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Manitoba | It would be a good idea (IMO) to grab a blood sample (cheaper, faster but less accurate) or fecal (more expensive, slower, more accurate) from the bull and confirm johnes status. If I understand the blood test a positive is always a positive but a negative can also be a positive. If the blood came back positive you would probably want to do a percentage of the herd (or whole herd, not sure of herd size) to see their status. Johnes can be a real sleeping monster that sneaks up on you. Much more of an issue in confinement (dairy like ourselves) but probably more difficult to "manage" in a beef herd I would think. (control limitations there).
The nature of johnes is that you spend all the time and $ on an animal that never had a chance. Raise it up to calving age and when you finally get to the point where it is time for it to start paying it's way it crashes. Nothing you can do about it once it decides to make it's move. It is very opportunistic so after a certain age all it takes is a stress issue (calving, sickness etc) and off it goes. A slow wasting and all the while it is shedding johnes in huge numbers and spreading the issue. Biggest risk for transmission is an animal under a year of age getting a mouthfull of contaminated manure (younger the animal, bigger the risk, big risk for nursing calves as the udder can easily have some crap on it, it does not take much at that age to infect the calf) It can be spread in the milk from a carrier mother but that is less of a transmitter than manure.
If you have a closed herd and a percentage test of the herd comes back completely negative your probably ok. If you buy animals in you almost certainly have it. Extremely prevalent in north america.
Edited by Oakwood 2/22/2011 23:21
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Had the vet out today
