About 1,30,000 chickens on a farm in Karnataka's Bidar district will be culled as a precautionary measure after a lab report identified the avian influenza (H5N1) virus as the reason behind deaths of thousands of chickens in the district.

"We received an information on May 5 that at a chicken farm about 20,000 chickens have died. To identify the disease we had sent the samples to a laboratory in Bhopal, the report confirms the cause is due to H5N1 virus," Karnataka Minister for Animal Husbandry and Sericulture A Manju on Sunday said.

He said the rest, about 1,30,000 chickens in the farm would be culled in next one or two days, and an order has been issued in this regard.

The farm where the chickens have died is in Molakera village in Humnabad taluk, and belongs to a person named Ramesh Gupta. As a precautionary measure, government has already prohibited the sale of chickens from the farm and one km around its radius.

The minister also said all precautionary measure have been taken by government to control spread of the disease in any kind.