even more bad news for bighorn

[MattK]

I just read an article in the Missoulian today about the sheep in the upper rock creek herd. Seems they have pneumonia also. There were six shot in the lower rock creek herd and 3 shot in the upper rock creek herd. The sheep aren't looking too good right now.

 

[Tom]

Is the pneumonia killing them? They don't put up shelters or supplemental feed to help them out eh?

They need a nice valley to have to themselves maybe, do they have that or do all the people take the valleys?

 

[Oak]

Are you trying to be funny Tom?

 

[Tom]

Are you being ignorant Oak? What do you say they need?

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Bighorn sheep used to be plentiful in the western United States, but populations have declined since the westward expansion of human settlement and related introduction of exotic species by European settlers, especially domestic sheep.
http://bss.sfsu.edu/geog/bholzman/courses/Fall02 projects/bighorn.html

 

[Oak]

Matt or I are definitely not the one being ignorant in this thread, Tom. Why don't you do some research on pneumonia in wild sheep and then re-read your first reply. Then you can explain to me how "putting up some shelters" will help.

 

[tjones]

From what I am hearing from inside the FWP, we will be lucky if 20% of the upper Rock Creek herd survives. Real ugly up there.

 

[Tom]

I was thinking more long term solutions to prevent it not kill them off after the herd is infected, and I was hoping you would know of something besides have me look up possible solutions.

Why not give them some feed with antibiotics in it? Chlortetracycline is a general antibiotic put in some animal feeds that kills bacteria, and the pneumonia is commonly caused by some bacteria. Here's an abstract on the common bacteria that causes pneumonia in wild sheep.
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Treatment of pigs experimentally infected with Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, Pasteurella multocida, and Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae with various antibiotics.
L Stipkovits, D Miller, R Glavits, L Fodor, and D Burch
Veterinary Medical Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. [email protected]
Abstract
The authors have performed a comparative study of the efficacy of various in-feed medications for the treatment of 5- to 6-week-old specific pathogen-free (SPF) piglets experimentally infected on day 1 with Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, on day 8 with Pasteurella multocida (serotype A), and on day 15 with Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (serotype 2). The treatment started on day 9 and continued for 12 consecutive days, then the piglets were euthanized for examination of macroscopic, histologic, and pathologic lesions and for the presence of mycoplasmas and bacteria in the lungs. Based on the results of clinical observations (respiratory signs, rectal temperature, body weight gain, and feed conversion efficiency), macroscopic and histologic lesions of the lungs, and microbiologic findings, the best results were obtained by treatment of pigs with Econor + chlortetracycline, followed by Tetramutin, Pulmotil, Cyfac, and lincomycin + chlortetracycline.

Maybe more would survive with something like that applied?!