Korean Journal of
Veterinary Service

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) commonly infects cloven-hoofed livestock animals such as cattle, pig, sheep, and goat and its clinical signs are well-known. Besides livestock, FMD can be transmitted among cloven-hoofed animals in the wild. FMD mostly affects livestock animals in farms, but, wild animals are likely to play a pivotal role in spreading the disease due to their way of free living. In the case of deer, the clinical signs of FMD vary widely from subclinical to severe infections. Thus, in some deer species, it may be hard to verify clinical signs of FMD. A deer may carry the virus up to 11 weeks after exposure, shedding the virus during the period. However, deer is not considered as a typical host for persistent infection like buffalo, cattle or sheep. In Korea, small-scale livestock farms which have less than 10 animals make up 63.6% of the entire livestock farms. Considering raising environment in deer farms, it is assumed that the risk of virus excretion and consequent transmission of FMD among deers is relatively lower than other cloven-hoofed animals. However, Sika deer and Elk which are typical deer species in Korea would manifest mild to subclinical symptoms upon FMD infection. Therefore, laboratory testing is necessary to confirm FMD in these animals because of difficulty in verifying clinical signs and the risk of virus shedding during inapparent infection.

Keywords: Deer,Clinical sign,Transmission,