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Show Three of Antelope Island buffalo have brucellosis Three of the 530 buffalo on Antelope Island have tested positive for brucellosis, Utah Division of Parks and Recreation and Utah Department of Agriculture officials announced. The findings were a result of blood tests conducted on the island's buffalo herd March 16-18. 16-18. "Three of the buffalo tested positive as reactors, while six more .tested positive as suspects,' State Veterinarian Michael R. Marshall said. A reactor animal is one that tests positive to one or more of a battery of eight different tests to detect brucellosis. A suspect animal is one which tests positive in some of the tests, but the suspect animal's immune im-mune system did not respond as strongly as a reactor's immune system, Marshall said. The reactor animals will be disposed of and their tissues sent to the National Animal Disease Laboratory in Ames, Iowa and the Veterinary College at Texas A&M for further testing and research, Marshall said. It will take 30 days to have the tissues analyzed. "Once they receive the results, we'll know more about the long-term effects," Marshall Mar-shall said. "We will also continue studies to find out where the disease came from." The suspect animals are currently separated from the rest of the herd and quarantined. They will be tested again for the disease in 30 days, Marshall said. The animals in the herd that did not test positive for the disease have been released back to pasture, but remain under quarantine quaran-tine on the island. Brucellosis, commonly known as bangs, is a bacterial disease that causes abortion in cattle and buffalo in the last trimester of pregnancy. It can reduce the number of live births by as much as 50 percent. The disease is transmitted orally by contact con-tact with uterine fluid, afterbirth, or milk from infected animals. The blood tests were conducted after a case of brucellosis was detected de-tected in one of the buffalo tested during the division's annual roundup roun-dup last November. For more information call Mary Tullius, public information officer with the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation, at 538-7336. |