Bengaluru: About 1,30,000 chickens at a farm in Karnataka’s Bidar district will be culled as a precautionary measure after a laboratory report identified the avian influenza (H5N1) virus as the reason behind the deaths of thousands of chickens there.

“We received information on 5 May that at a chicken farm about 20,000 chickens have died. To identify the disease we had sent the samples to a laboratory in Bhopal; the report confirms the cause is due to H5N1 virus," Karnataka minister for animal husbandry and sericulture A. Manju said on Sunday.

He said the rest, about 1,30,000 chickens in the farm, would be culled in the next one or two days, and an order has been issued in this regard.

The farm where the chickens have died is in Molakera village in Humnabad taluk, and belongs to a person named Ramesh Gupta.

As a precautionary measure, the government has already prohibited the sale of chickens from the farm and 1km around its radius. The minister also said all precautionary measure have been taken by the government to control the spread of the disease in any kind.

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