Bird flu strikes Northwest Iowa turkey flock

Turkeys in a flock of about 27,000 in Buena Vista County recently were infected by the contagious and deadly avian flu, state agriculture officials confirmed Thursday.

It is the third detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza in commercial or backyard poultry this year in Iowa. Entire flocks are culled to help prevent the spread of the virus, which is often transmitted by wild birds.

The other flocks affected so far in 2025 include about 240,000 egg-laying chickens in O'Brien County, which the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship announced about two weeks ago, and a backyard flock of 60 birds in Clinton County, in early January.

The rate of detections has plummeted since mid-December, when over about 10 days the virus was found in eight Iowa flocks. Half of those were large, egg-laying operations with a total of about 6.7 million chickens.

That spate of infections along with others across the country have driven up the price of eggs to about triple the cost a year ago, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Some grocers have been limiting the amount of eggs people can purchase per visit and are "holding prices at record or near-record highs to dampen demand," the USDA reported last week.

While detections of the virus have been sparse recently in Iowa, they have soared in Ohio where 56 commercial flocks -- of mostly turkeys or egg-laying chickens -- with more than 10 million birds have been infected in the past month, according to USDA data.

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