Re: Newcastle Disease kills 900 birds on Marsh Lake in western Minn.
Re: Newcastle Disease kills 900 birds on Marsh Lake in western Minn.
Disease killed nearly 1,000 birds on western Minnesota lake, DNR says
<!--subtitle--><!--byline-->Pioneer Press
<!--date-->Updated:
08/06/2010 11:06:38 PM CDT
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Nearly 1,000 double-crested cormorants and ring-billed gulls have died on a western Minnesota lake of Newcastle disease, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Friday.
As of Wednesday, about 500 cormorants and 400 ring-billed gulls had been found dead on Marsh Lake near Appleton in Big Stone County.
More testing is being done to determine the strain of the viral disease, which most commonly infects cormorants, but also has been found in gulls and pelicans.
Clinical signs in wild birds are often neurologic and include a droopy head or twisted neck, lack of coordination, inability to fly or dive and complete or partial paralysis. Juveniles are most commonly affected.
Newcastle disease can sometimes affect people, generally causing conjunctivitis, a relatively mild inflammation of the inner eyelids. It's spread to people through close contact with sick birds.
Another die-off of 50 cormorants, meanwhile, has been discovered on Wells Lake in Rice County, south of the metro area. Samples are being tested, but the specific cause of the birds' illness is unknown.
The DNR and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services are cleaning up the sites and collecting swab and carcass samples for lab analysis.
Newcastle disease is not new to Minnesota. The last outbreak covered a seven-county area in 2008, when about 2,400 birds died. In 1992, several outbreaks occurred across the Great Lakes, the Upper Midwest and Canada, killing an estimated 35,000 birds.:tiphat:
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