Smuggled cocks believed to be source
The Star, 23 Feb 2006

KUALA LUMPUR: It is the fighting cocks. 

Villagers in Kampung Pasir Wardieburn are quite certain the cocks, smuggled in from Thailand and Indonesia, brought the H5N1 virus to the village. 

Forty kampung chickens died of the virus last week. 

The villagers told The Star that they had seen the ayam belaga (fighting cocks) in the village. 

Mohd Idris Ismail, 53, said the village was divided into several areas, one of which was Kampung Kelantan in the north where chickens first started dying. 

“The birds there died even before Chinese New Year; and then it spread to this area.” 

Mohd Idris, also known as “Tuan Ayam” as he has several big chicken sheds, used to have 300 chickens. He lost 50 birds to the flu in the past week. Now his sheds are all empty, all culled since the operation began on Monday. He said neighbors had told him that they had seen cockfights in the village.  Mohd Idris said he would wait for the Government to give the all-clear signal before resuming his chicken business. 

Another villager, known only as Fadil, said he had seen Indonesian workers, who lived just outside the village, keep fighting cocks. 

Mohd Idris was also concerned about the pigeons, which used to feed at his chicken sheds.  “Who knows where these pigeons have gone now?” he said, adding that there had been no pigeons around in the past two days. 

Grasscutter Samsudin Lazim said he had seen chickens dying at least a month ago, and many were just thrown into the drain. 

“Most of us thought nothing of it. We thought it was normal. We kept quiet because we thought it would pass,” he said. 

“It was only in the past week when many chickens were dropping dead that we started to worry.”