Deseret News Richard Geary heard word of the contagion around the turn of spring, when it was still distant. News reports and murmurs among fellow veterinarians revealed livestock herds about 1,000 miles away in Kansas had fallen ill with a confusing new ailment. In the 35 years he’s been treating animals across southeast Idaho, Geary had never heard of anything like it. Nor did he think he’d soon be at the center of an outbreak that threatened national, even global, consequences.
Shortly after, highly pathogenic avian influenza — colloquially known as bird flu — was confirmed for the first time in dairy cows from New Mexico, Texas and Kansas.
“In my mind, I was thinking, ‘Well, I sure hope that they can contain it,’” Geary says. But just one week after the news broke, the first reported case reached an Idaho dairy farm and sent farmers into a panic. “Their questions to me and to the other veterinarian in my practice are: ‘What do you know about it?’” he says, “and, ‘What do we do when we get it?’”