Chat
11-05-2014, 10:46 AM
Getting those tests every year is worth every penny for the peace of mind it gives.
I was wondering something about CAE. A lady at the state fair was giving me grief because I dam raise my babies. She said I'm for sure going to give them CAE, etc. I was talking with a friend of mine, though and we were discussing that CAE is hardly an issue in Europe, and one reason Europeans often don't like importing goats from the U.S. is the prevalence of CAE in this country. In Europe it's more common to dam raise kids than in the U.S. I know people in this country often bottle raise kids on pasteurized milk as a way of preventing CAE, but I wonder if the risk is actually higher with that practice since even one single accidental feeding of improperly treated milk could infect an entire crop of kids. What's worse is that all of these kids would be sold as "CAE free" since the breeder wouldn't know that they'd been infected.
With dam raised babies, unless a mama lets anyone's babies suck on her, only her own babies are at risk, minimizing the impact of having CAE in your herd. I can't bottle raise babies to prevent CAE because I know I'd mess up the pasteurization process at some point (that's just me). In my case a better prevention program is to make sure and get my mamas and last year's kids tested every spring before the new crop comes. If a doe turned positive I could take measures to separate her kids at birth and then I would cull her from my herd before the next year and no babies would drink her milk. I don't trust myself to pasteurize it adequately all the time, every time. I'm too much of a screw-up in the kitchen.
What do ya'll think?
I was wondering something about CAE. A lady at the state fair was giving me grief because I dam raise my babies. She said I'm for sure going to give them CAE, etc. I was talking with a friend of mine, though and we were discussing that CAE is hardly an issue in Europe, and one reason Europeans often don't like importing goats from the U.S. is the prevalence of CAE in this country. In Europe it's more common to dam raise kids than in the U.S. I know people in this country often bottle raise kids on pasteurized milk as a way of preventing CAE, but I wonder if the risk is actually higher with that practice since even one single accidental feeding of improperly treated milk could infect an entire crop of kids. What's worse is that all of these kids would be sold as "CAE free" since the breeder wouldn't know that they'd been infected.
With dam raised babies, unless a mama lets anyone's babies suck on her, only her own babies are at risk, minimizing the impact of having CAE in your herd. I can't bottle raise babies to prevent CAE because I know I'd mess up the pasteurization process at some point (that's just me). In my case a better prevention program is to make sure and get my mamas and last year's kids tested every spring before the new crop comes. If a doe turned positive I could take measures to separate her kids at birth and then I would cull her from my herd before the next year and no babies would drink her milk. I don't trust myself to pasteurize it adequately all the time, every time. I'm too much of a screw-up in the kitchen.
What do ya'll think?