It may sound like a strange combination, but it's one the area is no stranger too having used chickens as a tool for detecting viruses carried by mosquitoes for many years.

Leeton Shire Council in particular has been a participant for many years in an arbovirus and mosquito monitoring program with NSW Health.

Now, 60 chickens have taken on an important public health role across the Murrumbidgee Local Health District (MLHD).

Flocks of 15 chooks found new homes in Leeton, Griffith, Hay and Deniliquin, where they are now being tested weekly for local mosquito-borne viruses, providing an early warning system for when preventive measures among humans need to be ramped up.

MLHD senior environmental health officer, Tony Burns, said a chicken's immune system kicks in after they're bitten by a mosquito carrying Murray Valley encephalitis, which can be lethal in humans.

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Ross River virus, which is debilitating and causes severe fatigue is also of public health concern.

While the chicken's health isn't affected, the antibodies they develop in response can be detected in blood samples, which are sent each week to Sydney laboratories for testing.

Mr Burns said the six-month sentinel chicken surveillance program, which runs from November to April, is particularly important this summer given predictions of increased rainfall due to the La Nina weather pattern, leading to an increase in water where mosquitoes can breed.

MLHD works closely with local councils to run the chicken program and find suitable volunteers to house them, take weekly pin-prick blood tests and post samples to the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in Sydney for testing.

Volunteers are trained - a key part of the program's ethics approval - and chicken coups are inspected by a Department of Primary Industries vet to ensure they are up to standard.

"People looking after the chickens need to have a well constructed chook pen so foxes don't get in and take them," Mr Burns said.

"There needs to be shade, and an area where they can perch and lay their eggs.

"We provide food as part of the program and the volunteer gets free eggs and they keep the chooks."

Just as it takes only one mozzie bite to infect a person with one of these viruses, once a chicken has been bitten, a seroconversion will always be detectable in their blood.

Affected chickens are retired from their job on the front-line after seroconverting (part of the reason a flock of 15 is needed at the outset).

Mr Burns said information provided courtesy of the chickens is supplemented by mosquito trapping, which gives an idea of numbers.

Recently Leeton and Albury had less than 50 mosquitoes per trap, while Griffith had about 1000.

However, that number is expected to rise, with residents themselves no doubt seeing the pesky and irritating pest out in droves during the Christmas festivities.

Trapping also gives a sense of what species are thriving locally - while there were eight different species among the 58 mozzies collected in one overnight trap in Wagga recently - there are more than 300 species across Australia.

The mosquito traps, which are left out for 12 hours, rely on light and carbon dioxide from dry ice to attract the insects and a fan to blow them into a bucket.

The traps are then packed into an esky with freezer bricks and sent to Sydney for analysis.

Mr Burns said while farmers, particularly those who irrigate, have improved their water handling to minimise breeding grounds, it is important for MIA residents to also be vigilant.

"It's important to take a good look around your back yard to make sure you don't have any containers or even trays under pot plants that are holding water, because it doesn't take much water to allow mosquitoes to breed," he said.

"And remember to minimise the chance of getting bitten by covering up and wearing repellent, particularly at dusk and dawn."