A dumb question about CAE

[farm mom]

If you have an all negative herd then why do all the CAE prevention with the kids (pulling them off mom right away, not letting her lick them)? Can your does suddenly test positive one year for CAE even though they have been negative for years before that?

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Once you are milking the kids you pulled out of moms, raised them on prevention with no contact from your original does. It's likely you are and will stay CAE negative from that point forward. I will always use CAE prevention, which is heat treating colostrum and pasteurising milk and making sure I am present at births so kids don't nurse, for Johnnes, mastitis, staph, mycoplasma, softer udders that milk out......Plus the benefits to the dam and her lactation to be milked is why I will always, no matter how many tests I have in the file, will always prevent.

Nearly all cases of percocious udder and lopsided udders in FF can directly be linked to a doeling nursing a dam who is positive for subclinical staph.

99.99% of disease that can be spread via milk and colostrum is spread that way.

Heat Treating colostrum and feeding it back to your kids is also the best way to improve overall herd health and immunity to your kid crop, by not having to use colostrum from young unvaccinated does. Having vaccination does, older does who are vaccinated but also have been through some disease, is really valuable to your herds health.

And like HIV, all your CAE test is telling you is that as of today when you pulled her blood she does not have enough titer to react with the ELISA test. It does not tell you she will always be negative. Vicki

[Middle River]

I wondered this myself, good question.

Vicki - you said "Nearly all cases of percocious udder and lopsided udders in FF can directly be linked to a doeling nursing a dam who is positive for subclinical staph."

Can you explain this more ? I have an Alpine doe - she is a 2 yr FF now as of 2/22. last summer she delvoped a bit of a percocious udder as a yearling - mostly just one side, when i saw it and checked it out, there was just some normal looking milk in there - i left her alone, and she dried up. Now when she freshened she did so nicely, nice udder, good bit of milk and all that jazz. She did reject her kids though so we are bottle feeding them, untill i work from home pulling all kids isn't an option for me, however next year i should be home working so am going to condsider it - up till now i've just been milking does once a day and leaving their kids with them. Not this doe though, she is milked am and pm - and i am happy with her.

I do belive she was dam raised herself.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Subclinical staph mastitis produces normal milk in every way...except it will hurt the keeping quality in the fridge. A true hormonal percocious udder would come in equally on both sides, due to hormones. One that comes in lopsided is always staph if you test the fluid. It is caught milking or being fed raw milk...one of the other things we all gave to our herds back before we knew what CAE was and how to use prevention. Pooling of colostrum and milk gave us nearly a 100% positive farm for mycoplsma (mastitis, pnemonia and arthritis) CAE and subclinical staph in our udders.

Course I do also vaccinate for staph mastitis (Lysigin), but the ease of your herd health when you raise dairy goats on prevention is just worth it. Once you have the core of your herd bottle tame, negative (and LSU test milk for you for free right now) for many things, then raise their kids anyway you want to, checking on your staph levels as you dry up each year, so you can treat if need be during the dry period. Vicki