[Vision2020] Hormonal On The Range

[Tom Hansen]

There's something about sticking my arm (to the elbow) up the rear-end of
a buffalo that lacks the appeal . . . it used to.

Courtesy of today's (March 17, 2010) Spokesman-Review.

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Adult female bison don’t take kindly to traditional pregnancy tests.

The test, known as “rectal palpation,” involves a veterinarian inserting a
gloved arm to feel for thickening in the uterus wall. In hormonal beasts
weighing nearly 1,200 pounds, the test can quickly become a recipe for
injuries.

“Buffalo are tremendously fast and strong,” said Dr. Kenneth Throlson, a
retired vet who owns a North Dakota bison ranch. “They go from docile to
crazy in about two snaps of the finger.”

About seven years ago – after two hip replacements, back injuries and
shoulder troubles – Throlson switched from manual pregnancy testing to
blood tests for the ranch’s 300 bison cows. Blood samples are sent to
BioTracking LLC in Moscow, Idaho, for processing. Within 27 hours, ranch
hands know which bison are pregnant.

“If we get the samples today 
 we can tell the farmer tomorrow in the
afternoon,” said Dr. Garth Sasser, BioTracking’s president. “Our tests are
99 percent sure if we say she’s not pregnant and 93 to 95 percent correct
if we say she is pregnant.”

Sasser and colleagues at the University of Idaho originally developed the
test for cattle in the 1980s. While domestic livestock accounts for the
bulk of the company’s sales, pregnancy tests for wildlife and farm-raised
game are on the rise.

Last year, BioTracking processed about 3,200 pregnancy tests for bison,
elk, moose, deer, big horn sheep and exotic deer – animals known as
“ruminants” because of their multi-chambered stomachs. The tests cost
about $20 per animal.

In Oregon, Wyoming and Idaho, the blood tests are being used in research
to determine whether wolf packs and ATVs are affecting pregnancy rates in
wild elk herds. At ranches such as Throlson’s bison farm, the tests play
an important role in herd management.

Producers need to know as quickly as possible if their animals are
pregnant, Throlson said. Expectant mothers are put out to pasture, while
infertile bison are fattened up for slaughter.

“There’s no free lunch,” Throlson said. “If a cow is not going to have a
calf, you turn her into cash in the form of meat.”

Sasser, a UI professor emeritus, grew up on diary farm near Blackfoot,
Idaho. BioTracking grew out of his research work. Sasser identified a
protein that shows up in cows’ blood 20 to 30 days after conception. He
and his associates developed the pregnancy test for cattle and expanded it
to wild ruminants. The test uses enzymes to detect the protein in the
blood.

BioTracking is the only U.S. firm that confirms pregnancy through blood
samples for cattle and wildlife, Sasser said, although some ranchers and
biologists also use portable ultrasound machines.

“When they immobilize them with tranquilizers, they can easily take a
blood sample,” Sasser said. “Once they know the pregnancy rate, they know
a lot about the viability of the herd.”

Each winter, the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range sends BioTracking
about 200 blood samples from its wild elk herd. The research area
southwest of La Grande, Ore., is run by the U.S. Forest Service and the
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“We check pregnancy rates as a matter of routine,” said Brian Dick,
Starkey Project Area manager. “Pregnancy is an important variable in
research. Say you did some logging to reduce fuels in the forest or
changed the hunting strategy. You’ll want to know whether that changed
pregnancy rates.”

At the moment, Starkey researchers are studying whether driving ATVs
through elk habitat decreases the herd’s pregnancy rate.

Before the blood test was developed, researchers at Starkey calculated
pregnancy rates by harvesting 25 elk cows each winter. Blood tests allow
researchers to expand the sample size, which more accurately projects the
numbers of expecting elk, Dick said.

The states of Idaho and Wyoming also use BioTracking’s pregnancy tests to
monitor wildlife populations. When elk numbers in the Lochsa River
drainage began dropping during the late 1990s, Idaho Department of Fish
and Game officials began tracking the herd’s pregnancy rate. The research
eventually pointed to low calf weights at birth and bear predation as
factors in the herd’s decline, said Craig White, a senior wildlife
research biologist.

A recently completed study of 500 mule deer and 500 elk in Idaho also
looked at pregnancy rates. As wolves expand their territory in Idaho, the
baseline data will help biologists study wolves’ impact on elk herds,
White said.

In Wyoming, researchers are using blood sampling and portable ultrasound
machines for similar studies on 4,000 elk that roam between Yellowstone
National Park and the community of Cody. Part of the herd that migrates
into Yellowstone has lower pregnancy rates than elk that hang out in
agriculture fields near Cody, said Arthur Middleton, a University of
Wyoming doctoral student.

Drought, as well as the wolves’ presence, could account for the
discrepancies, he said.

“It’s a complicated set of questions that people badly want to know the
answers to,” Middleton said.

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Johnson places blood samples from a bison in a microtiter plate at the
BioTracking lab. When a cow becomes pregnant, a protein shows up in the
blood 20 to 30 days after conception.

http://tinyurl.com/Johnson-Microtiter-Plate

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Kim Johnson, lab supervisor for BioTracking in Moscow, Idaho, uses a
pipette to draw a bison blood sample. BioTracking developed a pregnancy
test for bison, elk, moose, deer, big horn sheep and exotic deer that uses
enzymes in the blood.

http://tinyurl.com/Kim-Johnson-BioTracking

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown