The UK, Australia and New Zealand all recognize MCF as the most infectious disease of farmed deer. Tim Marhauis Unlike the usual situation in cattle, the disease in deer is highly contagious. Deer are also more susceptible and suffer a more severe form of the disease than commercial cattle. They all show differences in susceptibility.
Fallow deer seem to be relatively resistant.
They seem to have better adaptation to the virus than is possessed by other cervid species. As in cattle, the issue of latency is important. This supports the concept that significant numbers of non-lethal infections occur. These negative results may reflect that the virus had been cleared from these animals or was not present at detectable levels in the examined tissues of healthy latently infected fallow deer. Circumstantial evidence suggests that there may be sources of virus other than sheep in SA-MCF as a number of outbreaks of cervid MCF have been observed in which no contact with sheep was reported.