Managing CL In Goats

       

 Talking about CL in your own goat herd is a subject that fills many a goat farmer with shame. No one likes to talk about it or admit they have it on the farm. It is a disease that is incurable, gets in your soil, in your barn, and spreads through tools as well. Quite simply, it is gross and hard to get rid of without hard culling and testing. It was a sad day when I realized what we were facing.

"CL" or Corynebacterium Pseudotuberculosis" 

           CL is caused by a bacterium called, "Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis". It is found throughout the world in goats, as well as sheep, horses, cattle, llamas, alpacas, and buffalo. It is also zoonotic, which means that humans can contract the disease, though it has only happened very rarely. It is important to note that goat CL can transfer to sheep, but that they present with the disease differently.

       

      The bacterium enters through a break in the skin and then travels to the nearest lymph node. When the node becomes infected it abscesses and swells full of thick pus. In goats, it then bursts and travels to other goats or lands on feeding troughs or fencing, where another goat comes along and picks it up later. Sheep tend to have their abscesses internally, making it harder to visually appraise if they have the disease.

The prevalence of this disease is quite high in the local herds and flocks. That is a shame because it wears on goats and makes them less thrifty, hardy, and fertile. Signs of the disease can usually be spotted in the form of scarring at lymph node sites. Under the ear, on the side of the head, is a prevalent spot for abscesses to form.

A scar at a lymph node from an old Cl abscess.

     So lets talk about some strategies for not getting this disease, as well as some management strategies. I will show you what we are trying to do on the farm to manage the disease and hopefully completely eradicate it! I can't bear to sell breeding stock with such a blight! It is in all our best interests to get rid of this disease.

 Prevention

          Preventing this disease from getting on the farm is the best overall strategy. When out and about, I am always scanning the goats for old Cl scars.  Animals can be blood tested ahead of time and then quarantined if they pass the initial test, with a follow up test in thirty days. Better yet would be to buy from a herd that tests annually, as individual negative results are less trustworthy than an overall herd negative result. This is because the disease has to progress to a certain extant before testing will pick it up. Therefore, false negatives are very possible.    

          There is a vaccine for goats for Cl. Unfortunately it works by reducing the number of abscesses a goat will have. Therefore it is good for farms that already have the disease as it reduces the affect of the disease. For disease free farms it is not recommended as all your goats will then test positive....which is exactly opposite of the desired outcome!

Management of CL

         To minimize the amount of bacterium in the goats' environment and reduce subsequent transmissions, we lance Cl abscesses and drain the pus into a garbage bag. Then we rinse out the wound with iodine and quarantine until the wound has healed. Sometimes the wound will seal and refill with pus. Then we have to go through the same routine again until the wound is healed. 

      Doing this has minimized the spread of the disease and has helped us maintain a healthier herd over the years. But now I want a disease free herd!
     

 This past winter, we brought in 16 kids, from our main flock, to be bottle fed and raised in a CL free environment. As a caution for others who may try this, though CL is rarely passed through colostrum or milk, it is a possibility unless it is pasteurized! We also only brought in kids that were born in the open field as there is less likely to be live CL bacteria out there as there is to be in the barn. Anyway, we greatly enjoyed raising this crew and have kept them in the yard for safe keeping.

     

    We have been carefully whittling down the best of the 16 brought in. We are culling for parasite resistance and good teat formation. Next we plan to slowly phase out the herd in the barn and eventually we will put the clean flock back in the old barn after much time has passed. It is not known how long CL can live on surfaces so I am not sure how long I would wait, but one study showed that CL can live in the soil for as long as 8 months!

      I will update this post as we add more babies to this herd and continue to monitor their growth and fertility. So looking forward to seeing what cute babies come from this little dream team!