Assessing Health of White-Tailed Deer by White Blood Cell Counts
- 1 January 1987
- journal article
- research article
- Published by JSTOR in The Journal of Wildlife Management
- Vol. 51 (1) , 57-58
- https://doi.org/10.2307/3801630
Abstract
Differential white blood cell (WBC) counts were performed monthly on peripheral blood of 8 anesthetized adult captive male white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) between December 1983 and April 1984. In healthy animals lymphocytes ranged from 24-35%, neutrophils 57-72%, eosinophils 2-7%, and monocytes 1-3%. Deer with a history of chronic illness exhibited lymphocyte proportions up to 300% higher than those found in healthy animals. The proportion of WBC's did not seem to be age or season dependent. In our study animals with high lymphocyte counts had poor survival.This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: