INDIANAPOLIS – Officials with the Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH) said they are learning more about how bird flu has been transmitted in the state. They have also made some adjustments to procedures and protocols to try to keep the virus at bay and to make the situation easier on producers.

During the April 8 BOAH quarterly meeting, board members were updated on the impact of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the state and nationally.

Of the state’s 26 cases in 2025, 21 have undergone a genomic analysis, said Dr. Maria Cooper, BOAH’s avian health director. Seven of the cases are considered point-source introductions and 14 were common source or lateral transmissions.

“We always like to look at what strains and subtypes and genotypes are we dealing with, and how was it introduced. How do we think it’s spreading,” she said.

With point-source introduction, “geese are probably pooping on or around those barns, providing environmental exposure in some way or another to the (poultry).”

Common source or lateral transmission is “not a new introduction from wild birds but rather it’s spreading farm to farm, more likely,” Cooper said.

It’s a misnomer to assume lateral transmission means the virus was spread by people carrying it from one premises to another, whether through themselves or equipment or vehicles, Cooper said.

“That’s not necessarily the case. That also includes airborne transmission, which we think is certainly, in our minds, very significant.”

Testing has found there is potential common source or lateral transmission between cases in a large commercial operation in Jackson County and a small backyard flock in Jasper County, Cooper said. The operations could have been infected by the same group of sandhill cranes flying over both, she pointed out. Jackson County is in the southern part of state, and Jasper in the northwest.

The same genetics found in sandhill crane samples from dead birds in Kentucky and Tennessee have been shown to be related to some of the cases in commercial poultry in Indiana, said Ty Harweger, a board member representing poultry.

As of the day of the meeting, the U.S had seen 1,676 cases of HPAI since the outbreak began in February 2022, with 168.3 million birds affected either through depopulation or dying from the virus, Cooper said.

Of Indiana’s 26 cases this year, seven have been in commercial turkeys, nine in commercial egg layers, five in commercial ducks, and five were hobby or non-commercial flocks. A total of 8.33 million birds had been impacted. Indiana has seen 44 cases since 2022.

“Unfortunately, at this point, it almost feels like sometimes, HPAI response is routine,” noted Dr. Kelli Werling, BOAH’s animal programs director. “But every single site and case does have to have a different lens and treated individually.”

BOAH has made some changes in strategies and protocols for dealing with HPAI, she said.

For example, Werling said the agency has adjusted its backyard surveillance. BOAH no longer does door-to-door surveillance within 3K of an infected commercial farm, but will notify those in a surveillance area by phone if their premises are registered, she said. Premises adjacent to a commercial operation with positive HPAI tests will still be sampled, Werling added.

Protocols have changed in regard to environmental sampling at egg layer facilities as BOAH is now submitting fewer samples for testing. They sample differently based on manure management type and cage versus cage-free operations, she said.

The policies for disposing of egg layer manure and for manure sequestration have been revised.

“We’ve had a lot of opportunities to talk about manure and how to dispose of it in a biosecure way that we’re not going to be moving virus around, but also allows these sites not to get tied up and having to wait for that manure to have its wait time, which could be 120 days if we did nothing.”