Re: Johnes in feedlot cattle

Posted by blinwmiaol.com on September 26, 2011 at 19:18:26 from (198.228.200.148):

In Reply to: Re: Johnes in feedlot cattle posted by rrlund on September 26, 2011 at 18:33:42:

If the results came back from campus as positive, I would have him on a truck as soon as possible. And segregated from the herd until then, especially in a feedlot environment. Johnes is spread two ways, by a mothers milk or by an animal ingesting manure that has the organism in it. The way I understand it, because of the way the disease works, you can have false negatives but not false positives. The reason you can have false negatives is because an infected animal may not be shedding the organism, so it is still infected but not shedding in the feces. A cow that is tested and confirmed is a true positive and needs to be removed before exposing more animals to its manure. I was never to worried about Johnes in my tiestall barn because there was very little chance an animal could ingest infected manure but in freestall, pasture and feedlot operations, it is the perfect recipe for spreading to other animals.
It is very unusual for an animal infected by Johnnes to die, they generally just look and perform very poorly. One of my profs said they are just very unthrifty looking. BUT, you mentioned a fever, I have never heard or seen a Johnnes cow with a fever, it does infect animals but is not really an infection, such that usually causes a fever. So I would also be asking questions about what else is going on in that animal.
It is not true that Johnes can only be transmitted to calves or youngstock. It can be spread to any age animal by any age animal by contaminated manure, or by the dams milk. The disease basically cauterizes the intestines of the affected animal, leaving nasty looking scar tissue, which can no longer absorb nutrients like it is supposed to. The animal might eat as much as its herd mates but doesnt have the absorbent ability to use the nutrients out of the feed. Because it can't absorb the nutrients needed to excel, it will look and perform poorly. Although it isn't a death sentence, is sure isn't condusive to keeping healthy growing animals, especially beef. He needs to go for a one way ride soon. And watch for other cattle in the future that just don't look like they should. Its possible others are infected.

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