[Bywaters]

IS it me or does there seem to be fewer notifications from the ministry this year ?
And, does that signify a faint chance that there might not be flockdown this winter ?

I know it hasn't gone away, far from it, but it might be a change in Defra approach maybe ?

I'm trying to be optimistic

[Fleecewife]

We didn't have one here in Scotland last year, so you could be hopeful that DEFRA has taken that onboard.  It appeared to me that the majority of cases in England were on commercial premises which should have strict biosecurity measures in place always.  I wonder what that shows?  The majority of bird deaths in Scotland were of wildfowl, probably lots of those too in England and Wales?

[doganjo]

We had a short local lockdown due to a small outbreak just a few minutes from me(Clackmannan).  Local Reserve had a lot of wild waterfowl deaths
Hopefully there won't be any next year but who knows

[Richmond]

Hardly anything reported in England, maybe 3 cases? Scotland seem to have had a few more but nothing on the scale of last year, thank goodness. However, I have a theory that while commercial premises will have certainly ramped up biosecurity to the max, I think there are probably likely to be backyard cases going unreported (by owners) in order to avoid mass culling and lockdown being imposed. No-one wants their poultry culled and I do wonder how many deaths are quietly being ignored. I see lots of requests on poultry rehoming forums saying things like  "Two of my ducks have just died, can anyone let me have a friend for the remaining one" or something similar. Now those deaths could be due to fox attack, or old age, or it's just someone trying to get a free or cheap bird, but some deaths may well be due to disease and at this time of year you cannot rule out avian flu.