Bizarre cow deaths

[flashl]

A bizarre and painful death

WHAS11 News is investigating the suspected outbreak of a deadly cattle virus.

Blue tongue disease has apparently jumped from Kentuckiana’s deer population to area livestock and a southern Indiana farm has been hit hard.

Everything appeared normal on Kenny Yeager’s farm on Saturday, until he went outside. First he found one cow down, then two, and as of this morning, a total of twelve dead cattle.

“It’s just devastating. It’s taken years to build them up, and over a twenty four hour period I lost all of them,” Yeager told WHAS11 News.

That loss has settled on Yeager’s face, along with even more concern over whether or not his remaining twenty cattle will survive. He fears that they too will suffer what Yeager says was a bizarre and painful death.

== snip ==

The major signs of blue tongue include high fever, excessive salivating and swelling of the face. Blue tongue is spread by midges or biting flies and it is not transmitted by direct or indirect contact between animals and it cannot be transmitted to humans.
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[MichaelHarris]

1. One word

Chupacabra.

[flashl]

2. Its in the UK

TWENTY-five farms are now infected with bluetongue, the Government said yesterday.

Deputy chief vet Fred Landeg said they were all in the control zone in eastern England — mostly around the first discovered case near Ipswich.

Restrictions will last to next summer, he added.

Firms are working on a vaccine for bluetongue, which is spread by midges. It may be used if the disease does not die out this winter.

Dr Landeg added that recent cases of foot and mouth in Surrey were unlikely to spread outside the area.

edit:

EU Commission confirms outbreak of blue tongue in Denmark's sheep

Brussels- Laboratory tests have shown that sheep in Denmark have contracted blue tongue, the EU Commission confirmed Sunday.

The herd was near Sakskbing on the island of Lolland and one animal had already died.

The EU Commission and the 27 member states had in early October agreed on preventative and security measures to be taken to combat the insect-borne disease and to toughen notification duties.

The EU has registered 23,500 cases since August 2006.

[soothsayer]

3. Hmm, so these kinds of diseases will spread due to global warming.

[sce56]

4. First Mad Cow now Blue Tongue!

That bites! Just like the fact that I still can not give blood due to time spent in Europe when Vaca Loca first came out!

[flashl]

5. Deer too

Hunters looking out for dead deer

The deer hunting season is just around the corner and area hunters are carefully listening as the state Game Commission continues to track deer deaths associated with Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD).

"This is a main concern with hunters right now," said Samara Trusso, regional biologist for the Southwest Region of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Once bitten by an infected midge, Trusso said it takes five to 10 days to see the signs of the illness in the deer. Trusso said the deer will start appearing lethargic, disoriented, lame or unresponsive to humans and other stimulus. Trusso said there have been incidents when people had to physically push an infected deer off a roadway because it would not respond to passing vehicles or honking horns.

As the disease progresses, the deer may drool, have bloody discharge from the nose, sores on the mouth and swollen, blue tongues; they could also become thin from not eating and normally die near sources of water because they seek the water when their fever rises. Once at the water source, they're too disoriented to drink.

Trusso said between five and seven days after the disease is incubated, the deer could die. Some deer can survive.

== snip ==

While humans cannot be infected with the disease, secondary infections makes the meat unfit for human consumption, so the Game Commission recommends that hunters avoid shooting or consuming deer that appear ill.

[flashl]

6. Arrival of Bluetongue Brings Dismay

Horse racing

The Animal Health Trust are hopeful that blue tongue disease and African Horse Sickness will be taken seriously. A leading vet said yesterday that the first recorded case of blue tongue disease in Britain is a warning that the threat of African Horse Sickness, a lethal virus which is carried by similar vector species, must now be taken seriously.

Richard Newton, the head of equine epidemiology at the Animal Health Trust, said that an outbreak of AHS, which can have a mortality rate of 80% or more, would have a "very rapid and very prolonged effect" on racing. "It is not something that we want here," he added, "if there is anything at all that we can do to help it."

Until last year, blue tongue disease had not been recorded in northern Europe and it was widely assumed that the species of midge occurring in the area could not transmit the blue tongue virus. However, a series of outbreaks last summer and autumn in Belgium and Germany proved otherwise, raising fears that the midges could also transmit AHS.