Causes of mortality in farmed mink in the Intermountain West, North America

Abstract

Abstract. The primary causes of mortality were identified in postmortem examination of 339 (90.9%) of 373 farmed mink (Neovison vison; syn. Mustela vison) from January 2009 through June 2014 at the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (Logan, Utah). Mink were raised under farm conditions in the Intermountain West in North America, except for 1 submission of mink from Wisconsin. In the 339 mink where cause(s) of death were established, 311 (91.7%) died from a single disease or condition, whereas 28 (8.3%) had 2 diseases or conditions contributing to death. Where cause(s) of death were evident, 11 diseases accounted for 321 (94.7%) of the diagnoses: bacterial pneumonia (67, 18.8%), Aleutian mink disease (61, 17.7%), mink viral enteritis (56, 16.2%), hepatic lipidosis (28, 8.1%), nutritional myopathy (24, 7%), bacterial enterocolitis (17, 4.9%), bacterial septicemia (16, 4.6%), starvation (15, 4.3%), epizootic catarrhal gastroenteritis of mink (14, 4.1%), pancreatitis (13, 3.8%), and bacterial metritis (10, 2.9%). In 34 (9.1%) animals, a cause of death was not evident. In an additional 16 (4.3%) of the mink, botulism was suspected from clinical history but could not be confirmed by laboratory testing. Control measures for the most common causes of death in farmed mink include testing and removal of positive animals (Aleutian mink disease), vaccination (Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia, mink viral enteritis), avoidance of obesity in mink (hepatic lipidosis), and environmental management, including maintaining clean water cups, floors, feed troughs, cages, feed silos, feed truck tires, workers' shoes, dining areas for farm personnel, leather mink handling gloves, street clothes, and coveralls.

EndemicSkunk amdoparvovirusin free‐ranging striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis) in California

“…Alternatively, there may be a more complex ecology involving multiple closely related viruses that cross‐react on PCR but have different clinical implications for skunks. While California itself does not have a recent history of fur farming, nearby states such as Oregon, Utah and Washington (National Agricultural Statistics Service, ) have extensive histories, and ADV has been documented in fur farms in Utah as recently as 2015 (Wilson, Baldwin, Whitehouse, & Hullinger, ). Farmed American mink occasionally escape from farms, or are let loose by concerned activists, and subsequently can establish the ADV in local free‐ranging mink (Nituch, Bowman, Wilson, & Schulte‐Hostedde, ; Oie et al, ).…”

Mustelids

“…Mink viral enteritis is caused by a parvovirus closely related to feline panleukopenia virus. A recent report identified this disease as the third most common cause of death in ranched mink (Wilson et al, 2015). Disease presentation is similar in cats and mink, with mink enteritis virus causing necrosis of crypt epithelium, lymphocytes, and leucocyte progenitors in bone marrow.…”

Ecology and Infection Dynamics of Multi-Host Amdoparvoviral and Protoparvoviral Carnivore Pathogens

“…Several different pathogens and parasites can affect mustelids and the most well studied are those that can frequently be found in mink on fur farms. These include bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which causes hemorrhagic pneumonia, and Clostridium botulinum, the causative agent of botulism, and viruses such as canine distemper virus and several different parvoviruses [12][13][14]. Parvoviruses (family Parvoviridae) are small, single-stranded DNA viruses with genomes of approximately 5 kb that include two main open reading frames (ORFs), one encoding the viral non-structural proteins (NS) and one encoding the viral capsid proteins (VP) [15].…”