According to the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, six flocks in Iowa have been infected with H5N1 avian influenza in 2026. By the end of March 2025, USDA reported that Iowa had the same number of flocks, ending the year with ten total
flocks infected.

Four of the flu ridden flocks this year have been small, backyard poultry farms, while the other two have been larger-scale, multi-species hatcheries, a facility that breeds and hatches birds raised for hunting or release. 

There have been no detections in commercial poultry flocks, or a flock that is intended for large-scale production and sale, in Iowa as of March 23.

One of Johnson County’s small poultry flocks lies in Simple Maple Farm in Solon, which keeps around 50-60 egg-laying hens at any time of the year. 

Bethany Bird, the owner of Silver Maple Farms, a diverse 20-acre farm that grows organic produce and raises poultry and livestock using chemical-free practices, said it is hard to predict if this year’s influenza outbreak will lead to a period of rising egg prices as it did last year. 

Bird said that during the 2025 egg shortage, Simple Maple Farms and other local options drew more demand because their egg prices remained steady while commercial egg prices continued to rise. 

“Suddenly our eggs were more affordable when previously they had not been,” she said. “So we saw a lot of people, especially at the Farmers Market, shifting over to getting their eggs locally, and we’ve just kept our price consistent.”

Bird said Simple Maple Farms raises its birds on a mobile tractor system rather than allowing them to free-range or roam on their own on the pasture.

Bird said their mobile coop comes with a tarp roof and chain-link fencing, providing the benefits of being outdoors without the risks of predator exposure or cross-contamination with other species. 

Bird said the mobile tractor system puts the farm at less of a risk of influenza exposure than other small backyard operations or large
commercial operations.

“It’s hard to control what’s in your area and, like, what your birds are exposed to if they’re just free-ranging in your backyard,” she said. “The risk with the large operations is if one bird is exposed, and then the whole flock has to be culled. That’s hard to recover from financially.”

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Yuko Sato, a veterinarian and researcher at Iowa State who specializes in poultry health, said avian influenza has affected roughly equal numbers of commercial and backyard flocks nationwide.

The USDA reports an equal split between commercial and backyard flocks: 40 flocks in each category from Feb. 21 to March 23, totaling 80 flocks and 10.1 million birds affected by the outbreak.

Since the beginning of the outbreak in 2022, bird flu has been detected in 2,170 flocks: 989 commercial and 1,181 backyard, according to the USDA. 

Sato said that while the virus can theoretically infect any flock, backyard birds have a unique risk of being exposed to wild birds that carry the virus.

“Most of the commercial poultry, they are raised indoors,” she said. “The risk of backyard poultry is that most of them have some sort of outdoor access, that’s usually the point of introduction, basically the contact, whether that’s direct or indirect, with wild birds.”

Sato said she tallied the numbers of laying hen losses reported by the USDA and found that roughly 13 percent of production was affected by avian influenza in 2022, 5 percent in 2023, 13 percent in 2024, and 15 percent in 2025. 

Sato said egg prices could rise in 2026, similar to last year, if the outbreak continues to mount, especially as the Easter season brings high demand for shelled eggs. 

“At this point, we have lost about four and a half percent of egg production, and we’re in March,” she said. “At this point, we’re already near the 5 percent mark, which is what we had in 23. It could be as bad, or just as equal to 2025.”

Sato said the avian influenza is problematic because it is highly contagious; once it has entered a flock, all poultry operators and health officials can do is attempt to prevent it from spreading to other flocks. 

“It’s not like you can segregate the birds that are affected and the birds that are not affected, that are fine,” she said. “The common practice is, if you have a site that is infected, the whole flock
goes down.”

Sato said quarantining the six Iowa flocks with avian influenza is key to preventing its spread to other flocks across the state. 

“It’s no different than COVID,” she said. “As soon as you know you have COVID, and you hunker down, you are less likely to spread it to someone else or a group of people. You’re not going to go to a church event, you’re not going to work because you’re like, ‘I’m
still infectious.’”

Sam Jarvis, community health division manager for Johnson County Public Health, said that while the county is vigilantly monitoring the outbreak of avian influenza, Johnson County birds are rarely affected by the disease. 

“We don’t get a whole lot of those alerts for our area,” he said. “We have a small amount of dairy farms or industry in our area. Certainly, our surrounding counties have a lot more agriculture in terms of dairy and poultry.”

Jarvis said if the disease were detected in counties near Johnson County, the public health department would continue to monitor cases reported by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and would work with state partners, such as Iowa Health and Human Services, to alert residents. 

“Obviously, if there were to be a risk that would expand to others in the general population, we would make sure that information is shared with the general public,” he said. 

Jarvis said he advises Johnson County residents to get vaccinated against the seasonal flu to protect themselves from future concerns about avian influenza and other flu outbreaks. 

Jarvis also said residents should refrain from approaching dead birds. If residents, such as backyard poultry farm operators, must handle dead birds, Jarvis said they should wear proper personal protective equipment, or PPE, and maintain good hand hygiene to prevent themselves from the flu. 

Bird said that as avian influenza continues to spread across the nation, she hopes customers will purchase from local options, which are able to set their prices outside of the typical market price for eggs.  

“When we have monocrops or huge operations that are not diversified in any way, the risk is super high; their whole business can be wiped out for a period of months,” she said.  “We’ll see smaller-scale diversified local sheds stepping in as an affordable solution.”