12 Aug 2025
Aiden Foster BSc, BVSc, CertSAD shares an update on discussions at the recent British Deer Veterinary Association meeting in Yorkshire.
Aiden Foster
Job Title
Sika deer at Studley Royal Deer Park. Image: Courtesy of Peter Green
The British Deer Veterinary Association (BDVA), formerly called the Veterinary Deer Society, held a day meeting in June at Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, North Yorkshire, which includes a deer park managed by the National Trust.
There were more than 70 delegates including vets from the APHA, deer managers from the Forestry Commission, National Trust and The Royal Parks, private veterinary surgeons and deer farmers.
The meeting opened with Dylan Yaffy, lecturer in zoo and wildlife pathology, who leads the exotic species diagnostic pathology service at the RVC; he conducts research and disease surveillance on UK wildlife. Dylan gave a richly illustrated talk about performing postmortem examinations (PME) in deer.
Access to a detailed history and external carcase examination are important. Samples can be collected for diagnostic and surveillance purposes, helping to support the value of PME for the individual animal and the wider deer population, for public and environmental health considerations. Dylan described changes seen in the viscera in the thoracic and abdominal cavities for some common and important diseases, such as malignant catarrhal fever, liver fluke, haemonchosis and lumpy jaw, as well as anthrax.
Ken Urquhart (BDVA) discussed the status of the wild boar in the UK. Ken is a retired small animal/equine vet who has worked as a deer manager across the UK.
Wild boar are highly adaptable animals that successfully colonise most environments, in part because of their high fecundity. In England, there are several small pockets of wild boar, with the Forest of Dean population a particular focus of study. Also present in Scotland, their numbers are likely to grow as they disperse from established clusters in the West Highlands and the borders – potentially extending into Northumbria, eventually.
Ongoing monitoring and management will be needed given the interaction of wild boar with the environment, concerns about disease and adverse interactions with people and property in urban areas.
Charlotte Pritchard (APHA veterinary advisor working for the TB Delivery Advice team with a focus on non-bovine TB) is a third-year resident with the European College for Veterinary Public Health, working towards specialisation in population medicine.
Charlotte provided an overview of TB in deer, including reference to the tools used to investigate deer-TB breakdowns; namely, postmortem examination, tuberculin skin testing, serology, PCR and whole genome sequencing (WGS). Deer are generally considered to be spillover hosts for TB and can act as maintenance hosts. APHA and Defra, with BDVA, are developing a process of dealing with park herds in England where gathering of deer is not feasible.
This includes working through flow charts where there is access to carcases for PME and serological testing as part of the seasonal cull where TB is suspected or where confirmed, on a case by case basis, subject to veterinary judgement.
Alison Hollingdale (APHA veterinary advisor – field epidemiology) is based in the south-west of England and provided an overview of the Exmoor Deer Project. The aims of the project include encouraging the reporting of suspect TB lesions in wild deer, obtaining WGS data to better inform TB epidemiological investigations and to estimate a baseline prevalence of TB in the Exmoor wild deer population.
Culled deer have been blood sampled and suspect TB carcases examined from 2022 to 2025. The apparent seroprevalence for TB from 432 samples was 16% (bit.ly/3HcZBsF); it should be noted that such findings need to be interpreted with consideration of ecology, species-specific epidemiology, deer density, disease pathology and cattle management. Carcase samples had the same WGS clade as local cattle samples; it should be noted that this supports inter-species transmission but the direction of transmission cannot be determined. More work on the direction of transmission is under consideration.
Ruth Cox works for the APHA/National Wildlife Management Centre and is based at Woodchester Park, where she is research lead in wildlife ecology and epidemiology. Ruth’s presentation was entitled, “Surveillance for coronavirus in UK wildlife”. The advent of SARS-CoV-2 demonstrated that wildlife could become infected and potentially may be reservoirs of infection; the World Organisation for Animal Health has recommended monitoring of cervids in all regions.
Previous studies in the UK of wild deer have not revealed evidence of seroconversion. APHA research projects, wildlife managers and gamekeepers, the National Trust, Wildlife Trusts and The British Deer Society have helped provide access to blood samples from deer for serology testing and swabs looking for presence of viral RNA. Over several years, several hundreds of samples were received and there was no evidence of active SARS-CoV-2 infection, small numbers of fallow and roe deer were seropositive suggestive of previous exposure.
Further confirmatory testing is ongoing. The current risk of infection in deer is considered to be low; studies will be ongoing to monitor exposure, host range and to help inform risk management.
Andrew Painting is the conservation officer for the Mar Lodge Estate: a National Trust Scotland site and the largest nature reserve in Scotland. He is the author of Regeneration: The Rescue of a Wild Land.
To conserve the natural and cultural heritage, while balancing the competing demands for public access and sporting interests, has required a long-term programme of intervention. This has required a substantial reduction in the estate deer population and density – particularly in the designated regeneration zone. This has been associated with improvements in the quality and diversity of habitats in the estate (particularly regeneration of pine and birch woodland, montane scrub and heathlands), benefiting wildlife; deer health has also improved.
Mark Moseley (School of Veterinary Medicine, SRUC) discussed Mycobacteria species. As well as causing TB and Johne’s disease in livestock, M species included many environmental bacterial species that can cause opportunistic infections in humans and livestock or interfere with diagnostic tests. Initial studies in wild red and roe deer in north-east Scotland suggest that exposure to M species differs between habitats and that deer are exposed to a wide diversity of clinically relevant or novel M species. The results show that deer are valuable sentinels for understanding the habitats that pose potential risk to human and wildlife health from environmentally transmitted bacteria, such as M species.
Lucy Gilbert is a senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow. Lucy is an animal ecologist with an interest in multi-trophic and multi-ecosystem interactions. Her talk was about the associations between wild deer and tick-borne pathogens in the environment.
On average, a Scottish red deer carries 1,700 adult female Ixodes ricinus ticks over the course of a year and they often increase the tick population density. Deer can transmit Babesia species (red-water fever) and Anaplasma phagocytophilum (tick-borne fever and anaplasmosis), also increasing their prevalence and risk. They do not transmit Borrelia species (Lyme disease), louping ill virus and tick-borne encephalitis virus. The role of deer in terms of shaping the risk of Lyme disease is highly complex and difficult to determine. Furthermore, ticks are also influenced by other hosts, changes in microhabitat (temperature and humidity) and climate.
Pablo Mújica is a large animal vet and has been involved with game, wildlife and conservation work. He is also the co-founder of Sylva Deer and Veterinary Services. His talk was entitled, “Spain and the UK: Two approaches to deer and wild boar management”. Spain has extensive and substantial populations of wild boar across the country compared to the smaller and more localised distribution of wild boar in the UK. Spain has substantial populations of red, roe and some fallow deer with additional wildlife (Barbary sheep, chamois and ibex).
Given their environmental impacts and role in diseases that may threaten the large Spanish domestic pig sector, wild boar have to be managed, with deer, to avoid negative impacts on biodiversity and habitat. To optimise resources and efficiency, it is recommended that such management (in the UK and Spain) is integrated, based on coordination of all sectors including vets, wildlife managers, landowners and government bodies, with all decisions based on data to prioritise efforts and to facilitate the assessment of the impacts of management.
Sam Holland is joint-APHA wildlife expert group lead and WOAH UK focal point for Wildlife. Sam’s talk was entitled, “Diseases of deer – updates from APHA diseases of wildlife scheme”. The scheme has undertaken wildlife disease surveillance in England and Wales since 1998, and it is part of the Great Britain Wildlife Health Partnership. The scheme draws on a variety of partners to undertake scanning surveillance.
Recent postmortem diagnoses in wild deer have include parasitism – parasitic gastroenteritis including haemonchosis, tick-borne fever and lungworm. Surplus blood samples have enabled serosurveillance in wild deer including Q-fever, Schmallenberg virus and Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis, as well as tick-borne pathogens.
Sam gave an overview of two notifiable diseases where deer are implicated: chronic wasting disease and epizootic haemorrhagic disease virus. Neither are considered a major risk for incursion into the UK the near future.
Peter Green has maintained an interest in deer throughout his professional life. After 25 years in predominantly equine veterinary practice, he established a full-time veterinary consultancy in deer health, welfare and management in 2007. His talk was entitled ,”Bullet placement, welfare and venison quality”, with a focus on four fundamental concepts: consciousness, respiration, circulation and motor function. The head shot is focused at the base of the ear; there are no welfare concerns and rapid bleeding out is important.
There are welfare concerns about the neck and spinal shots. Shoulder, lung and heart shots lead (as preferred) to ineffectual respiratory efforts; bleeding out is not usually required and the deer dies. Whichever bullet placement is used, the welfare of the deer must be safeguarded and consideration must be given to the impact on the quality of the venison.
The talks were followed by a guided walk around the deer park, where some of the red and sika deer were observed – there are also fallow deer in the park.
The BDVA is a small specialist division of the BVA. It aims to provide a forum for the discussion and exchange of ideas about science, biology and veterinary medicine pertaining to deer.
This includes free-living wild deer and captive, enclosed deer, including those related to farmed, rescued (wildlife centres), park and zoological collections, as well as reindeer. The association holds occasional CPD events for the benefit of veterinary surgeons, veterinary students and others interested in deer issues, and has good links with the British Deer Society and the British Deer Farms and Parks Association, as well as the APHA, BVZS, The Deer Initiative partnership, Defra and the Forestry Commission.
The BDVA has a new book – Deer Veterinary Medicine – with details via the Wiley website. Visit bdva.co.uk for further information.
Aiden Foster is past-president of the British Deer Veterinary Association and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Bristol.
