MADISON — No more cases of chronic wasting disease have been found in a Racine County whitetail deer herd that was killed and tested after one of the deer turned up positive in a routine test last month.

The remaining 15 deer owned by Colin Breber, of Raymond, were killed June 10 and samples sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Test results returned June 23 to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

A team from the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Wildlife Services put the animals down by gunshot. Staff from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and from USDA-Veterinary Services removed tissue samples, and the carcasses were disposed of in a chemical digester at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

Breber will be required to burn or bury all feed, bedding, manure and wooden feed troughs used by the deer. He must also clean all feed, manure and other organic material from metal, concrete and plastic items that came in contact with the animals. State staff will then disinfect those articles with a strong chlorine bleach solution. In areas of heavy animal traffic, the owner will need to scrape off and bury 2 inches of topsoil and replace it. He will need to maintain fences adequate to keep wild deer off the property for five years, and cannot re-introduce farm-raised deer or elk to the property for five years.

Breber will receive a state indemnity payment for the animals — four does, one buck, four yearling fawns and 6 newborn fawns. The indemnity equals two-thirds of the appraised market value of each animal, up to $1,500 per animal.

The Ames laboratory reported May 21 that a 9-year-old doe that had died on Breber’s farm and tested positive for CWD. State regulations require that all farm-raised deer and elk 16 months or older must be tested when they die, are killed, or go to slaughter. The department’s policy is to kill exposed herds for testing. There is no live test for CWD.

In all, 13 herds in Wisconsin remain under quarantines related to CWD, which means they cannot move live deer or elk off the farm. Farms where herds have been depopulated are released from quarantine. Only one of the currently quarantined farms has had an animal test positive; the rest are herds that may have been exposed to CWD, through sales to or from infected farms, or possible contact with infected free-ranging deer in the Department of Natural Resources CWD eradication zone.

To date, 16 farm-raised animals have tested positive for CWD on five farms. One of the infected animals was an elk; the rest were whitetail deer.

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