Agricultural News
Colorado Dairy Herd Depopulated
Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:32:30 CDTDespite recent findings of bovine TB in a Colorado dairy herd, that state remains classified as bovine TB–free under USDA-APHIS traditional classification. The entire herd at the southern Colorado dairy was depopulated under an agreement between the owners and USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. According to Nick Striegel, Colorado’s assistant state veterinarian, the farm milked - a few hundred cows. No other infected herds have been found in the state.
Under a federal order announced earlier this year, USDA-APHIS no longer recommends a whole herd depopulation as the preferred means of disease management. The orders say - increasingly large herd sizes make it difficult to justify depopulation when quarantine and testing may offer an appropriate option. But in the Colorado case, officials supported herd depopulation. The dairy’s owners later performed intensive cleaning and disinfection to eliminate bacteria from the site.
Striegel notes - we still have not determined how the infection began in the herd. While four cows were originally found to be infected, several others later tested positive for bovine TB.
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