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Southern Indiana EHD outbreak September 2014

The only defense to EHD is a herd with natural resistance. We have tried all of the vaccines, sprayers, and tried to mitigate all places they breed and hatch on our property. Over the years we have come to the following conclusions. Disclaimer.....this writing is my opinion and if you disagree with my insight it is ok with me. Some deer are naturally resistant to EHD. Therefore those with this resistance are the ones we want in our breeding herd. Breeding these "resistant" deer gives us a better chance of producing offspring that will survive outbreaks they encounter. Our southern deer appear to be more resistant than our northern deer but if you cross breed at greater than 50% all bets are off on the offspring's heartiness. EHD takes what it wants and moves on. The deer you have after its passing are your most valuable assets. Many times these resistant deer are not what the industry consider superior genetics. However they remain alive when i am burying the northern s in the same pen with them.


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Scott

Can you further define "natural resistance". Is it solely by way of consistent exposure? Science would say if a young deer from pure south Texas genetics was taken to an extreme northern environment for 5-7 years and then returned that it would die in the first EHD outbreak. Can resistance be passed through semen? It seems as if you are inferring this. If so wouldn't a certain genetic marker point out the resistant gene??? Can you please expound on this?

I believe that the only way to be safe is by a trustworthy vaccine that uses a better quality adjuvant that will trigger immune response.

I also think there is a systemic that may be strong enough to repel all insect biting. I agree fogging, spraying, and the current vaccine is a joke. Especially when just a light wind blowing for an hour can bring in new midges. Sure the resident midges are wiped out each time we fog but consider if a ten mile an hour wind blows for just one hour. New midges may now be present from up to ten miles away! I would like to see some research how fast the insecticides degrade on dirt and on the deer's nose. I think it will be evident why these methods fail.

Right now I am mixing 1 gallon of garlic powder in 300 lbs of feed and preparing high doses of water soluble powdered thiamine in my water troughs. I am also continually putting a trace amount of wormer in all my water troughs.
 
I am not a scientist but I have agreed with what Scott said for a long time. I have never lost a southern deer to Ehd. I have never had a northern survive on my place a full year. I started taking southern does and breeding them to texas or Texas northern crosses 4 years ago. It seems to work very well. None of my deer have more than a 1/4 northern blood and most have none. Midge flies have been here since July. Some one year olds get bit every year but get over it in a couple of days. I do not medicate them. My theory is if the have no natural resistance, I will bury them.

It took 4 years to breed the genetics up starting with pure southern does but it is working so far. I have some really nice bucks that I can release in the preserve that will survive. I now have one year olds that are 3/4 Texas and 1/4 southern that will score 120. By 2 they should hit 180. i think the third generation fawns will get me close to where I want to be. Two year typicals that will consistently score 160 to 200 inches.

There has been a lot of people try the northerns in alabama. Some have had success but most of south alabama has problems with northerns. It is a shamed, they are fine deer but there is a reason they are not here naturally.
 
What is the genetic marker or markers that indicate resistance?
 
I think this would be very easily proven true or false in a controlled testing environment.
 
Brett

I agree with you 100% that yearly exposure in the south helps build more resistance in southern deer. I firmly disagree with those who say that it has something to do with % of northern and southern blood. My deer and the offspring from doe that have lived through previous outbreaks are much more resistant. I don't know exactly why but I am certain it has nothing to do with their gene tree or DNA. To insinuate that resistance can pass by semen is bologna.
 
I agree. It is pure exposure over time. But who knows how many years or hundreds of years it takes to build that resistance in a herd. Personally, I think the problem in the north is lack of exposure. I know that seems crazy but when you go several years without exposure you get multiple generations of deer with no resistance.

This may also be completely wrong, but I believe the resistance is pasted through the doe. That is why I am trying to build up a herd through ai'ing southern does. It has worked so for. Time will tell all!
 
What about resistance if you ai with northern genetics? If all that holds true you should be able to ai close to 100% into your herd and not have the losses as buying and bringing them to the south. Any thought on that?
 
You start to have problems when you get above 25% northern.  I have no idea why.  Just what i have observed.  I had a couple 50/50 northerns and when the midge flies hit they both were hit the hardest in the pen.  One of them eventualy got over it, the other one died about a week later. 


The !/4 northerns will be sore on their feet for one to two days.  They never stop eating or drinking.  After 3 or 4 days they are back to normal.  i also believe Jerry is right that some northerns do better than others.  If you look at the southern half of alabama, so people seem to have some success raising northerns.  I can't see any reason other than certain northern lines have more resistance than others.  The Mississipi Delta has 50/50's in the wild due to the government restocking program in the 1930s-1950s.  They restocked with northerns several times and they mixed with southerns and survived.  It is unknown how many of the northerns survived but the northern influence can clearly be seen in the wild deer there still today. 


The funny part is if you move 25 miles from where the northerns were stocked, you hardly see any evidence of northern deer.  So, either deer do not travel very far during the rut or there is a natural barrier to the spread of these mixes. 


I will be happy when we figure all this out.  I would like to have more northern in my deer.  I love the size and earlly maturity of the northern deer.  I do believe if I had the time and money, i could keep breeding the northern semen and let the ones with no resistance die and breed the survivors that one day you could develop the resistance needed.
 
What about the deer who have lived thru EHD? Aren't they now just carriers of it and every time you have an outbreak of midges and they bite one of the deer that has had it before, wouldn't they just continue spreading it year after year? It has to survive here some way where I'm at because we don't import any new southern cattle anywhere within 300 miles of me. I've been seeing extreme die offs here since I was 10 years old, 30 plus years, and these wild deer don't seem to ever get resistant to it that I can tell. I think the more deer in an area with a heavy midge concentration are more likely to bite an infected animal and then spread it to another non-infected one??? How long can it live in a host and continue to be passed on?? I know a couple TX deer guys who have had huge EHD losses, one in the hundreds a couple years ago, few ever admit it because it's such a good selling point that TX deer are resistant. 
 
No,they are not an infectious host without fever and symptoms. The virus only winters over in tropical areas where the cycle can continue. Female midges(vector) bites an infected reservoir host to nourish her eggs. Then she lays them on unmoving water where they go into the mud and develop until they can also fly,mate, and bite. Temperatures continually over 70 degrees are necessary for this cycle to remain ongoing. The midges are resident in most of the Midwest every summer. The EHD virus is not. It is transported north from tropical environments either via the seasonal movement of a reservoir host or by the vector(midge) in wind currents. In my opinion it is mainly by seasonal movements of livestock. There is a small chance that the virus could remain dormant for a time before becoming infectious to the host. I think this would be an extremely rare circumstance.

I highly recommend reading the writings of Dr. Lee Cohnstaedt. He has devoted his PhD to studying this subject matter.
 
I don't buy the theory of it being carried by cattle up to the north. I'll promise you cattle don't move to Montana from the tropical climates. Montana and South Dakota cattle move south during the fall to feedlots where they get a better gain and have an ample corn supply. Tropical southern cattle don't survive the harsh northern winters, northern cattle are born, bred and raised here because of the survivability in the winter. I don't think you can have 90% of the deer in the milk river valley of  MT die off like it did 2 years ago without having the virus stay here some how. I also don't believe that many midges will ride the wind currents as the predominant wind in the Midwest is blowing out of the northwest most of the time. It appears to me the midges don't fly around all day floating on the wind currents, they sit on the mud in the heat of the day and in the evening while the wind goes down they fly around the water hole biting the animals who come in for a drink and then go back to the mud to lay eggs. I don't know the answers of how and why but it just seems to me it would have to stay here this far north in order to have the time to create the right circumstances for a big die off. You would also have deer dying from EHD all summer on the way up here, not just in the fall window of mid august-frost. I'm sure cattle are hosts but I think it would have to survive in the host for longer then just a few days during symptoms to keep the cycle going. All interesting stuff and hopefully some day we will figure out the answer. Meanwhile I gotta go out and do some fogging, I know that works. :D 
 
Cody

It doesn't make the jump over that much distance overnight. It moves north into Texas in the early spring. I agree, pure south Texas deer die off in huge numbers when a new strain surfaces. I don't know how the resistance builds. I think it is better if the deer are exposed annually. If an outbreak only occurs in an area every 5-7 years there will be offspring alive 4-5 generations from the animals exposed in the previous outbreak. I don't think resistance would be good in animals this far removed from the last outbreak exposure. I think there are areas in Texas that don't get annual exposure. I don't know how the resistance builds but I do believe there is something to it if the exposure is annual.

Do some reading and you will see that cattle are in fact a reservoir host for the virus and a slow moving target for the midge(virus vector) to feed. Cattle are often moved to the northern planes for summer pasture. The things I have given my opinion about result from reading professional scientific research. My writing and understanding is very simple and more like a book report from reading and digesting hundreds of pages. You may have a completely different discovery. Fogging, spraying, removing muddy breeding areas, and systemics are all helpful but not complete remedies. I believe that if I wouldn't have been complacent this year and had started earlier fighting with one particular systemic that I could have avoided this outbreak. I never dreamed with all the regular rain and cool summer this was coming.
 
My opinion is the cattle are the carriers from year to year as they don't show any symtoms hardly when infected with it.  Like Bell says it would be hard for me in Montana to believe the wind current blew it up here as we get our wind weather from California most days or Canada.  We don't get wind current from the south.  Cattle are the result of all the EHD. 


Sorry Cody it was Bell I agreed with.
 
When you see a silver semi trucking up the road with vent holes in the trailer northbound across your state line in the middle of June with cattle inside that has maybe Laredo, TX written on the cab door maybe a light bulb will finally come on. Lol

Then when the snow comes and the wranglers push them down out of the mountains if you are on the road at the right time, you will see the same truck going south and if you look through the holes the cows will be a lot bigger. 10-4 lol
 
Gentle I have been ffollowing your Post on and off , and as a deerfarmer in Okla , I was curious about how long u gentleman have been raising deer , how early u prepare your farms for EHD , and R u dealing with losses year after year ? Mark kwitowski
 
Mark

We began to raise deer for profit in 2001. Before that we had a few pet ones. The first outbreak I remember was 1999. Then 2001 a bad one. In 2006 I lost forty something and with the help of our farm DVM, we had a vaccine made from our deer for EHD type 2. Then in 2007 I again lost fifty something. So much for exposure. I vaccinated like a mad man for the next several years with the Mo and DBC vaccines. In 2012-13 everyone around me had huge loses but ours were small. This September we have lost twenty three adults and several fawns. I thought that I may have found an effective systemic because my deer remained mostly untouched in the 2012-13 outbreaks Then this year the weather tricked me and I didn't take any preventive action. Usually I can catch wind of it south or west of me and I am on it. This year my neighbor moved in a bunch of calves from where I don't know. I am the only one in the immediate area besides him with EHD. EHD has become much more common in the past two decades and I don't know why?

I have studied research facilities records from the 60's,70's and 80's. Almost no breeding deer are recorded to have died during EHD season. Read the Kerr Wildlife Management antler research documents for instance and the date of death for all of their breeding stock is recorded for 20+ years. The deaths are not during EHD season. I will be planting a lot of sunflowers next year. Lol

There are certain things I will not say about fighting this virus unless I was seriously upset or desperate. I am not there yet,Thank God

Mark, are you perhaps the superstitious gentleman with the great big 240"+ clean five by five in the book case with the long matching drops sticking through the shelves? That deer was one of the prettiest ever. I would have loved to have bred some of my typical doe to him. Some of your previous post remind me of the gentleman who had him. No one else on this forum would know the deer I speak of. I have never seen the fellow who brought his sire down from up north post on here.
 

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