MONTMORENCY COUNTY, Mich. — Bovine Tuberculosis has been discovered at a private deer ranch in Montmorency County in the northeastern part of the Lower Peninsula, even as state officials continue to work towards having the southern portion of the Lower Peninsula declared free of bovine TB.

“We haven’t had this happen in nine years,“ said Bridget Patrick, coordinator of the state’s bovine TB eradication project. “Of course it’s a disappointment.”

The discovery of bovine TB in a privately owned deer herd should not affect the bovine TB status of the state with regard to cattle, Patrick added.

“It’s not a big deal for us,” she said.

Epidemiologists are currently at the ranch trying to determine how the deer was infected. There are a reported 150-200 deer on the ranch.

All of them are to be euthanized in order to keep the disease from spreading.

It’s not yet known if any other deer at the ranch were infected.

The USDA will compensate the rancher for his herd, Patrick said.

The herd must first be appraised, and this process involves paperwork and the involvement of officials at both the state and federal levels of government.

The USDA revoked Michigan’s TB-free status in 2000, sometime after bovine TB broke out in cattle and deer in the northeastern Lower Peninsula.

Since then Michigan officials have tested more than 1 million head of livestock and 17,000 herds for bovine TB in the state, and no cattle have tested positive for TB outside the modified accredited zone.

The modified accredited zone includes Alcona, Alpena, Antrim, Cheboygan, Charlevoix, Crawford, Emmet, Montmorency, Oscoda, Otsego and Presque Isle counties; and parts of Ogemaw and Iosco counties, all in the northern Lower Peninsula.

A modified accredited advanced zone, on the other hand, is one where bovine TB has not been found, but which hasn’t yet been designated as TB-free. Last year the USDA announced that the Upper Peninsula was TB-free, an upgrade from the modified accredited advanced status it had for several years.

This farm news was published in the Nov. 22, 2006 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.