10 chickens and 11 ducks, most of whom appeared clinically normal.
There had been no prior illness in any poultry on the farm, and no dead wild birds had been seen.
Discussion with the owner uncovered that the last feed, about six to seven hours prior to the deaths, had included six whole avocados.
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