Under a cavernous sky, beneath wheeling clouds of starlings, the turkey cull began anew yesterday, with the first of 22,000 free-range birds loaded into mobile gas chambers at four farms.

There was as yet no sign of the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain H5N1 among the flocks. Instead these birds had been condemned by the movements of a handful of workers between the farms and Redgrave Park Farm, the site of the original outbreak.

Fred Landeg, the acting chief veterinary officer, described the cull as a precautionary measure. Nevertheless, in villages on the Norfolk-Suffolk border the news provoked disquiet.

“If other farms are involved it’s very worrying,” said a farmer based just outside Redgrave, who did not wish to be named. “Christmas is a huge market round here and if we can’t move the birds, how are we going to get them to the table? They need to be slaughtered a week before Christmas at the latest.”

Rumours were running through the villages. The farmer said he’d heard that all the chickens born on Tuesday at a large commercial hatchery were gassed after news broke of the outbreak of H5N1. The hatchery denied this.

While officials sought the source of the outbreak, locals in the White Hart pub reached their own conclusions. “It’s all the wild birds that come here,” said David Bryan, 64, a retired builder from Redgrave.

Local ornithologists leapt to the wild birds’ defence. Paul Stancliffe, from the British Trust for Ornithology, which has its headquarters nearby in Thetford, said it could not be the wigeons because “they have been here since September”, and the swans on the lake appeared to be of British origin.

Smallholders were watching their flocks nervously. Jenny Francis, a retired school teacher, had lately designed a Christmas card based on three of her husband’s beloved flock of geese, standing barely visible in the snow. The message inside was: “Now you see us, now you don’t.” “It seems rather unfortunate now,” she said.

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