Macau completed the slaughter of its poultry stocks yesterday, with the carcasses of 56,800 chickens, ducks, pigeons, geese, quails, partridges and other birds being incinerated.
Government officials had earlier estimated the number of poultry on the Macau Peninsula and Taipa and Coloane islands to be 40,000.
'The number was higher than initially expected because the final cull also included over 7,000 young chicks that were kept at three family-owned farms on Coloane Island,' a government spokesman said.
Macau has only three small, family-run poultry farms on Coloane Island. Most of the poultry is imported daily from the mainland.
Officials of Macau's two municipal councils said they did not expect the sale of poultry in Macau to resume before the end of the month, adding traders and farmers would be compensated for their losses.
The Macau Government ordered the cull on Friday, following the confirmed detection of the H5N1 virus in two geese imported from the mainland.