More testing planned over next several days Brucellosis has been confirmed in a second herd in Park County — but this time it was found in a bison herd.State livestock officials are investigating a second confirmed case of brucellosis in Park County and a possible new case in Sublette County.

Wyoming Assistant State Veterinarian Bob Meyer said Wednesday the new case in Park County involves a herd of 1,400 bison.

The state is working with the owner to test the entire herd. Three surrounding cattle herds also are being tested, even though the bison are fenced in, Meyer said.

It's suspected that elk may have been the source of the disease in the bison, he said, since no neighboring cattle have tested positive. Brucellosis was detected when the bison herd owner arranged to sell 12 heifers. State law requires cattle and bison from the disease surveillance area to be tested for brucellosis before they are sold. The surveillance area includes Park County west of Wyo. 120.

“We want to make sure that any of the surrounding herds right around there didn't get the same exposures to the elk because the elk can jump over fences both ways,” Meyer said.

The new case is not related to an earlier case discovered in late October in a separate cattle herd in Park County, located in northwest Wyoming. The state tested thousands of cattle in 12 herds in the first case and found no additional infections.

Meyer said Wednesday that cattle from three herds that shared pastures adjacent to the bison will be tested. Cattle from one adjacent herd tested clean in the first round of testing spurred by the case reported in October, he said, and do not need to be tested again.

But preliminary tests indicate possible brucellosis in one cow that was being put up for sale in the Daniel area of Sublette County, which is in west-central Wyoming, Meyer said. A public meeting with state livestock officials is scheduled in Pinedale on Dec. 9.

More tests are being done to confirm the initial findings, and more will be known sometime next week, Meyer said. Brucellosis was detected in a different Daniel area herd in 2008, leading to the slaughter of that entire herd.

The Park County bison herd in question numbers about 650 head and there are four or five other cattle herds nearby, Meyer said.

The bacterial disease can cause spontaneous abortions, infertility and weight loss in cattle, elk, bison and other mammals. It persists in herds of wild elk and bison around Yellowstone National Park and has periodically passed to cattle in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

Until recently, if the disease was found in multiple cattle herds it meant costly restrictions on marketing of all Wyoming cattle to prevent brucellosis from spreading to other states and probable slaughter of the herd where it was found, which proved costly to livestock producers and sometimes destroyed decades of herd genetics.

However, Meyer said the U.S. Department of Agriculture has eased its stance on imposing statewide restrictions and has assured the state that it will retain its status as being considered free of brucellosis. He said a USDA representative at a public meeting in Meeteetse Tuesday said “there will be no action taken by them to reduce the state's status.”

“As long as we're doing a good investigation to make sure that we haven't got spread into any other herds — testing neighboring herds, testing in the area and doing a good investigation — they said your status will stay intact, meaning we won't have a downgrade in status from USDA,” he said.