12 more geese found dead in Jind

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jind, January 4

Two weeks after 14 bar headed geese were found dead in Jind’s Gatauli village, the bodies of 12 migratory birds of the same species were found floating in a pond in Dhathrath village, some 30 km away, on Saturday.

Though samples from the birds that died in Gatauli village had tested negative for bird flu, Animal Husbandry Department officials sent samples from two birds for testing and buried the remaining 10 in the village.

The bodies of the geese were found floating in the village pond around 2.30 pm on Saturday. Special teams from the Animal Husbandry Department led by its Jind deputy director Devinder Sharma, Deputy Civil Surgeon Dr Manjula Sharma and senior officers from the Wildlife Department led by inspector Rajvir Malik also reached the spot. They sprinkled potassium around the pond and sent the samples to the Jalandhar laboratory for tests today.

An official in the Animal Husbandry Department said the birds are suspected to have died due to consumption of dirty water from the village pond. “We strongly believe it’s not a case of bird flu and dirty water of pond has killed the birds. We are waiting for the report” said Raju Sharma, in charge of the Jind diagnostic lab.

Vishal, a villager, said the geese came to the village every November and left in February. “It’s the first time that our village has seen the deaths of these migratory birds,” he said.

On December 21 last year, 14 geese were found dead in a pond of Gatauli village, but the administration has not received the final test report from the Bhopal laboratory.

“All 14 geese that died in Gatauli did not have bird flu. Had they died of flu, we would have got the report within three days of sending the samples to Bhopal. The laboratory sends reports of only positive cases within three days,” Sharma said.