herd

For them, the desert is home, where they cultivate date palms and raise herds of goats, sheep and camels.

That’s alarming, because 95% is generally considered the minimum to produce “herd immunity,” in which vaccination is so widespread that even the unvaccinated are protected from the spread of these diseases.

His herd of 400 cows are milked three times a day on behalf of a major milk supplier and his 18,000 hens lay eggs for a leading supermarket.

As H5N1 bird flu spreads among California dairy herds and southward-migrating birds, health officials announced Friday that six more human cases of infection: five in California and one in Oregon — the state’s first.

The animal belongs to a herd of hefty herbivores who spend their days lumbering through an open landscape of conifers and gingkos, horsetails and monkey puzzle trees.