Disease Questions

https://Immersive-optics.com/

How much would you give to create a research fund to investigate deer diseases

  • £5

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • £10

    Votes: 4 23.5%

  • £15

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • £20

    Votes: 12 70.6%
  • Total voters
    17
B

Buchan

Well-Known Member
Veterinarian
having chatted to other vets on here, it would be good if we could have a fund to use to get histology on the weird stuff you folk find in deer so a good disease database can be formed as an online resource. It was done in Scotland a but ago @jsimpson I think was involved.

So does anyone know if BDS/BASC/GWCT would have funding to support this, also , what would forum members be prepared to put into a fund for this?
 
As mentioned @Buchan I'll approach my old employer about costs also. I'm sure they'd be keen to apply elsewhere for PhD funding if we can get enough samples being sent in.
 
Is research into deer diseases needed?

I’d be willing to donate, but curious what the purpose would be? Are there new diseases and would the research be to come up with ways to overcome and treat them? If so, how? And why? Or would it be to help stalkers identify existing diseases to avoid carcasses going into the food chain that should not? Should DSC’s not be covering that element already?

I’m not questioning the integrity of the OP’s desire to help the deer and stalking community, but I’m not sure what the desired outcome would be, and to what purpose, that we shouldn’t already be aware of through existing training.

Help me understand this one. ☝️
 
I would have thought with the amount of money being thrown at deer management through the grant schemes, there should be something government led as part of the grants. If you had to send in regular blood samples a picture of the national herds heath could be worked out using one or several university lead studies?
Just an idea?
 
Home Loader said:
I would have thought with the amount of money being thrown at deer management through the grant schemes, there should be something government led as part of the grants. If you had to send in regular blood samples a picture of the national herds heath could be worked out using one or several university lead studies?
Just an idea?
Click to expand...
Been doing the UKHSA Porton Down deer blood and tick sampling for years now :thumb:

Having our "resident" vets is very useful :tiphat: for the majority of mainly common, known issues but when you get something like what @Dorset Deer recently posted and they are broadly stumped, where can we go? IMHO, this ought to be led by the BDS under their wider remit for deer:

The BDS works to make a difference for deer in the UK through education, awareness raising, campaigning, advocacy, monitoring, best practice management training, and science and research.

We have thousands of members and supporters who are helping us build a strong future for wild deer in the UK. ​
 
HonestJohn said:
Is research into deer diseases needed?

I’d be willing to donate, but curious what the purpose would be? Are there new diseases and would the research be to come up with ways to overcome and treat them? If so, how? And why? Or would it be to help stalkers identify existing diseases to avoid carcasses going into the food chain that should not? Should DSC’s not be covering that element already?

I’m not questioning the integrity of the OP’s desire to help the deer and stalking community, but I’m not sure what the desired outcome would be, and to what purpose, that we shouldn’t already be aware of through existing training.

Help me understand this one. ☝️
Click to expand...
Fair comment. I get a lot of questions on, "What's this?" and I often reply, I don't know, it would take histology to be certain. Aside from professional curiosity I like the idea of an atlas of conditions that people can look at and know what's going on, so help them understand what they are seeing.
I think the eat/don't eat is reasonably straightforward
 
HonestJohn said:
Is research into deer diseases needed?

I’d be willing to donate, but curious what the purpose would be? Are there new diseases and would the research be to come up with ways to overcome and treat them? If so, how? And why? Or would it be to help stalkers identify existing diseases to avoid carcasses going into the food chain that should not? Should DSC’s not be covering that element already?

I’m not questioning the integrity of the OP’s desire to help the deer and stalking community, but I’m not sure what the desired outcome would be, and to what purpose, that we shouldn’t already be aware of through existing training.

Help me understand this one. ☝️
Click to expand...
Seconding what @Buchan has already said, when perusing the latest edition of the textbook 'Deer Veterinary Medicine' I find it interesting how often it is remarked that there isn't enough data on various conditions. And how few images some chapters had. Part of the purpose would be knowledge for knowledge's sake, the others would be to establish a dataset of what is seen where and in which species, plus helping to inform stalkers and hopefully eventually contributing to deer health and welfare through better understanding. Through this forum we have a network of stalkers across the UK (and beyond) which gives incredible sampling potential. It would be great to utilise it.
 
HonestJohn said:
Is research into deer diseases needed?

I’d be willing to donate, but curious what the purpose would be? Are there new diseases and would the research be to come up with ways to overcome and treat them? If so, how? And why? Or would it be to help stalkers identify existing diseases to avoid carcasses going into the food chain that should not? Should DSC’s not be covering that element already?

I’m not questioning the integrity of the OP’s desire to help the deer and stalking community, but I’m not sure what the desired outcome would be, and to what purpose, that we shouldn’t already be aware of through existing training.

Help me understand this one. ☝️
Click to expand...
Let me try.

First off, you ask a very valid question, but having been a member here for 18 years it still surprises me how many times members post photos of diseases and injuries they have encountered with deer in the field, and how much of a struggle it can sometimes be to diagnose the affliction that the animal is suffering from. Both experienced deer stalkers and veterinarians often fail to agree on the diseases being reported, which perhaps highlights both the rarity and variety of diseases that can be encountered?

We are fortunate that the deer population in the UK is generally in an exceptionally healthy condition, as a result of which most stalkers are unlikely to encounter diseases in the field. In approaching thirty years of stalking the number of diseased deer I’ve personally come across can be counted on perhaps the fingers of two hands - a slack handful of cases of bTB, a single case of pneumonia, another of lungworm, one of pseudomonas, and perhaps 3 or 4 cases of scour. That’s leaving aside the incidence of missing limbs, parasite infestation, etc. If my experience is typical, there are probably a lot of stalkers who have never shot a deer and found it suffering from a disease!

As to the various levels of DSC certification, whilst these can give a general grounding in terms of what to look for, they are by no means exhaustive, and nor are they meant to be. The primary focus is on identification of notifiable diseases, for obvious reasons, as well as those conditions that might prevent an animal being put into the food chain, but even at this high level they often lack suitable images to exhibit what these diseases look like when physically encountered in the field.

This is where I would see a database of diseases in deer really being useful - ideally anyone should be able to upload a photo of a carcass to a database and have a diagnosis delivered within seconds, not by a vet necessarily but via AI. A significant database of disease images could provide a wonderful resource for further research, that would be to the benefit not just to deer stalkers but to veterinarians, biologists and ecologists across the UK.
 
Last edited:
Buchan said:
having chatted to other vets on here, it would be good if we could have a fund to use to get histology on the weird stuff you folk find in deer so a good disease database can be formed as an online resource. It was done in Scotland a but ago @jsimpson I think was involved.

So does anyone know if BDS/BASC/GWCT would have funding to support this, also , what would forum members be prepared to put into a fund for this?
Click to expand...
Hi

Yes for the last 12 years I have been collecting data on wild deer diseases. Pathology has been done on samples submitted to me through the Royal Dick Vet College Pathology department. Tried for ages to get funding together to provide a better service but kept hitting a brick wall. Happy to be involved in an effort to get something off the ground., Also happy to give talks on deer diseases to any regional groups.
 
It would be handy if there was a supply of histology sample pots. Stalkers then could take a small sample and once in fixative send it off for analysis. Also some photos could be submitted.
D
 
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