CL in Ohio goats

thequeensblessing · #1 01/05/07, 10:06 AM

How do you all keep CL out of your goat herd? It sure seems to be everywhere here in Ohio. We bought a 3 year old Saanan/boer cross doe. We put her in an isolation pen and had her tested. The test came back negative. The vet said to keep her in isolation for another month or two and then retest. We did, and this time, the test came out positive. We got rid of her and disinfected the isolation pen.
We bought a 75% boer buck, checked him out completely before we bought him, and brought him into our isolation pen. After getting him onto the property, but still in isolation, we gave him another exam and did the blood draw. On examination, we found a walnut sized abscess at the juncture of groin and scrotum. I'm sure the blood test will come out positive on him.

It's so discouraging. The vet says that it is a growing problem and the only way to prevent it in your herd is to do this isolation thing, however, it is a long, and expensive process, not to mention tiring and discouraging having to burn all that bedding, lime and disinfect everything after each animal.

How do you all introduce new animals to your homestead? Have you ever gotten a cl positive goat on your property? I never realized how many of them are out there to be had.

Jcran · #2 01/05/07, 10:10 AM

You might ask sellers to test as a condition of purchase. Or only buy from herds that test yearly. My neighbor and I are learning to draw our own blood and will then send our own tests in to UCDavis for testing. It will save A LOT of money and allow us to test all goats yearly. I think it was Vicki who had a really interesting story about her own herd and CL prevention.

moosemaniac · #3 01/05/07, 10:18 AM

Buy from tested herds and don't farm out your bucks.

Ruth

thequeensblessing · #4 01/05/07, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moosemaniac

Buy from tested herds and don't farm out your bucks.

Ruth

Thanks Ruth, and while that sounds well and good, we've had a hard time finding tested herds. We went to 2 different boer goat farms, biiiiig farms, and neither of them routinely tested their animals.
Perhaps I need to ask the vet to point me in the direction of a few tested herds in my area. You'd think he'd have volunteered the info wouldn't ya?

I never buy goats from the sale barns and I never "farm out" my bucks, for many reasons, CL being just one of them.
Do you guys have that many reputable tested herds in your areas? Anyone in Ohio who can point me in the right direction?

Patty0315 · #5 01/05/07, 12:35 PM

Instead of buying a new buck why not AI one of your best does and keep a buckling. They are suppose to be coming out with a vaccine for Cl but I have not heard anything lately.

Patty

Idahoe · #6 01/05/07, 01:14 PM

I felt something of your frustration QB, I ended up driving from N. Idaho to Santa Barbara to get a buck. No one around here (say a couple hundred mile radius) tests regularly, or tests at all. The area is still very depressed economically, unlike farther north, and it's hard to test your whole herd when your income is hand to mouth. I don't get too judgemental as this is the way most small farmsteads have been for hundreds of years. Lately, I have met some folks online further north of me who test reliably and have reputable bloodlines, etc. Of course, I met them through this BBS

.

CL is a complete nightmare. So are the other goat plagues. Thank goodness you followed through and isolated your newcomers!!

Gailann Schrader · #7 01/05/07, 01:23 PM

A Boer friend of mine says it's everywhere and they just don't worry about it.

I butchered a Nubian wether the other day and found what I think were nodules inside him. He's never been exposed.

My vet says if you save some of the exudate and send it in they can make a vaccine specific to YOUR herd.

I don't know. I think it will get more rampant before it gets under control...

It's an ugly disease/condition and very depressing when you realize how prevalent it is...

Good Luck with your search.

dosthouhavemilk · #8 01/05/07, 02:18 PM

We were at an auction earlier this year for an Amish family preparing to move. We liked the looks of the herd and were trying to figure out where we could quaranteen that large a group...until I saw the open abcess on the side of one goat....Stopped us right in our tracks. That was the first and only time I've seen an active CL case. We've had goats for 10 years now...nary an abcess of that nature here yet. I hope to test the herd this coming year.

enjoy the ride · #9 01/05/07, 09:48 PM

One of the first two goats I ever bought had CL when I got her- I was too inexperienced to know. But I did have it tested before any abscess opened on my place, having the pus cultured. I tried an autogenous vaccine which did nothing to slow up the rapid progress of the disease in that goat. I had to put her down. I did pull one of the babies she had and hand raised her. I also tested the other goat and she was negative. I will be testing both of them again in the spring before they get their CL shots to see if it's still OK. No other signs of it have shown up.
One of the bad things about CL is that I have seen deer with it, and while I've been told that CL is species specific, I'm not sure about deer as other things are shared between them.
My vet said that when called out for an abcsess, people most frequently refuse to test- and I have heard of whole herds having abscesses so frequently it just about has to be CL. And the blood tests are not as reliable as they may be.
The doe who had so very badly had had an accident when she was a baby in which 1/2 of her ear was torn off. I've wondered if that large wound may be how she got such a bad case of it as it is frequently true that the initial load of bacteria has to do with how fast the disease progresses- I don't know.
I would never want to go through what I went through with that infected doe- but as the vet said she had it really badly- layers of abscesses at many sites and one that was the size of a softball.

KimM · #10 01/05/07, 11:06 PM

You have a PM

Teacupliz · #11 01/06/07, 01:04 PM

Hi-- I found that to be the same in meat goats here in NY- Cl everywhere and they think they can manage it.. I do nto feel you can.
If you are looking I have a friend who is a vet tech she has two nice 50% boer does for sale-- they are CLEAN.. Western NY--Liz
Teacup Farm

computerchick · #12 01/06/07, 02:39 PM

It is so amazing that it's just a 'given'. There is a vaccine on the horizon, and I know some strains have been successfully suppressed with autogenous vaccines.

It's good to test, but know also, you could just as easily pick it up from someone who touched a feed bag in the store. Tests have shown it survives for years on surfaces.

I test my goats every 6 months for cl, which I admit is getting costly, so I may have to go to a yearly or just a sampling every 6 months as a monitor.

Andrea

enjoy the ride · #13 01/06/07, 02:52 PM

I've told this story on another site so I hope I don't bore people here but this is a big thing to me.
When I had my infected goat to the vet's to have an abscess drained, there were another lady and her husband already seeing the vet about the three pygmy wethers they had. Seems they bought one pygmy from a breeder then were so in love with him that they bought three more from a person selling them at the county fair. By the time the three from the fair were 6 mos old, they all had developed abscesses. And the vet had just given them the news that they tested positive for CL. The first goat they had from another source was negative.
The husband wanted to put all the goats down because they were his wife's pets and now had become a "pain" because she was too squeemish to lance and drain the abscess so he had to do. She want to see if they developed more so they did not put them down then.
I hope that the lady toughened up some for the goats sake but it pointed out to me the damage that this condition does. People who are not used to taking care of farm animals have a hard time dealing with such a "gross" thing as lancing abscesses. And I can understand- I had been treating abscess after abscess with my goat and it was ugly to say the least.
The market for pet goats will dry up if this disease isn't controlled- a newby pet person is pretty sure to be turned off by this ugly disease.
I think there are too many people who turn a blind eye to this for it to be controlled by culling. You can only keep it out by keeping a closed herd and never taking any goat off your place- and hope that no one even brings the infection to you. I'm hoping that the vaccine that Australia uses will soon be available here and at least a person who wants to protect their goats as well as they can will have a better option.