Talk to me about CAE and pasteurizing milk for kids to drink....

[monarchcmj]

One of my does, Ruthie, who is due to kid any day, is CAE positive. I am going to do everything I can to make sure I am here for the birth and can take her kids away immediately so they won't nurse and be exposed to CAE through her milk.
Obviously the kids will need colostrum and milk to drink, so what do I do?
Heat the milk to kill the CAE? Buy milk from another farm to feed the kids? Use milk replacer?
Heating themilk sounds easiest, but I know a lot of the beneficial nutrients and such will be killed off along with the CAE, so it's not the best option.
Of the farms I've called in the area, the people I've spoken to either have CAE positive goats, or don't test for CAE, so I'm not having luck finding CAE negative herds to buy milk from.
Milk replacer is a last resort, but it's looking like maybe it should be moved to the top of my list.
I'd love some advice!
If you've heat-treated milk, how did it go? Did the kids thrive?
If you've fed milk replacer, what were the results?

Any other thoughts, comments, and advice are welcome.

Thanks so much!!!

[Hollowdweller]

http://dawog.net/Goats/cae.htm

This will tell you all you need to know.

If you raise goats, while the internet is cool, I would highly suggest you go out and buy a few books on raising goats.

I highly suggest this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Goat-Medicine-...=goat+medicine

And this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Milk-G...s=gail+luttman

[Cyngbaeld]

I am heat treating the milk and they are thriving on it. My goats are all from negative herds, but CAE can apparently lie dormant and activated unexpectedly so just to be on the safe side, and because I can't get to the post office to send off blood, and so I can plan on a better price for my doelings....

Go ahead and start milking her now. Save the colostrum till you have enough to treat and do the 145* for 1 hr treatment. If the colostrum turns to custard, all is not lost. Warm it up prior to feeding and put it in the blender. After blending it a couple of minutes add a little hot water to thin it down enough that they can drink it.

After you milk her out, TAPE the teats so the kids won't get anything if she pulls a fast one on you. Keep her milked out and taped till the kids are born. Then just keep her milked as normal and pasteurize all the milk the kids drink. I keep raw in the fridge for people and pasteurized for kids so I put a big "P" on the lid of the kid milk to be sure not to slip up.

[Hollowdweller]

http://www.caprinesupply.com/raising...steurized-milk

[IndyGardenGal]

I'd buy powdered colostrum and feed that and then while milk from the grocery store. I just would take the chance. Where are you? Someone here might know of a good, tested herd in your area.

[Hollowdweller]

Originally Posted by Cyngbaeld

I am heat treating the milk and they are thriving on it. My goats are all from negative herds, but CAE can apparently lie dormant and activated unexpectedly so just to be on the safe side, and because I can't get to the post office to send off blood, and so I can plan on a better price for my doelings....

Go ahead and start milking her now. Save the colostrum till you have enough to treat and do the 145* for 1 hr treatment. If the colostrum turns to custard, all is not lost. Warm it up prior to feeding and put it in the blender. After blending it a couple of minutes add a little hot water to thin it down enough that they can drink it.

After you milk her out, TAPE the teats so the kids won't get anything if she pulls a fast one on you. Keep her milked out and taped till the kids are born. Then just keep her milked as normal and pasteurize all the milk the kids drink. I keep raw in the fridge for people and pasteurized for kids so I put a big "P" on the lid of the kid milk to be sure not to slip up.

135

145 too hot!

[Hollowdweller]

Originally Posted by IndyGardenGal

I'd buy powdered colostrum and feed that and then while milk from the grocery store. I just would take the chance. Where are you? Someone here might know of a good, tested herd in your area.

I would never trust feeding colostrum from a negative herd. There's a lot of other things you can transmit from unpasteurized colostrum besides CAE.

It's not hard to heat treat colostrum.

[mekasmom]

My suggestion would actually be to just buy whole milk from the grocery store. I know it is more expensive, but once you pasteurize the colostrum it has no value anyway. And why take a chance on the goat's milk at all. Just drink it, and feed the kids whole cow's milk. They will be ok with it even sans colostrum. A lot of people end up doing that when they are in your situation.

[mygoat]

CAE, from my understanding, doesn't lie dormant. There is about a 6 month incubation period between exposure and antibody production in some cases. The 'dormant' cases are likely misinterpreted situations where they were exposed unknowingly, say at a show or other situation, and seroconvert at next test.

I would get milk replacer if you must. Another thing people use is cow's milk from the store, but there is a small risk of Johnes disease from such a milk source. I've used it with sucess in the past, and know many people have had great sucess using it. But know that johnes can be cultured from about 3% of milk off of the store shelves. Cultured doesn't always mean that it is an infective qty, however. Then again, most johnes tests are not accurate until the animal is 2 years of age, so it could be a while before you discover them to be positive... and even longer if you don't yearly test for johnes.

The kids WILL NEED COLOSTRUM. Otherwise you'll have to be extremely dilligent in their health as they will have zero passive immunity against E. coli, salmonella,(enterotoxemi and tetanus as well if the doe is vaccinated) or any of the other environmental pathogens that the doe has made antibodies of and would be passing on to their offspring via the colostrum. Finding somone with a CAE negative doe and heat treating it (NOT PASTEURIZE - hold at 135* for 1 hour) After that you could thoroughly pasteurize the milk form your doe - get it to 160* and make sure it's at that temperature, while stirring, for at least 15 seconds to thoroughly pasteurize. In a pinch, milking your positive doe and heat treating the colostrum may work well but all effort should be made just to get colostrum out of a negative doe, because improper heat treating/pasteurization IS possible (Take temps when colostrum is being stirred). If you overheat colostrum, it will curdle and be impossible to feed to kids.

For the doe, you can tape teats. I know in some herds who already had colostrum ready out of negative herds had great sucess with attending births as well as dry treating the CAE pos does with ToMorrow and supergluing their teats shut. That way if they missed the kidding, the teats weren't working. There is a possibility of it spreading through mucous membranes (rather like OPP in sheep) but this is not a main route of transmission.

[Hollowdweller]

Originally Posted by mekasmom

My suggestion would actually be to just buy whole milk from the grocery store. I know it is more expensive, but once you pasteurize the colostrum it has no value anyway. And why take a chance on the goat's milk at all. Just drink it, and feed the kids whole cow's milk. They will be ok with it even sans colostrum. A lot of people end up doing that when they are in your situation.

This post shows why it it dangerous to rely on the internet for advice.

First you do not pasteurize colostrum you heat treat it at 135 which kills the CAE virus but does not destroy the antibodies.

Also if you feed your kid whole cows milk it could be OK, but if you do not pasteurize the cows' milk you could introduce mycoplasma or johnnes into your herd. However if you keep the kid inside and feed it only milk, no colostrum until it's old enough for it's immune system to develop you may be out of the woods. BUT- a goat kid not given colostrum will be WAY more susceptible to both enterotoxemia and tetanus so be careful.

[mygoat]

Originally Posted by Hollowdweller

This post shows why it it dangerous to rely on the internet for advice.

First you do not pasteurize colostrum you heat treat it at 135 which kills the CAE virus but does not destroy the antibodies.

Also if you feed your kid whole cows milk it could be OK, but if you do not pasteurize the cows' milk you could introduce mycoplasma or johnnes into your herd. However if you keep the kid inside and feed it only milk, no colostrum until it's old enough for it's immune system to develop you may be out of the woods. BUT- a goat kid not given colostrum will be WAY more susceptible to both enterotoxemia and tetanus so be careful.

Well put. And as I said, not just entero and tetanus, but other scary things such as environmental pathogens like salmonella, E.coli, and whatever else is floating around as normal flora in your goat herd that everybody is immune to, but the kids would not be.

A kids' immune system doesn't develop well at all until about 4 weeks of age. Before that, it relies almost solely on it's passive immunity from the mother. That is why vaccines aren't given much earlier than 3-4 weeks of age to kids for the first time - they simply don't have an immune response making the vaccine given to young kids worthless.

[monarchcmj]

Originally Posted by Hollowdweller

http://dawog.net/Goats/cae.htm

This will tell you all you need to know.

If you raise goats, while the internet is cool, I would highly suggest you go out and buy a few books on raising goats.

I highly suggest this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Goat-Medicine-...=goat+medicine

And this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Milk-G...s=gail+luttman

Thank you for your reply.
Lest you think I am totally unprepared, I do have books about raising milk goats. I've had my does for 5 years and have done a ton of research, but now that the kids will be coming any day, I want to make sure I'm doing the very best that I can do.

[SJSFarm]

The woman I got my CAE neg goats from raises both goats and cows. She feeds the kids cow colostrum and the calves goat colostrum.

Perhaps you can locate a raw cow milk dairy for a small amount of cow colostrum?