large herds not testing why?

Which is why tests need interpretation based on the WAY THE DISEASE WORKS. There are very few chances for an ADULT goat to be exposed but not infected with CAE to have a full blown 'positive' result - though possible, horizontal transmission is RARE. (unlike with TB in the work force, where you're high risk for infection if working with a TB patient because it does spread readily between two people, whereas CAE often does NOT spread readily between adults) RETESTING will show true status especially if you have a waiting period of a month or so - TITRES, the level of response - WILL CHANGE WITH TIME, decreasing after exposure in a non-infected individual. It is pretty safe to say that by far the vast majority of animals responding to the test will be truely infected as they will maintain their 'positive' titres with repeated testing and the unlikelihood of horizontal transmission as adults means they were far more likely to contract this disease in their young age from eating unpasteurized milk and colostrum. On incoming animals or to establish a baseline for a herd, a screening is invaluable. Tests are cheap and easy and if a positive sample came up that didn't make sense, you could very well do further testing (Though depending on the situation, there is not really much room to discredit a CAE Elisa on an adult animal where the VAST majority of cases are from an infection AT A VERY YOUNG AGE and if they were exposed/not infected at a young age, they would TEST NEGATIVE as an adult). As I said they are a TOOL to be interpreted, and yes, can very well be diagnostic. I am not suggesting people blindly use these tests but understanding how to effectively use them is necessary. I think you're underestimating the power of this tool completely.

When evaluating a tests validity, you must evaluate the risks of exposure and the normal routes of infection, management etc. Did you buy new goats? What biosecurity do you have? Do you show? Age of the animal? It is a situation by situation result to be interpreted depending on herd/individual history etc. It very well may be a situation that calls for culling because those animals require special care unless you are willing/able to do the required legwork of managing positive animals. It is also a disease fairly easy to manage in the grand scheme of things, wether or not we decide an animal is worth it to harvest genetics from or not.

__________________


Dona Barski

"Breed the best, eat the rest"

Caprice Acres

French and American Alpines. CAE, Johnes neg herd. Abscess free. LA, DHIR.

Nice theory.

Are there studies that substantiate this theory??? Where and when were they done??? How many animals were involved in the studies?? What were the protocols?? Were there follow-up studies that duplicated the results???

WADDL told me that they have never found ANY correlation between the titre level and the animals that eventually develop symptoms. This would seem to contradict your theory.

If you think that wwhat we have available is wonderful, then ......you are entitled to your opinion.

As far as being misleading.........IMO, it is misleading to present theories and speculation as fact.

__________________
"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

Did you ask whether or not they have looked for any correlation? Not to say correlation equal causation...

The facts are that there are not enough good research science in goats, yet. The facts are that we are working with the tools available to us as best we can.
The fact is also that before testing became as common as it is now a much larger percentage of goats had CAE than they do now.

Without people testing and inquiring there is no impetus for more research to refine these tests and improve our understanding of this disease. Nothing My Goat has put forth is just wildly out of left field.

But people are using these tests as absolute at the direction of others for killing potentially good animals and not considering others. 50 titres on a test is negative, 51+ positive?

Not a perfect match but similar to the A1/A2 debate in cattle. A company produced a test and said that A2 is healthier for you and A1 is bad. No official reputable scientific studies to back this up but the masses buy it. Another example of many potentially good animals with A1 Beta Casein being butchered because of a test.

With Antibodies of CAE, not actual CAE.

Just saying

Which is why the repeated testing is necessary.

I haven't had to deal with CAE yet and I hope to minimize my risks by only bringing CAE negative animals into my herd. I don't think for one instant the correct course of action is to breed animals that get exposed and carry the disease even if they never feel the effects adversely themselves. I would prefer breeding for non carriers who even if exposed don't carry and don't contract the disease.

I don't know anything about the a1/a2 debacle so it's not a good comparison for me.

I would love to be able to have the resources at hand to keep CAE positive goats and see what the actual effects are. To be able to keep a separate herd that one could perhaps use to determine what level of antibodies indicate an active presence of the disease and what simply mean past exposure and what indicates a non affected carrier. But I don't and I don't see universities or other groups doing any significant research in that direction either. And there likely is never going to be a goat lobby group to procure funding for such. If it ever happens it will be a from the bottom up thing as more and more people return to goats and invest more time effort and money into them.

I see less people saying kill the cae positive animal on this board at least than seems to be indicated in this thread. I see people saying that it's easier to manage without managing that as well. I see people recommending selling CAE positive goats to people who don't care about that for whatever reason. There is a range of what to do not a, kill it, move on mentality here.

I'll admit though, CL scares me more than CAE.

Well, the research is out there for your perusal. I personally have based my opinion on mass amounts of reading and discussion with professionals. If you came to a different conclusion - so be it. I believe I'm very clear about talking about this test as a TOOL to be INTERPRETED depending on situations and encouraging retesting upon positive results. And, I'm NOT always encouraging culling - I think this is a manageable disease if you choose to undertake it. I chose to butcher my goats because the benefits of keeping them did not outweigh the work I would have to deal with keeping them separate, retesting, etc - as once you are seropositive, I manage you as a true positive animal as that is the safest approach. I evaluated the situation and made a logical decision for my situation. My herd is negative since. I don't think many animals would be worth keeping around as seropositive animals longer than a breeding season or two at max if you're breeding properly, as you SHOULD have a higher quality offspring to replace them with by then that are seronegative. Not when the risk of transmission and extra work is there to keep seropositive animals. IF you want to not test and keep all your goats together and not utilize well understood and generally accepted as extremely useful tools, then that's your prerogative I guess.

__________________


Dona Barski

"Breed the best, eat the rest"

Caprice Acres

French and American Alpines. CAE, Johnes neg herd. Abscess free. LA, DHIR.

Yes......the fact that it is not reliable supports my argument that the resources available to us are woefully inadequate.

__________________
"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

Just want to thank both of you for debating this as I can see both sides. Here is my two cents and thats about all its worth. I have never seen a goat shortage, perhaps with some of the very rare breeds like the golden Guernseys to make not culling the option if one consistently comes back positive. Why build resistance when you can eliminate it. Its like saying we should breed resistance to HIV, after all the two viruses are related. Would I buy a superior goat with it or non symptomatic that would guarantee me the next Frosty Marvin you bet, but thats impossible and I would manage one under intense management but it would not have a long lived retirement home here. I mean really with all the goats out there why would you want to bother with a CAE positive animal when you can buy clean animals with no titers so you dont have to worry about pasteurizing 14 gallons of milk and cooling it before you have to feed it all before going to work. Im good, so is goat meat.

__________________
I'm a goat person, not a people person,
De @ Udderly Southern Dairy Goats
we will be adding a new breed in the spring

I doubt anyone here is going to cull a goat based on one positive. Retesting is inexpensive and relatively painless.

I am a little skeptical of the statement that the test produces 90% false positives. Are you saying that, of those results that are positive, 90% are false? Or are you saying that the test is 90% inaccurate? World of difference there.

Would like to see documentation on those numbers if you can get your hands on it, please, Billooo2.

__________________
Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

Yes, that is exactly what I asked.

__________________
"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

Not on CAE directly, but I could reference vaccine studies to show a response spike to a non-infective exposure, which levels off and drops with time. Some diseases maintain protective antibodies for extended periods after vaccination. Tetanus comes to mind in humans. Some diseases the protective nature/presence of antibodies wears off fast. Lepto vaccination comes to mind in dogs. And, I believe studies have been done with goat kids fed pasteurized colostrum/milk and were positive as youngsters but after about 6 months they were negative again - exposed and had an immune response, but it was non-infective. So, my 'theories' are not just wind out of nowhere. Here is direct from WADDL's info page that I posted earlier: This is why they suggest testing animals 6 mon of age and older. Lots of reading on pubmed and even some article titles at the bottom of WADDL's page.

As I said, it's a TOOL to be interpreted and utilized to best fit your situation. How many times do I have to repeat this to make you realize I'm not just saying it's perfect in all situations and aspects? If you think your sero positive animal is so great you don't want to cull, she can be managed properly to prevent future infections. I think this forum is pretty good about saying that... but lets admit your average goat is not so great that she's worth the effort and money of proper management and further testing. I really wish there was a cheap and easy direct virus detection available commercially - but there isn't that I'm aware of. I'm sure if you insisted, you could have one ran somewhere for a goodly bit of money (and due to genetic variability, the PCR doesn't detect all strains of virus but can be definitive when they are positive... negative either means not infected or infected but not a strain with matching DNA to the test). I'm willing to work with and understand what tools I have because research and professional opinion seems to validate them.

Maintaining potential CAE positive animals is not worth it to me; To me, not many goats are worth the extra work and costs due to risk of infection/transmission and the isolation that means I have more work to do. I'd rather cull immediately if they're not valuable enough. If they are really valueable, I'll isolate and retest, breed and catch kids a few years for replacement stock - and then cull and return to a sero-negative herd. In a herd that has tested negative year after year, with a known asymptomatic history on animals as well as extensive biosecurity measures is about as an ideal of a situation as I can ask for - until something better comes along, I'd much rather utilize my tools available to me in a manner that makes sense to me, my budget, and agrees with most of the established control protocols that have done a very good job at managing/eliminating the disease. YMMV, and that's fine if it makes sense to you, your budget, and is effective at control.

__________________


Dona Barski

"Breed the best, eat the rest"

Caprice Acres

French and American Alpines. CAE, Johnes neg herd. Abscess free. LA, DHIR.

Yes, I specifically asked about correlation.

I phoned U. of Washington, and then followed up with e-mails. I did not ask if the results had been pubilshed.

I think that the test is very accurate for the presence of the antibody.

The test appears to be a poor predictor of the development of actual symptoms.

We cannot determine whether or not the animal is actually contagious.. Therefore, we have to assume that the animal is contagious......and make management decisions based on that assumption.

We have to make decisions based on data that we can obtain. IMO we have to make decisions based on inadequate information.......but that is all that we have.

__________________
"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

A1 vs. A2 milk:

http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Milk-Ill...+devil+in+milk

The authors seem to rely mainly upon epidemiological studies that show that populations of people that consume mainly A1 milk have a direct correlation between the amount of milk consumed with increased occurrences of cardiovascular disease and diabetes......and, to a lesser degree of correlation, .......autism and schizophrenia.

__________________
"When you are having dinner with someone and they are nice to you, but rude to the waiter, then this is not a nice person.".....Dave Barry

So to make sure I understand, those that vaccinate do so to introduce antibodies for what they are trying to protect from. This is a good thing, right? But when antibodies for CAE or CL are found without any other physical signs, that is a bad thing? Then there is the CL vaccine that shows positive for antibodies?

I'm not advocating CAE or CL but many ask for testing but don't know what it is they are testing for. Somebody said testing should be done, therefore should be.

As I have said before, if testing is important to you, then you yourself should test any goat you are looking to buy at the time of purchase. No matter what test results or not the seller has. The seller's test results 1, 2 or 3+ months prior are no longer valid.

Gather the facts, research for yourself and make your own decisions.

All of this of course is said with a smile. Text does not show this. Have a great day!

This thread has made a severe turn from the OP original question of why large herds do not seem to be testing. See thread Cost of testing?.

Short answer, it's not profitable. Between testing, vaccinations and general feeding they would be in the red before they even got started. They focus on productivity and hardiness.

Oh,I don't know about that I think this has been a good discussion.

I can see the cost issue but if your consuming the milk on these animals and say they have Brucellosis/CL it could make humans sick. This is the bases of the large part of the argument of why pasteurization was required. So, if you are selling the milk commercially for cheese making (when they cant pasteurize too high) I would think these are some of the things you would be wanting to check on..Right?? or does this stuff not really carry over in the milk very well and the danger to humans comes when handling the animals.

Not sure if I am wording my thinking correctly maybe someone came make some sense to my thoughts.

Davstep, I have been told by people who study this stuff and work closely every day with CAE testing, that antibodies to the disease are not protective, meaning, they provide no immunity (killing off the virus). CAE is a retrovirus, like HIV, so similar concepts apply. It is an obligate intracellular virus, I believe, so being inside a cell, it is probably difficult for antibodies to attach to.

The facts are:
-CAE is a terrible disease.
-A goat who tests positive (so long as the results are repeatable), is capable of infecting other animals, whether or not they ever develop the actual disease.
-At the least, some of those animals will probably develop disease. So, why risk it?
-Testing/separating/culling/pasteurizing has proven to prevent future generations from becoming positive and developing disease.

With a disease so easy to prevent, it saddens me that people still think like this...and perpetuate a disease that could have been eliminated by mow.

__________________
Nancy Boling
Frosted Mini Goats
Alpine and Nigerian Dwarf goats
2 Jersey heifers
1 guard llama
And whatever else shows up...
http://www.swfarm.net/

This exactly!


I deleted my diatribe. I will simply say that it is so sad that people are more concerned with profit than with responsible animal husbandry.

__________________
Je ne suis pas Alice

http://homesteadingfamilies.proboards.com/

One more example of factory agriculture creating and perpetuating a problem; large-scale pooled-milk bottle-feeding created the epidemic. This is the real cost of cheap food. Fortunately, the trend is swinging toward sustainable, local, modest-scale farming. Hopefully consumers will become savvy enough to demand better and be willing to pay for a higher level of management.