Minnesota State Fair will prohibit nursing dairy cows at Miracle of Birth over bird flu risk

The Miracle of Birth Center — offering Minnesota State Fair visitors an annual fix of cute baby farm animals and their proud mothers — will go ahead without birthing cows this year as fears of bird flu abound in the dairy cattle industry.

State agricultural industry officials said Thursday that fair organizers will exclude birthing cows and newborn calves from the popular exhibit as a precaution as the virus continues to spread to mammals, including dairy cattle.

The exhibit will still showcase dairy cow-calf pairs, but the calves will be weaned and the cows will be dry.

“There will still be cute little calves and cows,” said Kelly Andrews, executive director of the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Association, one of the exhibit’s organizers. “They just won’t be lactating [cows].”

The State Fair said staff members could not confirm changes to the Miracle of Birth lineup but said they anticipated releasing a statement regarding H5N1 precautions on Friday.

“As I’m sure you can imagine, there are many different pieces to the fair’s puzzle and specifically right now with regard to H5N1 and how things will play out with exhibitors and also the Miracle of Birth Center,” said Lara Hughes, a fair spokeswoman, in an email.

The change to the popular event, where droves of fairgoers can tour a barn and watch a mama cow or pig nestle up to her young, was announced on the same day that the University of Minnesota’s Extension and College of Veterinary Medicine released a report discouraging fair organizers — from county gatherings to the statewide behemoth in Falcon Heights — from holding in-person lactating dairy cow exhibitions out of fear of further spread of H5N1.

Lactating dairy cattle constitute only a small portion of the dairy cows shown at fairs. Most are heifers — female cows not yet mature enough to produce milk.

While acknowledging scientists have yet to pin down an “exact route of transmission” for the virus, the educators wrote, “the most notable potential links between infected premises [dairy to dairy and dairy to poultry] are shared equipment, shared personnel, visitors, animal movements and having other wild or domestic animals on site.”

Joe Armstrong, a livestock educator and veterinarian with the Extension, said hard stops on movement of animals would vastly decrease the likelihood that bird flu, which causes cold-like symptoms in dairy cattle but can be fatal in poultry, spreads to other animals on the fair campus.

“Raw milk has the most virus in it,” said Armstrong, who helped write Thursday’s report. “And that’s being carried and mechanically moved by people and equipment.”

He acknowledged the news might be heartbreaking for a 4-H youngster who now can’t bring the milk cow they’ve cared for to the competition arena. But he estimated that of the 10,000 4-Hers showing dairy cattle at county fairs this summer, only roughly 25 will show lactating dairy cattle.

“It’s a very small population,” Armstrong said.

Lucas Sjostrom, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, said the guidance is similar to what the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued this year.

He said farmers should be able to decide whether to show the animals. Sjostrom said some might rely on the sheen of exhibiting a lactating dairy cow before judges at a county or state fair to market their cow’s heredity to would-be buyers.

“We have a tradition of some of the best genetic stock in the world,” he said. “So neighboring farms, neighboring states and neighboring countries do seek out Minnesota genetics regularly.”

The state Board of Animal Health this summer required that dairy cattle be tested before they can be shown at county fairs. Some fairs, including those in Houston and Winona counties, have already gone a step further and canceled exhibitions for lactating cattle or switched to virtual shows.

In Minnesota, H5N1 infections have been reported among nine dairy herds since June. The latest was reported July 17 in Stearns County. Herds ranging from 120 cows to more than 2,000 across central and western Minnesota’s dairy belt, including Morrison and Benton counties, have tested positive.

Industry observers said the statewide tally is likely an undercount because testing is not mandatory.

Colorado has announced nearly 50 infected herds and on Monday mandated the weekly testing of commercial dairy herds.

A new report from University of Wisconsin scientists suggested that raw milk is likely the chief conduit for the spreading of H5N1 between dairy herds and other mammals, including humans.

“This relatively low risk is good news,” Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of pathobiological sciences, said in a statement, “since it means the virus is unlikely to easily infect others who aren’t exposed to raw infected milk.”

While federal officials say interstate truck traffic has helped spread the disease to more than a dozen states since the spring, raw milk has been a vector in local transmission.

Minnesota banned poultry from events in 2015 during the height of another bird flu pandemic.