Johne's?

[TCRanch]

Welcome, Out To Pasture!

Actually, I probably should have updated this thread. Condensed version: friend sold the bull for essentially nothing. Sent the test results and sale receipt to the breeder, who has done squat other than offer a discount on another bull (hard pass!). She has received excellent advise from Chocolate Cow. Testing the exposed herd at a later date.

This has definitely been a learning experience; one I hope never to find in my herd!

 

[TCRanch]

hard to say hello to a group this way but this is why im here and i do relize this is an old post .

i have neighbouring breeder that is passing it on to customers and sale barns. they say they dont have it but why would you ship register heifers an breed cows to local sale barn , i have heard they have had aprox 30 case in the last 12 months or less .
they very power full people in this area.
another bit of info why would you give 40 cc or more of la 200 to healthy 8 month old calf ! maybe i should have said hello an left it there sorry if i broke a rule but me an several others are dum founded as what can be done to stop this

Karma. At some point in time your neighbors will be exposed if that is truly the case. In the meantime, don't buy any stock originating from them!

Need more info on the 40cc LA200 for the calf. Presumably there was a reason. Dosage indication on the box is 3cc per 100 lbs but advanced or specific cases 5-6cc (per dosage insert inside the box, drugs.com and my vet).

 

[out to pasture]

i will try to give a little more info but im trying to keep people an places out of it
hope you can understand
last few days a lot has happened so im really on pins an needles
exposure from traffic and run off im afraid its to late an cattle no signs so far
have due to drop soon the stress of calving will tell the story lord knows i cant afford it but w i will deal with it
they use a private lab ,this means the lab is not responsable for reporting it they have made good on certian animals an given some larger producers another animal ,others they pretty much acted as if they were full of it told them they got it from somewhere else.
la 200 if anyone is watching that story will be a dead give away .
and a comedy in its self
i will try get back here i have feed to do an treatment on abscess hoof (horse )waiting on help so had a few min..

 

[Stocker Steve]

There is alot of it out there. Neighbor buys all his replacements out of the sales barn. Almost all mature cows, very few heifers, and no poor doers. He culls about 2% per year for obvious Johne's, along with a bunch of slow breeders, and a few poor doers. He is an ex dairy guy and knows cattle.

So the infection rate in our MATURE sales barn cows is over 2%, probably closer to 5%. Have you seen any other data on this ?

 

[out to pasture]

yes i have read data most is for dairy the number that struck me the most herds of around 500 95% had it not sure how that is exceptable for breeder to pass it on an act like it some one else problem
wisconsin has good site
so does uk an australa they have done some awsome work on this ,they have went as far as certify vets for johnes
i know someone who worked at a dairy up that way some time ago and their used to be a lot small dairys in my area when i was younger by the time i started numbers were falling off still know a few who have dairy
and the la 200 well they made contact with a vet ( not the one they normally use ) half way across the state gave symptoms of some type he told them they had a rare mosquito ,guess it was just on their farms ,haha,he is the one who saw them coming i guess but at least he agreed with them it was not johnes so thats how they got the la 200- 3 cases plus and yes they can afford it and that is typical how they do things if you dont agree with them your not smart enough for them they will and have sought out vets from diffrent area from what i can tell
calves got 40 cc cows got i think 90 , my guess they need it in attempt to keep things looking healthy for the next month
its blowing up on them has been last 9 months really ,found out they had several cases over the years my guess last 15 yrs
for someone who throws there name around a lot i found out and you can most likely tell there biosecurty measures are not all that good i found out another story on them not going into details but they a lot sick calve ( to small area,to many calves and didnt clean )
words out to right people ,finally ,
i also heard they contacted their lawyer couple weeks ago to find out how they can cover their rear ends

 

[Stickney94]

Just adding some more hard earned experience to this thread:

1. Purchased a registered 3 year old cow from a registered breeder in early 2016.
2. After calving in early May 2019, about 2 weeks later she started a steep and rapid decline.
3. Despite efforts to get her back on track we sold her in early August and put the calf in an orphan pen.
4. At the beginning of October I noticed her calf had extremely loose stools. The pen mate on the same diet was perfectly fine.
5. I noticed this thread around that same time and it actually made me wonder about Johnes. I was totally unfamiliar with the disease. A fecal sample from the calf (5 months old) came back positive for Johnes. According to my vet we shattered their previous young animal positive test by 6 months (not a record I wish to have).
6. We have since tested our entire herd of cows. We had one additional animal test positive. It was a bred heifer that possibly during 2018 either was given some spare colustrum from the above cow, or more likely was housed in the same pen in the days after the infected cow calved.
7. This bred heifer's direct exposure to the vector cow was VERY minimal. At most 10 hours total as a calf. Possibly NO direct exposure. The calving happened during a blizzard so we were moving cows/calves constantly.
8. Our vet thinks that the bred heifer as a calf was infected from manure in the pen area. Which means the cow was likely shedding 12+ months before she showed clear clinical signs.

We immediately sold the bred heifer that tested positive, along with two fat steers that were pen mates back in 2018 as calves. We are now on a long-term management plan.

Thanks to this thread and Chocolate Cow 2 for some advice and guidance.

In short, the infected cow almost assuredly came to us from the registered breeder (there were only two other possible point sources which have effectively been eliminated by our testing).

With a long potential for incubation before clinical signs, coupled with ET and recip cows, there is actually a great potential for seedstock breeders to unknowingly spread the disease.

 

[Silver]

Just remember, stage one Johne's disease cannot be detected, so a negative test on a herd means only that it has not been detected yet.

edited to add: If there has been one case showing clinical signs of Johne's, you can bet it's just the tip of the iceberg and many more will be sub-clinical.

 

[TCRanch]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Stickney94.

I neglected to post an additional update but my friend had another bull diagnosed with Johne's. Couple years older, same breeder. Wanna talk about a train wreck? And yet she is fortunate in a weird twist: our vet who was working closely with her accepted a position as a State Veterinarian and has developed a game plan not only with the 2 other vets in his former practice but also with K-State. It's gonna be a long 3 years of testing but they're confident they'll get the herd under control.

And the breeder? Nada. But one of these days the aforementioned train wreck is going to barrel through his operation. Hello, karma!

 

[Stickney94]

Just remember, stage one Johne's disease cannot be detected, so a negative test on a herd means only that it has not been detected yet.

edited to add: If there has been one case showing clinical signs of Johne's, you can bet it's just the tip of the iceberg and many more will be sub-clinical.

Correct. Time will tell. The blood test for Johne's isn't a clear yes/no indication. It's a rather complicated screening that looks for thresholds of antibodies. The bred heifer was well over the threshold indicating many antibodies to the pathogen that causes Johne's.

We had one other animal that was slightly above a "normal" level that we will need to watch. But the vet wondered if it was a bit of an oddity as the cow is pregnant with twins. We will be monitoring her closely and probably segregate her anyway due to the twins. She is a 5 year old cow and would not have been exposed to the likely vector cow as a calf. As such, if she develops the disease she would have had to have contracted as an adult or there would need to be another vector. From our records the possibility of another vector is just very, very low.

As Silver hints, we will need to continue blood tests on at least an annual basis probably for the next 2-3 years depending on results.

I found this link from UWisconsin highly useful:

https://johnes.org/

 

[Chocolate Cow2]

My first case, we blood tested. But she was full blown and Stevie Wonder could diagnose her problem.
From that point on, I did fecal PCR sampling as it detects the DNA of the MAP bacteria. I pooled samples at a 4-1 ratio. The lab recommended the ratio.
It's a worry, for sure. And, an added expense. But if a person decides to not test, I see the eventual decimation of the herd.
TC, I am so sorry about another bull testing positive. Really nice (not) how the breeder ignores the issue.
Radio station KFRM ran a segment yesterday morning about Johne's disease featuring K-State veterinarian Gregg A. Hanzlicek.
The moron's played the weather over top of the interview and it was impossible to learn anything. :bang:

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

NY has a program that breeders can join (NYSAP & CHAPS). There are a couple "levels' of testing. I did it for several years on Johnes, Leukosis & ?? (don't remember). They test a percent of your herd each year, after so many years, you are certified free of -----. We got certified for many years, and I would advertise "Certified free". But, state quit paying for it, so I quit doing it. So far ----- knock on wood ---- I have never had a Johne's animal in my herd.

 

[SBMF 2015]

The manure from a Johne's positive animal has a sickly sweet smell. Once you've smelled it, you won't forget it.
If an animal is actively shedding, a blood test will confirm quickly. Fecal samples can be done on younger animals to detect the presence of the bacteria before they become full-blown shedders.
Soil pH has a lot to do with how long the bacteria lives. In my area we have a lot of limestone so the bacteria has a shorter survival time.
I've been through it. It's an awful thing to work through. Expensive too with all the testing and selling animals that you don't want to sell.
As for the people where this bull came from, I call BS on them. They're lying to cover their butt and I'd never buy an animal from them again. My exposure came from a registered cow I bought as a yearling. I called the breeder and he immediately started testing his herd. He found several positives and continues to test today. He apologized and wanted to know how to make it right with me.

That's no kidding! It is wretched. I think my noses is better than the Elisa test. I've been involved in cleaning up two beef cow herds and it is a costly nightmare. It's crazy how you can start connecting the dots. These two farms had no interaction except that they both bought feeder cattle from a local sale barn that routinely shipped in lot loads of co-mingled dairy feeders from NY. One place fed dairy strs the other did not, but they both ended up with Johnes.

 

[SBMF 2015]

NY has a program that breeders can join (NYSAP & CHAPS). There are a couple "levels' of testing. I did it for several years on Johnes, Leukosis & ?? (don't remember). They test a percent of your herd each year, after so many years, you are certified free of -----. We got certified for many years, and I would advertise "Certified free". But, state quit paying for it, so I quit doing it. So far ----- knock on wood ---- I have never had a Johne's animal in my herd.

That sounds exactly like IL. Started a program, helped the producers for a while, then expected producers to pay for all of it.

 

[MurraysMutts]

@devonian

If havnt read this thread, now would be a good time. An ounce of prevention and all that..

 

[Hpacres440p]

This sounds like something my neighbor has going on-puts together some cows from the sale barn, runs bulls year round and sells calves. In the past 2 months, he's had 2 walking skeleton cows with bottle jaw die. Of course-fence neighbors. Glad to hear it is manure-spread primarily, but the thought of my dinky herd getting contaminated is really scary.

 

[Lucky_P]

Go to Johnes.org - good source of up to date info geared mainly to the layperson.
There's quite a bit of erroneous info mixed in with correct info in this thread...more than I want to address pecking on my phone.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

@Lucky_P Good read, but this ought to scare the heck out of anyone reading it:
"There is no small irony here: Even if the cost of treating Johne's cattle were low enough to be economically feasible, regulations against human consumption of the relevant antibiotics would preclude doing so … and as a result, untreated cattle, ripe with untreated and virulent MAP bacteria, are made into meat – mostly hamburger – for direct human consumption!"
Then the article goes on & discusses eating the meat & drinking raw/or pasteurized milk from a Johnes cow. That is eye opening!!!!

 

[Lucky_P]

Jeanne, for some years, I 'traveled' in the Johne's DZ research/management circle... my major professor in grad school was a major Johne's researcher, and I knew many of the big names in that small group of folks, personally.
You probably encountered my friend Dr. Chris Rossiter, who ran the NY Johne's program for many years. She was one of my faves... always had some great informative reports, particularly about successes/failures of the NY program - as well as insights gained along the way. While most NY herds enrolled were dairy, they did have a number of beef herds enrolled in their program - one take-home message that they found was: in a typical beef herd, a heifer born to a Johne's-positive cow is 10X more likely to be infected and become clinically-affected than is a heifer born to a non-infected cow in the same herd.
But... we're fooling ourselves if we believe that older animals can't be infected... they're just more resistant... but with continued, or overwhelming, exposure, even adults can become infected.
One report that Dr. Rossiter presented was of a group of young bulls at a bull stud... group housed in a group of 4... all were test-negative when they arrived at 9 months of age. But... at the next biannual test, one young bull was seropositive and shedding MAP bacteria in his feces. Of course, he was terminated immediately, but all his penmates seroconverted and/or began shedding, and were culled, over a two-year period.

Laboratory experiments have shown that MAP in milk can survive pasteurization - in at least one study, where they spiked milk with lab-grown MAP... they actually had HIGHER bacterial colony counts after pasteurization... the heating broke up clumps of bacteria so that each individual bacterium gave rise to a colony. Sampling of milk from grocery stores has shown the presence, albeit at very low levels, of viable MAP bacteria in pasteurized milk on store shelves... food for thought...
I've not seen any reports linking MAP infection in people, or incidence of Crohn's Disease, to consumption of meat from Johne's-infected cattle... but I have seen MAP organisms in tissues like liver and lymph nodes (albeit mainly those draining the GI tract)

 

[SBMF 2015]

Jeanne, for some years, I 'traveled' in the Johne's DZ research/management circle... my major professor in grad school was a major Johne's researcher, and I knew many of the big names in that small group of folks, personally.
You probably encountered my friend Dr. Chris Rossiter, who ran the NY Johne's program for many years. She was one of my faves... always had some great informative reports, particularly about successes/failures of the NY program - as well as insights gained along the way. While most NY herds enrolled were dairy, they did have a number of beef herds enrolled in their program - one take-home message that they found was: in a typical beef herd, a heifer born to a Johne's-positive cow is 10X more likely to be infected and become clinically-affected than is a heifer born to a non-infected cow in the same herd.
But... we're fooling ourselves if we believe that older animals can't be infected... they're just more resistant... but with continued, or overwhelming, exposure, even adults can become infected.
One report that Dr. Rossiter presented was of a group of young bulls at a bull stud... group housed in a group of 4... all were test-negative when they arrived at 9 months of age. But... at the next biannual test, one young bull was seropositive and shedding MAP bacteria in his feces. Of course, he was terminated immediately, but all his penmates seroconverted and/or began shedding, and were culled, over a two-year period.

Laboratory experiments have shown that MAP in milk can survive pasteurization - in at least one study, where they spiked milk with lab-grown MAP... they actually had HIGHER bacterial colony counts after pasteurization... the heating broke up clumps of bacteria so that each individual bacterium gave rise to a colony. Sampling of milk from grocery stores has shown the presence, albeit at very low levels, of viable MAP bacteria in pasteurized milk on store shelves... food for thought...
I've not seen any reports linking MAP infection in people, or incidence of Crohn's Disease, to consumption of meat from Johne's-infected cattle... but I have seen MAP organisms in tissues like liver and lymph nodes (albeit mainly those draining the GI tract)

If they ever do officially make the connection, it will be the end of the dairy and beef industry.
My best friend has Crohn's, one of the best cowmen I know. His family had fed a lot of dairy strs over the years, and we worked ten years for a sale barn that routinely imported dairy cattle from NY by the pot loads.
Two separate farm that bought cattle at that barn had to clean up Johnes positive messes.
It's scary how you could start connecting the dots if a person used their imagination a little.