Colchester Zoo taking precautions against bird flu
A case was recently confirmed near Clacton
As parts of Essex are placed under a bird flu prevention zone, Colchester Zoo tells us they're doing everything possible to prevent an outbreak on their premises.
Essex has seen four outbreaks of Avian Influenza in the past year, including cases in Tolleshunt Major, near Maldon, and Clacton.
On 27th September, an Avian Influenza prevention zone implemented by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was announced, covering Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of Essex, including Chelmsford, Rochford and Colchester.
The new zone introduces enhanced biosecurity measures that must be followed by keepers of poultry.
Rebecca Moore is the zoo's director. She says they're upping safety measures to prevent an outbreak at the zoo: "We're certainly very concerned with the health and welfare implications that an outbreak would have on the birds here at the zoo.
"It can actually also affect other species too, such as pigs and cats, so we're making sure we've got the appropriate biosecurity to ensure the health and welfare security of the animals in our collection."
Rebecca explained what measures the zoo is taking: "We're envisaging every bird enclosure as a separate unit, so everything is different between enclosures, from what tools you use to clean the enclosure with, to foot-dipping the keeper's boots as they go in, scrubbing them so they're not taking in any bird poo or dirt with them.
"It's all about making sure there's no cross contamination between enclosures, because obviously, if you had a bird flu outbreak, you wouldn't want that to infect every single bird enclosure in the zoo. By managing them as separate units and limiting who can work with them, hopefully that will reduce the risk to our birds."
The zoo's director confirmed she's not expecting visitors to the zoo to notice huge changes to their days as a result of these precautionary measures: "They shouldn't notice any changes as it's more about the way that we're managing things that's changed.
"Unfortunately, bird flu appears to be here to stay every winter, so we've been working with the government to come up with a resolution that doesn't just involve locking our birds away for what could be up to six months a year.
"Instead we're looking at changing our practices. Now, a lot of the birds are fed indoors to stop wild birds coming into the enclosures and bringing in contamination.
"For those that are fed outdoors, like our Condor, which is in a netted enclosure, we make sure not to leave food remains out in the open for long periods of time.
"We're also making sure that animals that are being fed indoors can do so as naturally as possible. For example, our Flamingos, for instance tend to feed in the water using their beaks turned upside down to sieve through the water for food, so we've got an indoor pool environment that enables them to still do that."
Rebecca says if visitors do notice any changes, they'll be minimal: "You might not necessarily see the animals being fed in the same way, as we've said.
"The only other major impact is visitors will walk through things like foot dips (a disinfectant mat) when they enter places like the Lorikeet enclosure...
"We need to be sure that we are protecting our birds whilst at the same time letting visitors come and enjoy them.
"A collection without any birds would be a dismal place - they're a wonderful species to have in the zoo and we want to continue to be able to educate the visitors about them, whilst making sure that we're protecting them and not keeping them locked up for six months every year whilst bird flu cases are high!"