Annual state buffalo auction to resume after disease spread / LJWorld.com

Archive for Thursday, November 8, 2007

Associated Press

November 8, 2007

CANTON — The annual sale of buffalo is back on.

A year ago, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks' sale had to be canceled after the spread of an especially virulent disease that broke out in a wild buffalo herd in Kansas. The disease killed more than 50 head of the roughly 200 buffalo at the state-owned Maxwell Wildlife Refuge near Wichita.

Refuge officials spent thousands of dollars to rebuild the herd, which is healthy despite being smaller. The herd roams on the refuge's acreage north of Canton.

The sale will be Nov. 14. It will be one of the smallest auctions, refuge manager Cliff Peterson said. The Department of Wildlife and Parks will sell just 35 animals.

The department's Sandsage Bison Range near Garden City won't be bringing buffalo to this year's auction because of the illness and vaccination schedule. Sandsage refuge manager Tom Norman said the strict vaccination schedule will prevent an outbreak like the one at Maxwell.

He said he will take the buffalo back to Maxwell in the future and hopes the sale still goes well.

"You're auctioning off the commodity that is only as valuable as the people coming to the auction want to pay for it," Norman said. "(Maxwell has) had some tough times. It would be nice for them to have a good sale."

Problems with the disease, mycoplasma bovis, started at the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge in September 2006. The disease is spread through coughing and causes pneumonia, mastitis and arthritis in the animals.

Buffalo can get the disease from other bovine, possibly from the cattle in pastures near the refuge, Peterson said.

More than 40 percent of the animals that died were prime breeding age.

Maxwell refuge officials are taking steps to increase the herd. Peterson purchased 10 animals from the Nature Conservancy, with the animals coming from Niobrara Valley Preserve in Nebraska. The rest were donated by the National Wildlife Refuge System.