Vicki, I wondered if you could go into more detail about biosecurity and what precautions we should be taking. After I got the positive test results back for CAE, I got to thinking and realized (with some panic) just how sloppy I'd been. Letting small kids nibble my fingers while I was waiting for the milkers to finish their grain, pouring milk onto the ground when a doe stuck her foot in the bucket, not rinsing the hoof knife in bleach between does, that sort of thing. It was enough to make me despair. But then I realized that so far the only positives were ones that had actually ingested milk (for now), and that whatever damage was done, was too late to go back in time and change. I always use seperate needles, syringes, and swish the tattoo gun in bleach solution between kids, but what else should we be doing?

-- Rebekah (daniel@itss.net), June 03, 2001

Answers

Hi Rebekah, number one has just got to be quaranteen. How many of us pick up a cute kid from someone and put her right into the infant pen, don't want her to be alone! You not only don't want to stress a new goat futher with your germs, but what about the germs she has, that are running rampant right now because she is stressed? We keep them in quaranteen for 90 days, at that time they are wormed, vaccinated a 2nd time, and we run tests on them. They stay in quaranteen until CAE and CL (though I don't carry alot of hope for the CL blood test) come back negative, but most important for my herd (hot humid East Texas worm heaven) is the negative fecal with the amounts of wormer I use. I have actaully sold a doe before, a very nice doe, I own her son now, because she was resistant to Ivermectin and with 8cc per 100 of Valbazen it only gave me a 40% kill of hemoncous (our worst blood sucking worm in East Texas).

Allowing does to kid in the common pen, with older does, licking younger does kids off to steal, exude from uterus for 2 to 4 weeks, leaking in the pens. Vaccination techiniques, most use different needles, but aspirating the same syringe in the bottle over and over again. Letting others use your tattoo letters and numbers, or paste! The same nasty toothbrush that is used to ink ears at a 4H clinic! Not cleaning hoof trimmers if you get blood from one goat to the next, same of course goes for clipper blades (lice, CL, mites ets) Not keeping the milk containers in the barns covered and out of the way so milk is ingested by kids and does. The water from the sink, which you clean milking equipment and bottles or lambars, runs out into the does pasture. Allowing bucks to breed outside does, then breeding your stock without cleaning the penis and sheath. The biggest thing I am guilty of is showing and bringing home does, and thinking just washing their feet and spraying them is really going to do much. We have brought home a vicious form of chlymidia pink eye before, and also contagious icthima, which stripped the hide off of my best buck and doe. It won't keep me out of the show ring, but I am really much more aware. I do understand folks who don't show because of disease, but unless you really do have a closed herd and only AI, your at risk also. I bring in outside bucks, buy a doe or two each year, though this is the first year I have kept them as show stock, usually they are here to be bred, daughters are kept and they are sold. I know first hand how much we do not know about CAE. It happened to me this last year. I purchased a doe from somebody who stopped heat treating and pasturising, he had goats for 30+ years, always testing negative. This doe came to me with a negative blood test, 155 days later when she kidded, her colostrum was positive. 2 weeks later her blood test was positive. I gave her to a new friend of mine, fully disclosed about the CAE.

I am embarassed to ask folks to put on my rubber boots I keep, they have to be so obviously destressing me, with nasty shoes before I will say anything. A herd I know who has CL abscesses, wanted to purchase a doeling I had advertised, I out and out lied to her, told her we were having a pink eye outbreak and we had quaranteened ourselves. I am a whimp!! :) Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), June 03, 2001.

This is a great topic, Rebekah! there is SOOO much with cross contamination that if you start to study it you will never even go to a doctor and you almost become like Howard Hughes. Seriously. I know one guy who was a tatooist and he quit because he took a course on cross contamination and then went to a dentist appointment and was apalled at the lack of caution. He just had to quit after a year of driving everyone including himself bonkers about it.

Then there are reasoned and logical precautions to take. Last year when I had the doe that came up CAE and CL in the udder, I took care of all of my animals, then I had a shower and some cheapo Wally world shoes and went to care for her, leaving the shoes in a plastic box next to her pen, then I came back and had another shower and then went to work. That was horrific. I cried while I poured her milk into the drain, which runs on the far opposite end of my property....I did put her down, but I needed a few days as she was my first goat.

Now, after I had disinfec ted all of my pens, limed my exercise area, sprayed down everything with bleach, antibacterial, listerine and some high powered vet disinfectant that I can't recall, I tested for CL on the whole herd and they came up all neg....What is suspect about the CL test??? I really need to know.

BTW, Vicki, when I was at your place I had on a brand new, never been barned pair of shoes!;)

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), June 03, 2001.

If you send your CL test to Washington they send it off to UC Davis. The test is this....if it is 1.08 than she is negative, but if the titer rises to 1.16 than she is positive for CL. Now...if she is 1.09 or a little higher than she could possibly have been vaccinated for CL. Yeah sure.............Now tell me if a doe is truly negative with no virus wouldn't her titer be ZERO?? I can get the exact numbers if you want them a gal just posted them on another forum this evening/morning, geeze 1:00 am I have got to get to bed!!! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), June 04, 2001.

Hey Vicki! Hope you got some sleep! Now, my tests were sent to A&M or Pan American, I am "almost" certain of this. That is not very much of a discrepancy between pos and neg. This is worrisome to me. I really think it's better to deal with CAE than CL. I'll call the vet and find out for sure, but these were all blood tests and not colostrum.

On another note....because shaving helps to reveal things, what clipper balde is best for goaties?

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), June 04, 2001.