Anyone entering the College of ACES Poultry Research Farm is asked the following questions: Have you been around any birds in the past 72 hours? Are you willing to wear a protective suit in the facility?
The U.S. has seen an increase in avian influenza outbreaks in the past year. Few cases have been detected in Illinois as of now, but an outbreak could risk the well-being of the farm. The University’s research facility remains a critical way for students to learn more about chickens, so the poultry farm is doing everything in its power to prevent the spread.
“(Avian influenza) is a really scary thing for us because the chickens are really susceptible to getting it,” said Sarah Womack, ACES agriculture research specialist and manager of the Poultry Research Farm. “They get really sick, and a lot of them die.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service reported that around 11.4 million birds were impacted by avian influenza in February 2026. Once the influenza enters the system of one bird, it’s quick to spread to others.
Though the facility works hard to prevent avian influenza’s spread, its main focus is educating students on how to take care of chickens. Womack helps raise the chickens. They said the facility hatches eggs every week, for both educational and research purposes.
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Researchers collect eggs from their chickens twice a day and gently clean them before storing them in a walk-in cooler. They later put the eggs in an incubator, and the chicks hatch 21 days later.
Once the eggs are hatched, students come to the farm to begin learning. ANSC 103: Working With Farm Animals allows undergraduate animal science students to learn more about beef and dairy cattle, horses and poultry. Students go down to the poultry farm a few times each semester to learn more about chickens and their hatching process.
“Everybody likes to pick up a baby chicken, hold it and cuddle it,” said ANSC 103 professor Carl Parsons. “But I think it’s really important to understand there’s a lot of different things that go into producing chickens and hatching them out.”
According to Parsons and Womack, students in the class must adhere to avian influenza prevention guidelines, such as wearing protective gear and staying away from potentially infected birds. There is an emphasis on how catastrophic an outbreak could be on the farm.
Graduate students in animal science also utilize the farm’s facilities to conduct research. Even though a lot of care must go into keeping the poultry farm safe, director of animal sciences research farms Jonathon Mosley urges the importance of University-led research.
“We can do research in an unbiased way,” Mosley said. “If research in all things becomes just industry-driven … they can scare that research information to their benefit. Whereas, as a University, we’re going to give you the information based off of true research and sound data. And so whether it benefits a company or not, that’s not our problem.”
An outbreak would require all birds on the poultry farm to be euthanized, according to Womack. This issue is larger than just the University’s poultry farm, though. The presence of avian influenza has caused egg prices to fluctuate.
Because avian influenza kills so many birds, there are fewer hens to produce eggs. This causes there to be less supply for stores, driving prices up.
“It’s important for consumers buying eggs specifically, but also all poultry products, including chicken, turkey,” Womack said. “Because (avian influenza) gets the birds so sick, farms have to depopulate everything. That’s why prices fluctuate so much.”
Womack emphasizes that avian influenza doesn’t spread through bird eggs or meat, so consumers are safe when it comes to buying groceries. There’s also no need to worry about a human outbreak of the disease; it rarely spreads from human to human.
“(Avian influenza) is always going to be around, and it’s always going to be something we’re struggling with,” Womack said. “But hopefully it won’t always be this kind of outbreak status where we’re really concerned about it, and we’ll be able to kind of rein it in and have isolated cases.”
