CL Vaccine?

[DixyDoodle]

Is the CL vaccine pretty easy to get? And should I even vaccinate for it, if I can get it? I was under the impression that there was no vaccine, and now I'm reading that there is.

There seems to be a lot of controversy on whether it is effective and even safe. One article I read said that many goats are "susceptible" (non-infected) to the virus and the vaccine may cause "reactions" to them. It didn't say what those reactions are. And what the heck do they mean by susceptible? Goats with weakened immune systems from dealing with other disorders? Older or pregnant goats? Kids?

If anyone has vaccinated against CL, I would really be interested in hearing your experiences with it. Not so sure I would use something that appears to be so controversial...

Thanks!

[southerngurl]

I don't know a whole lot about it, but always remember the animal will test positive for CL if you give it the vaccine, so that will hurt you if you try to sell it.

[pookshollow]

It's not currently available - on "indefinite backorder". The company that was making it in Canada, no longer does, and the company in the States - well, I don't know what their problem is.

You can get a vaccine made from the pus from one of your infected goats - it will only cost you a minimum of $1300 USD.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

The real problem always is that nobody tests to really know anything. You purchase a herd, a few abscess pop up so you vaccinate the whole herd. Did all the abscess stop popping up in your herd from the vaccine or was it like we found, that once the movement has settled and the goats become a family unit that you rarely if ever see abscess anymore unless there is a stress? Did the vaccine really keep the goats from getting more abscess? And how do you know if they all test positive now anyway. Goats can be positive for both CL and CAE with never a symptom, yet infect goats around them...CAE with blood, milk and colostrum, CL with coughing, peeing etc....doesn't have to be an abscess you can see.

So would you buy a goat who tests positive "because she was vaccinated"? If the answer is no, as it should be, than just how good is this vaccine if it makes your breeding stock unsaleable? Oh of course unless you just sell to those who don't know about communicalbe disease yet, and the new people you can prey on...and this is why CL and CAE are still in goats...20+ years later. It isn't a vaccinatable disease it is a culling disease. Vicki

[DixyDoodle]

Ahhhhhh, so maybe I won't go crazy trying to get hold of this vaccine then. I also don't like the idea of having CL-postive goats from that! I can understand, I wouldn't want to buy goats like that either!

Thanks for the info!

[sunnygrl]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

. It isn't a vaccinatable disease it is a culling disease. Vicki

i'm trying to twist my brain around this, I read the above article that was stickied on CL and it said that it was highly contagious, that birds flying in from somewhere else, could bring it in was one of many ways a goat could contract CL without your control. I have also read I that you should cull your entire herd from CL and that you can never raise goats on your property again. I know that some of you have been raising goats for a longggggg time, in this time you have never had CL on your property? For some of you that have a lot of animals, how can you survive the chance that your goats might contract this even with your best efforts to prevent contamination? How many of you can pack up and move to a new location and get an entire new herd.

I am new to goats, I have only had goats for 2 years now, but it almost seems that from what I have read, that it is almost impossible to avoid it, it is only a matter of time and exposure. As it is, and my goats are a long distance from other goats, I don't think I would take my animals to a show for fear of contamination. Here I thought I was bad about not wanting to expose my human kids to germs, now I think about what germs my goats might contract from other things.....

[Patty0315]

Birds bringing cl on your property is 1 in a million. My herd is cl & cae free. When new goats come here they are in an isolation pen even if the herd they came from is tested free. I always assume they have something nasty until my test results come in . I also wait at least 30 days before letting them into my herd.

CL can be avoided .

Patty

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

I have been very open that I had dairy goats with CL, most who buy to milk do. But I also didn't vaccinate, or slice and dice or lance or formaline them and pretend I didn't have a communicable disease. All abscess were surgically removed by me or the vet (the vet when it was close to something that scarred me). By removing abcess I could keep the girls....but I also didn't fool myself, I knew I could never sell them and I was very careful during kidding season. I also had a brand new dairy barn that I gleaned kids I raised myself into...and yes when we put down the last group of old does and stopped commercially selling milk, we got rid of the barn and we burned the area. It sat fallow for several years, I then refenced it and put in boer crosses I ran for about 3 years. We butchered for meat many of them for ourselves always with me looking for internal abscess (we never saw external ones) each time. I do know my land wasn't contaminated because of the removal of the whole abscess...and with 40 to 60 of these does with CAE and CL we had only one doe who would get an abscess after kidding nearly every year, and after the intial abscess when we moved them in, we maybe would have 1 or 2 abcess a year. It was also why we shaved our does routinely so you could see abscess immedialty. Since I did not bother testing these positive animals...except Scotia because she had positive CL tests for exude of the material and negative on blood, and she was a pet project of a univeristy, she went there when we put the last of her penmates down.

So yes you can contain CL, it's about biosecurity though...I would tell everyone, extended family, customers etc....that they couldn't go in the pen because we had some mean goats who would ram you. But that is how nice these does were, and their pedigrees were also to die for, goats can be absolutly stunnning and still have CL and CAE and mycoplasma, chlamydia, Vicki

[DixyDoodle]

An I wrong to assume that you can have CL-negative goats that can "turn" into positives then? By means of injury, etc., I mean. I was under the impression that you can have clean goats and if one of them is compromised by injury or stress, they can obtain CL more easily through an outside source.

I'm kinda thinking like sunnygrl, that you will eventually see it in one form or the other? I read one article that stated most goats are technically are "expressors" of CL....ie, they won't test positive but have had exposure. Sorry I don't have that article now, but I do recall something about a lot of goats having anitbodies or whatever for it. (?) Sorry, that is probably the wrong terminology there, but.....

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

The only way a goat can catch CL is to have an open sore and brush up against CL bacteria and get it into this open sore. Biggy at shows is that sheep, which always have CL it seems, are penned in the pens we show in. So not disenfecting the bars and letting your does walking into pens that you haven't rebedded yourself, with just pared down feet is stupid. Make sure hoof timming is done in enough time for them to not be tender. Or a CL positive animal has to cough on your goat, in the face with a CL abcess brust internally in the throat. So you can see unless you have CL in your goats, or you purchase them, no I don't feel that my goats at any time are going to come down with CL...I am more anal than some out my biosecurity but not as over the top as some.

The problem with CL and CAE is that when you talk to those who try to justify why their goats are positive you get these vaccines, herbal, injecting of formaline nonsense posts to read. When someone has had it and culled their herd to get rid of it you get what happens, and in my case I don't sugar coat things...it's a PITA to deal with this, and if you had to remove abcess or help a 3 year old up with swollen knees you would never wish this on any goat, let alone breed them. Someone who is banned from here who has had goats as long as me would come on now behind me and tell you all that CAE and CL are no big deal....it always makes me wonder if she said this because she is positive? Vicki

[DixyDoodle]

Vicki, so what are the odds, would you say, of one of my clean goats getting a cut or whatever, and coming down with CL (someone mentioned birds as a carrier)? Yeah, I'm paranoid! LOL I quarantine all new goats, but honestly, now that I have a good-sized herd, it's not likely to see many newcomers except maybe for a full-sized dairy buck for my nubians.

And then of course, there's the issue of CL not showing up in a goat for years. Maybe I have a goat with CL that hasn't expressed it? Horrible thought! I'm almost afraid to test them, but would it I suspected it. But they do all seem healthy. No lumps if you don't count the burst salivary gland on my doe which WAS tested and that is indeed what her issue is---let me tell ya, when I saw that lump come up on her months after buying her, yes, I freaked!

[barelahh]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

The real problem always is that

So would you buy a goat who tests positive "because she was vaccinated"? If the answer is no, as it should be, than just how good is this vaccine if it makes your breeding stock unsaleable? Oh of course unless you just sell to those who don't know about communicalbe disease yet, and the new people you can prey on...and this is why CL and CAE are still in goats...20+ years later. It isn't a vaccinatable disease it is a culling disease. Vicki

Only problem with that theory is one goat comes in and exposes your entire herd. When you have thousands tied up in your herd, you vaccinate in the hopes of stopping the rest from getting the diesease. IF you don't vaccinate, you will end up losing the herd anyway.

[barelahh]

Originally Posted by Patty0315

Birds bringing cl on your property is 1 in a million. My herd is cl & cae free. When new goats come here they are in an isolation pen even if the herd they came from is tested free. I always assume they have something nasty until my test results come in . I also wait at least 30 days before letting them into my herd.

CL can be avoided .

Patty

Uhmm CL can take much longer than 30 days to show up. Try 8 months. So unless you can quarantine the new goats for at least a year, you won't know for sure if you have cl in the goat or not.

[barelahh]

Originally Posted by DixyDoodle

Is the CL vaccine pretty easy to get? And should I even vaccinate for it, if I can get it? I was under the impression that there was no vaccine, and now I'm reading that there is.

There seems to be a lot of controversy on whether it is effective and even safe. One article I read said that many goats are "susceptible" (non-infected) to the virus and the vaccine may cause "reactions" to them. It didn't say what those reactions are. And what the heck do they mean by susceptible? Goats with weakened immune systems from dealing with other disorders? Older or pregnant goats? Kids?

If anyone has vaccinated against CL, I would really be interested in hearing your experiences with it. Not so sure I would use something that appears to be so controversial...

Thanks!

The manufacturers of casebac vaccine for sheep are about to release a vaccine for goats. The reason theres reactions in the goats to the vaccine is the carrier they use to deliver the vaccine causes the limping and symptoms of illness in the goats after vaccination. The one their making for the goats is using a different formulation of the carrier and will not cause all the side effects but they are wating on fda to approve sales.

[6e]

A LOT of goat people that I know in this state do indeed vaccinate for CL. Their reason would be that it's just better to vaccinate and let the people know ahead of time that the goat has been vaccinated and so will test positive. And of the people I know who do vaccinate, they have never had a goat become sytomatic with the vaccine.

Now to our own personal experience. We bought a sheep several years ago that came up with an abscess. I contacted the woman we bought him from and told her what was going on. She said that she had never had CL there and not to worry about it, that it was probably just a sting or something. This woman was a VERY well known breeder with excellent reputation. So, we ignored it. BIG MISTAKE!! Another abscess came up and then another and then another one in another sheep and then it crossed to our Angora herd. That was when something HAD to be done. We did all the lancing and removal and all that, but the first abscess had been ignored and so the disease was already on our property. So, just "containing" it was not an option.

We could get rid of the entire herd and start over, but since CL can, under the right circumstances exist in the soil and on wood surfaces for up to 10 years, that left us up a creek without a paddle. So, we called the company that puts out the Casebac vaccine and decided that the side effects were worth it if it would protect the rest of the herd. So, we quickly went through everyone checking everyone for abscesses. Those that did were quickly culled and the rest were vaccinated. Any new goats were vaccinated before being allowed to go in with the rest of the goats. We have had no more abscesses pop up.

Yes, if you test the goats that have been vaccinated they will test positive for CL. So what? They test positive because they have antibodies to the disease. That's what the vaccine does. It doesn't mean that they have the disease, nor does the vaccine make them a carrier of the disease. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We made the huge mistake of ignoring that lump under the "guidance" of a well known sheep breeder. We lived and we learned and now have to deal with the plate we've been served.

Barelahh is right in that they will offer a vaccine for goats the first of 2009 that won't carry the side effects that the sheep vaccine does, although honestly it wasn't that bad. The goats limped around for a few days and that was it.

The problem with only removing abscesses is that the disease is still internal. You can't see it or treat it and they'll still be spreading it on your property.

Honestly, I would rather vaccinate for it and not have to worry about it, then to loose my herd to it. We deal with it and eventually we will wipe it out again. We don't have any more goats that have it, but it's still on the property from everything I've read and so we will continue to vaccinate until I am sure that we are in the clear.

JMO

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

The only way birds would carry CL into your barn would be chickens, pecking and scratching and then walking into your clean barns. Same with your boots, your dogs..biosecurity of a communicable disease means all equipment duplicated in both areas. We used trays to walk through even though we had clean boots, does walked through them to come into the milkroom. Now they have these cool mats to go in the trays so you are walking through essentially a sponge which saturates boots and hooves without the mess. Our stalls for our does were set up that our dogs and chickens didn't have acess to them. They walked to the dairy barn via an alleyway which even then didn't have nose to nose contact with the clean herd. Even our milkstands were sprayed with Tech Trol on the head holds after milking.

I have never had a doe go through my quaranteen and then subsequently turn positive for CL or CAE, but I do quaranteen for 90 days. 100% of the does who came to me who were positive for CL had an abscess pop up and/or tested positive for CL on bloodtest. I have never had a doe convert to positive for CAE.

Lots of things that are written about never happen on a working farms, only in labs and in some vivid imaginations

I have never, since we gave Scotia away and put down our last doe, had any of our dairy barn have CL or CAE nor sold a goat with it....I am so visible, and some less than love me, that it would be some folks passion to have found a kid they purchased from me positive for anything...to be able to share it with everyone So I know quaranteen and heat treating and pasteurising works. And this whole easy to catch nonsense is just that. Now let the abscess burst or lance and yes I think you could have a whole herd of CL goats in no time. Vicki

[6e]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

The real problem always is that nobody tests to really know anything. You purchase a herd, a few abscess pop up so you vaccinate the whole herd. Did all the abscess stop popping up in your herd from the vaccine or was it like we found, that once the movement has settled and the goats become a family unit that you rarely if ever see abscess anymore unless there is a stress? Did the vaccine really keep the goats from getting more abscess? And how do you know if they all test positive now anyway. Goats can be positive for both CL and CAE with never a symptom, yet infect goats around them...CAE with blood, milk and colostrum, CL with coughing, peeing etc....doesn't have to be an abscess you can see.

So would you buy a goat who tests positive "because she was vaccinated"? If the answer is no, as it should be, than just how good is this vaccine if it makes your breeding stock unsaleable? Oh of course unless you just sell to those who don't know about communicalbe disease yet, and the new people you can prey on...and this is why CL and CAE are still in goats...20+ years later. It isn't a vaccinatable disease it is a culling disease. Vicki

That is not true that it is not a vaccinatable disease. Those that have vaccinated don't tend to have trouble with CL. And if you show your goats a lot especially at fairs where sheep and goats are in the same area, you're liable to run into trouble.

But because of the vaccine, CL has declined markedly in sheep. I think it will do the same in goats if people will vaccinate for it.

It comes down to what each person feels is best for them and their herd. But as long as there is animals on this earth there will be diseases that plague them and people will have to deal with them the best they can.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

So would you buy a goat who tests positive "because she was vaccinated"?
............................

So you would trust that a doe/ewe/buck/ram was positive when you tested her because they were vaccinated just on the word of the person you are buying from? You would put them in with your clean herd? Because if you answer no, than it is a big deal to you that an animal tests positive. Double talk to explain why your goats/sheep are positive is all it is. And if a goat/sheep is positive for CL and have abscess already it is not a vaccinatable solution, it is a cull solution.

And so if this internal abscess way of spreading the disease was so prevelant than why in 8 years did we not see it happen one time?

With not being able to purchase the vaccine legally in the US, what will you do about all the kids from this year in your herd you can't vaccinate will they all catch CL?

Sorry but keeping a communicable zoonic disease alive and well in the meat supply of our country is exactly why we need NAIS. It goes to why you have to be policed, and why the USDA will have to grow by 1000% to be able to police all the food producers who sweep all of this type of problems in all facets of our food industry under the rug. This is akin to the USDA only inspecting 1% of the food imported from China even though we know most of it is laced with heavy metals and down right poisons.

Sure protect the animals you have that aren't positive with CL but contain or kill the ones who do have abscess. Don't put them into the food chain or sell them to new people. Vicki

[6e]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

So would you buy a goat who tests positive "because she was vaccinated"?
............................

So you would trust that a doe/ewe/buck/ram was positive when you tested her because they were vaccinated just on the word of the person you are buying from? You would put them in with your clean herd? Because if you answer no, than it is a big deal to you that an animal tests positive. Double talk to explain why your goats/sheep are positive is all it is. And if a goat/sheep is positive for CL and have abscess already it is not a vaccinatable solution, it is a cull solution.

And so if this internal abscess way of spreading the disease was so prevelant than why in 8 years did we not see it happen one time?

With not being able to purchase the vaccine legally in the US, what will you do about all the kids from this year in your herd you can't vaccinate will they all catch CL?

Sorry but keeping a communicable zoonic disease alive and well in the meat supply of our country is exactly why we need NAIS. It goes to why you have to be policed, and why the USDA will have to grow by 1000% to be able to police all the food producers who sweep all of this type of problems in all facets of our food industry under the rug. This is akin to the USDA only inspecting 1% of the food imported from China even though we know most of it is laced with heavy metals and down right poisons.

Sure protect the animals you have that aren't positive with CL but contain or kill the ones who do have abscess. Don't put them into the food chain or sell them to new people. Vicki

Wellll, since I have the vaccine bottle to back up what I say and I can show you the lump on the inside of their front leg from the vaccine, then yes, I would buy a goat that is vaccinated. Why would I not? And any goat or sheep that comes here is vaccinated anyway, then it really does not matter.

Yes the vaccine is legal in the US. Look it up. You can buy it. At this point it was designed for sheep, but you can use it on goats.

Secondly, All the kids born here will not get it because they are all vaccinated also, that and separated at birth and all of them were from CL free does.

But yes I agree that IF the doe has abscesses already, then you cannot vaccinate for it. You have to cull, which we did. But if the CL is on your property already, then your only choice is to go out of the sheep and goat business or vaccinate. There's really no other choice.

If you vaccinate a goat that is already carrying CL, the vaccine will do nothing and the goat will come down with abscesses. But if the goat is clear, the vaccine, regardless of whether or not they test positive or not, will keep them from getting it.

To say that we shouldn't vaccinate, only cull, is like saying that we shouldn't vaccinate for any other number of diseases that animals get. If we can protect the animal, then why shouldn't we? I vaccinate for all kinds of things if I think that it's something that we have around here or something that the goats will come in contact with at some point.

We had A LOT of money wrapped up in our Angora's and there was no way we were going to destroy the whole herd for a few. This was the best way to protect them from getting it.

Why couldn't we use them for breeding? They don't spread CL if they've been vaccinated. That's like saying that a person that's been vaccinated for Small Pox is now a carrier.

But yes you are right. We did cull all the goats that have abscesses. No sense in letting them keep spreading it.

[barelahh]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

So would you buy a goat who tests positive "because she was vaccinated"?
............................

you bet! Show me the lump under each leg, and the record when that vaccine was administered and the lot number of the vaccine and yeah i would buy it.

So you would trust that a doe/ewe/buck/ram was positive when you tested her because they were vaccinated just on the word of the person you are buying from?

With proper documentation yeah why not.

You would put them in with your clean herd?

Yes why not?? IF their vaccinated, then their not carriers unless they had the disease before they were vaccinated. Then a quarantine period will prove that.

Because if you answer no, than it is a big deal to you that an animal tests positive. Double talk to explain why your goats/sheep are positive is all it is. And if a goat/sheep is positive for CL and have abscess already it is not a vaccinatable solution, it is a cull solution.

No double talk here. IF the goat or sheep have cl already then their not vaccinatable. were not talking about infected animals.

And so if this internal abscess way of spreading the disease was so prevelant than why in 8 years did we not see it happen one time?

Luck, uhm you may not have had any to run into it, or get exposed from internal abcesses. Just because their internal doesn't mean they can't spread it.

With not being able to purchase the vaccine legally in the US, what will you do about all the kids from this year in your herd you can't vaccinate will they all catch CL?

ROTFLMAO Simple, I vaccinate the kids with the vaccine i buy in the US to vaccinate them with! its called cas-bac. ROTFL
Next year, their releasing the goat specific vaccine so that it doesn't have the side effects.

Sorry but keeping a communicable zoonic disease alive and well in the meat supply of our country is exactly why we need NAIS.

Oh heck yeah just sell out our privacy and rights wholesale to the government. It'll be a cold day in H*** when i register

It goes to why you have to be policed, and why the USDA will have to grow by 1000% to be able to police all the food producers who sweep all of this type of problems in all facets of our food industry under the rug. This is akin to the USDA only inspecting 1% of the food imported from China even though we know most of it is laced with heavy metals and down right poisons.

Its a good thing that the USDA can't handle what they got now isn't it! Thank God their not staffed enough to send their jack booted thugs everywhere to enact their police state.

Sure protect the animals you have that aren't positive with CL but contain or kill the ones who do have abscess. Don't put them into the food chain or sell them to new people. Vicki

Who said anything about selling infected animals? No one has even mentioned selling them. I believe were talking about protecting the herds we have with a vaccine. You i believe had a cow over the fact that we would buy a goat that had been vaccinated! Thats not a problem. A vaccinated goat might test positive for cl but thats because they have the antibodies. So yeah i would also sell a vaccinated goat. Their not a problem.
BTW you mentioned about a vaccinated Goat being a problem in the food supply, i can't see how it would be. I drink raw milk from a CL vaccinated goat. Still alive and kicking with no problems.