Rabies will continue to spread and its incidence among Ontario livestock will rise until the wild red fox--sole carrier of the disease--is wiped out. Dr. G. H. Collacutt, federal district) veterinarian, said yesterday.
Dr. Collacutt, with the Health of Animals Division of the Department of Agriculture, said he was not advocating the extermination of the fox. But, he added, the fox is presently at a high cycle of reproduction. It is not popular game animal, since its pelt is worthless. And it is, plaguing farmers and veterinarians across the province.
To date 10 foxheads and those? of one cat and a dog found in the Metropolitan Toronto area have been proved to be rabid in recent, months. The dog however, had been used to hunt foxes in another part of the province. A fox at Lorne Park and another at Cooksville were found to be rabid.
Here is a breakdown of figures indicating the number of animals bitten by rabid foxes and whose brains were analyzed at the Animal Disease Research Institute at Hull, Que., and found to be rabid. They were sent in by district veterinarians around the province since April 1 of last year:
Foxes, 926; cattle, 679: skunks, 82; cats, 76; sheep. 70; dogs, 55. Miscellaneous pigs, horses, wolves, goats, raccoons and a donkey, 46.
Countless other animals, particularly foxes, have either] been found dead, or were shot and not sent in for analysis. Dr. Collacutt said. Only foxes known to have contacted humans or other domestic animals are sent to the laboratories, he said.
Pathologists at the Hull research offices have been processing better than 225 specimens each week since Noevember, and in one record week handled 225 animal brains looking for signs of rabies, he said.
Dr. Collacutt said the disease is currently spreading into the Niagara Peninsula and is at its height in counties bordering on Lake Ontario. If the fox population is high in the Niagara area rabies will flourish. Otherwise it will not be noticed, he said. Since the first sign of rabies was reported to the Health of Animals Division in 1947 at Baker Lake, north of Winnipeg. it has fanned out across the north and spread slowly into almost every section of Ontario. The disease was first detected in a settled area Nov. 8, 1954. A rabid fox was shot at Kreuler a settlement west of Cochrane.
"That date is imprinted deeply in my mind." Dr. Collacutt said. He said there is not one case on record where the disease has spread from one dog to another.