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We just got a milk cow
and I'm wondering what we should have her tested for before we can responsibly drink raw milk?
Same here, Roseanna ... sucks, doesn't it?We are currently battling with it, but so is every other dairy farmer in our area.
willow_girl said:Same here, Roseanna ... sucks, doesn't it?![]()
I would be interested in hearing about your calf program and how you keep your heifers isolated, and whether you think it's working to prevent transmission.
We have a small dairy farm (57 head right now) so our calves were always removed within a reasonable time frame. However, we used to pool milk and feed that to our calves. So now we use powdered milk. The scary thing is our 13 year old cow (Freedom, just ready for retirement) was one of the four full grown cows that showed up positive last year! We actually had a cow (Fanfare) die from Johne's and it was horrible. The heifer calf (Davina) that resulted from her pregnancy that year was raised and slaughtered. Davina was a month old when her mother died. We hope that those four (Freedom, Listeth, Moulan and Sirius) picked it up by sniffing around Fanfare after she died. This year we only had one positive blood test and we sent out the fecal four months ago and no response yet, so she is most likely negative. We ended up culling those four, and have had culled two others before (one was Blessing, Fanfare's only daughter and the other was Twink our first postive, she was only 20 months old). We have a heifer that we should have slaughtered. Freedom was pregnant with Libertad when she was tested but it is hard for us to do so.
We have been testing for Johne's for around 8 years. Ever since they started the program in Ohio.