Rare Songbird Culling Scandal Revealed by Dutch Farmer

A quail farmer from the Netherlands has revealed that he illegally kept two extremely rare songbirds in his hen house. After a bird pest outbreak, he lost them both to mass poultry culling in 2003, and only managed to save one egg. Now the egg has been hatched, history is threatening to repeat itself, at the cost of a near-extinct Redscowl songbird. A preservationist uproar is imminent.

Wageningen, NL (PRWEB) February 21, 2006 -- Recent bird flu outbreaks in Western Europe have led to new measures, designed to keep domestic birds from getting the disease. As ever, the first measure to be taken is isolation. However, most poultry farmers and pet bird owners have seen all this happen before, and they know what is coming next: mass poulty culling to prevent the disease from spreading.

The sheer fear of this 'nigh-pointless act of mass destruction' happening again has caused a Dutch quail farmer to reveal the fact that he once illegally kept a couple of Redscowl birds in his hen house. He told the local press in Barneveld (a rural town in the Netherlands) that he contacted a Ukranian forester back in 2003, via the Internet. Shortly after, he went to meet him near the Ukranian border and bought a male and female Redscowl Bluesingsky in reasonable shape for just $3000 a bird.

He went back to his secluded home and kept the little songbirds - which have chicken-like traits -- in his hen house. "It was the best thing I ever did for my business", he said. "The other (miniature) chickens and quails laid double the eggs." Then he mentioned he got the idea after reading some of the myths regarding Redscowl Bluesingsky birds; especially the tales about their cheerful moods rubbing off on people and animals in their neighborhood.

However, disaster struck when the Dutch government issued a command to cull all poultry -- pets and pros alike -- in the Barneveld region in 2003, following a bird pest outbreak. The farmer in question (who chose to remain anonymous) lost both his Redscowl birds to an attempt to control a disease that could easily have been fought using medicine instead. And regardless of what he paid for the birds in the first place, their value had of course been immense -- if only because Redscowl are among the rarest bird species on earth.

What saved the quail farmer from total devastation was a single egg that he managed to save. Luck would have it that he was just taking it to an incubator in the South of Holland as the poultry culling took place. He even managed to hatch the egg, with the help of a friendly scientist from the University of Wageningen. And after he built his business back up from scratch, all he had to boost production again was this tiny redscowl chick that really did its best to cheer up the neighborhood.

"And it worked," commented the farmer. "I'm almost back up where I was before." Alas, this new epidemic threatening to strike today could undo all the hard work again. What's worse, it could lead to the sad death of yet another extremely rare Redscowl Bluesingsky bird. Possibly the only Redscowl ever bred in captivity. "I'm only calling out so that people will hear my story and force the government to find a cure. It's scandalous to cull rare little birds like that. The mere intention to do it should be illegal," the Dutch quail farmer stated.

Given the gravity of the issue, preservationists in the Netherlands are expected to pick up on the story soon. People can only expect a cascade of protests, possibly leading to an accelerated effort to find cures for bird diseases and the permission to inoculate poultry. The makers of the Official Redscowl Bluesingsky Guide http://redscowl-bluesingsky.com/ have already agreed to support the cause. They will put up a support page shortly, to help fund possible legal action. Nature lovers are already crossing their fingers, since the Redscowl Bluesingsky is probably nearing extinction as it is.

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