Living in WI in the heart of CWD country its interesting watching states deal with this "new" problem.
CWD is spread via saliva, and lives in the dirt and where deer congregate or high deer populations seem to have higher prevalence. So we have a county by county ban.
WI has tried a lot to stop CWD nothing has seemed to really work. Honestly it appears to be self limiting. Our deer herd is still strong and growing CWD isn't decimating the herd like they initially thought it would.
A couple questions I have always had.
1) Saliva is the main way the prion is transfered from anaimal to animal. Well I can put a trail camera up on a primary scrape on our farm and get pictures of 90%-100% of the deer living on the property and new bucks during the rut licking the same branch along with just about any other limb on a field edge. So do we need to cut all over hanging limbs?
2) We know the prion can survive for long periods of time through all weather in the dirt. We can't move dead animals from county to county but farmers can drive their implements throughout the state without needing to clean the dirt?
3) About 5-6 years ago western states had a bad drought and were buying hay from WI, well that hay came directly from the heart of CWD country and now magically CWD is found in higher numbers? When will we put limitations on the farmers?
Edit:
Would using mineral sites in the spring be banned too? They are here, and i have seen a couple pretty good studies that site a magnesium shortage as a possible reason why some deer are infected and others aren't.
As a side note I think baiting is unethical imo but don't think it increases CWD spread.
CWD is spread via saliva, and lives in the dirt and where deer congregate or high deer populations seem to have higher prevalence. So we have a county by county ban.
WI has tried a lot to stop CWD nothing has seemed to really work. Honestly it appears to be self limiting. Our deer herd is still strong and growing CWD isn't decimating the herd like they initially thought it would.
A couple questions I have always had.
1) Saliva is the main way the prion is transfered from anaimal to animal. Well I can put a trail camera up on a primary scrape on our farm and get pictures of 90%-100% of the deer living on the property and new bucks during the rut licking the same branch along with just about any other limb on a field edge. So do we need to cut all over hanging limbs?
2) We know the prion can survive for long periods of time through all weather in the dirt. We can't move dead animals from county to county but farmers can drive their implements throughout the state without needing to clean the dirt?
3) About 5-6 years ago western states had a bad drought and were buying hay from WI, well that hay came directly from the heart of CWD country and now magically CWD is found in higher numbers? When will we put limitations on the farmers?
Edit:
Would using mineral sites in the spring be banned too? They are here, and i have seen a couple pretty good studies that site a magnesium shortage as a possible reason why some deer are infected and others aren't.
As a side note I think baiting is unethical imo but don't think it increases CWD spread.
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