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northeastern Ohio | Beef or dairy?
30 years ago, Ohio Department of Ag decided to pay for whole herd testing. We signed up. We would do fecal one year and blood test the next year. Found some positives and culled them. Some were "super shedders", meaning they were excreting huge numbers of Johnes organism in their manure and thereby making it hard to control without culling them out of the herd.
At the same time, we took steps to limit the transfer to our newborn calves. Calve in a clean, well bedded area. Remove calf immediately so that they don't accidently ingest fecal matter. Pasteurize colostrum or feed colostrum replacer. Pasteurize milk or use milk replacer.
It took about 10 years of culling and detail at calving to finally eliminate it from our herd. We continued to test for 10 more years, but eventually quit testing because we didn't have any more positives. | |
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Johnees
