Flockdown: Warwickshire farmer frees geese as bird flu restrictions lifted

A bird farmer from Warwickshire was able to let her geese out for the first time today, as bird flu restrictions were lifted.

Judy Gronning said the geese were kept indoors for the last five months - even though the farm didn't have an outbreak.

She also rears turkeys and took a financial hit as people stopped buying them for Christmas because of concerns over bird flu.

The farm in Warwickshire didn't have bird flu, but they had to keep the birds indoors and now they're not taking any chances.

They are breeding geese, kept to produce birds for next Christmas, but the farm is halving how many geese they keep in case there's another outbreak elsewhere in the country.

They took a financial hit last Christmas when people stopped buying turkeys, selling only about 9,000 instead of 10,000.

Judy said: "It was a real effect. We did have quite a lot of phone calls, people saying, are you still there? Do you still have birds? Has everything been killed? Have you had bird flu?

"And it's very difficult to say, look, it's black and white. There's no gray area. If we've had bird flu, we would have had everything slaughtered. And no, we'd have no birds to sell.

"We don't have it. We haven't had it all up. That's to here. They were all ready for you to order. And they're perfectly safe to eat. They have not had bird flu, but very difficult to get that message across."

A virologist today said there may well be another lockdown next autumn as migratory birds return to the UK

Dr Phil Gould from Coventry University said: "I can't see a lockdown now for the rest of the spring and summer. There will be monitoring zones and if we do see any incidences happening locally, there'll be more restrictions in that local area.

"But the type of thing that we could predict is next autumn, a similar lockdown happen again when we see the migratory birds coming back to the UK from those areas affected over Russia."

The government said it was thanks to the hard work of farmers and vets that the restrictions are now able to be lifted, but they still should remain vigilant.