SEQUIM — The death of Momma Cow, a champion Angus cow raised by Sequim High School students, was both shocking and unprecedented, said agricultural science teacher Derrell Sharp.

Her memory lives on in the hearts of the 15 students who continue to care for her only surviving calf.

“The kids were heartbroken,” Sharp said Friday during a break between classes with his Future Farmers of America students.

He added that no other FFA animal has died in his 13 years at the school.

Momma Cow died Nov. 20 at the Sequim High farm after catching a rare disease known as MCF — malignant catarrhal fever — at the Puyallup Fair in September.

She was 2 years old and pregnant, and collapsed in front of FFA paraeducator Corrinne Dennis and a group of students.

MCF doesn’t affect humans or food safety; it’s carried by sheep who transmit the virus, said Leonard Eldridge, the state Department of Agriculture’s veterinarian.

Infected sheep show no symptoms, Eldridge said. The virus doesn’t make them sick, nor does it kill them.

Cattle died at fair

But 22 cattle at the huge fair in Pierce County died after exposure to nearby carrier sheep, and he said 17 of them were confirmed to have MCF.

“What happened in Puyallup was a kind of perfect storm,” Eldridge said.

“There was high humidity” in an enclosure full of sheep and cattle. “They ran fans to cool the sheep. There was an exhaust fan in the center, and the cattle that died were near the exhaust.”

The MCF virus cannot live long outside an animal, Eldridge said, but the humid air in the pen helped it survive long enough to spread.

“The bottom line is that the sheep carry it, and any time you commingle animals, there’s a chance that one could get sick. If you go to the picture show and the flu’s going around, you could get the flu.”

Momma Cow, winner of the Best in Show prizes at both the 2008 Puyallup Fair and the 2007 Clallam County Fair, was worth about $4,000, Sharp said.

His FFA students raised her together, and now they’re bringing up her first calf, a steer. Her second calf, nearly five months in utero, was lost when Momma Cow died.

“It was pretty excruciating,” said Dennis. “There was nothing we could do.”

For the 42 teenagers in Sequim FFA, Momma Cow taught a tough lesson, Sharp added.

“Ag education deals with the basics of life,” including birth and death, he said. “We’re going to be faced with losses all of our lives.”

‘Biosecurity measures’

Eldridge said the spread of the disease can be prevented through “biosecurity measures,” also known as common sense.

First among them: “Wash your hands. You can carry the disease.”

Animal caretakers should take time to wash after handling sheep and before touching cattle; to be extra careful they may want to change their clothes.

Eldridge advises against mixing sheep with other animals in the same pen. Each species should be in a separate enclosure, even a separate barn, and they should not share water buckets.

Good ventilation will inhibit the virus’ survival, he said.

On farm tours and at petting zoos, Eldridge said, children should wash their hands after touching sheep and lambs.

No danger to Sequim wildlife

Another strain of MCF, found in goats, can threaten deer and elk, the veterinarian said. But it’s a rare disease, and he doesn’t believe Sequim’s wildlife is endangered.

“I feel bad for those kids,” said Eldridge, who practiced veterinary medicine in Eastern Washington for 40 years.

“We had the 4-H sheep and cattle, and we never experienced that [disease]. Everything had to be just right for this to occur.”

MCF’s incubation period is about 60 days, he said, so the infected cattle looked perfectly well for up to a couple of months after the Puyallup Fair ended on Sept. 21.

Eldridge didn’t know where the infected sheep came from, and said only that they were Washington-raised.

And the cattle that caught MCF could not spread it to other animals, he said.

“They’re a dead-end host.”

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.