[twizzel]

Slightly off topic...

I have Crohns, was brought up drinking raw Jersey milk and drank goat milk whilst being a goat keeper.  I am neither a portly wine drinker or smoker.   

Personally, I would not eat meat from a suspected Johne's animal.

If the animal has gone through an abattoir and the carcass passed by the vet it is safe to eat.

[Anke]

The latest research I've read is that the link between Johnes and Crohns has been all but proven and that is imminent with the next few papers.  There's also evidence that MAP (which is believed to be a causative agent) is not destroyed/denatured by either cooking or pasteurisation and therefore it is believed possible that it could be passed on through eating infected meat or drinking infected milk. 

It's worth reading up some of the links "GoatVetOz' posts on Facebook.  She seems to be keen to eradicate both CAE and Johnes from herds and flocks and points to interesting research on a regular basis. 

It's one of the reasons that, if the UK truly wants to retain it's "excellence" brand post Brexit, more people need to get into the "high health" schemes monitoring for these debilitating diseases and conditions and we need to cull hard on anything that is infected.  Unfortunately, industrial agriculture that moves livestock around various premises on a regular basis without biosecurity means that these diseases are rampant and often undetected in mainstream agriculture.

If there was a definite link between Crohn's and Johne's then Crohn's would be endemic, which it is not. I am not saying it doesn't possibly play a role, but my brother has Crohn's and is definitely better with raw milk, and raw milk kefir even more so. He also has a weight problem.

[Backinwellies]

going back to original topic ..... zwables do need much more feeding than other breeds to maintain condition

[SallyintNorth]

going back to original topic ..... zwables do need much more feeding than other breeds to maintain condition

Which I guess is understandable when the lambs are doing really well; the benefits of a dairy breed.

We could make up a group of ewes that get caked, but it makes an extra field to check, and extra job, makes us less "sustainable" (but we still buy foods in for ourselves so I don't think we need to get too hung up about it for just one remaining Z.)

Sigh.

[Anke]

Any sheep with Johne's that you keep on your pasture will increase contamination for years to come.... do you test your cattle?

[SallyintNorth]

Any sheep with Johne's that you keep on your pasture will increase contamination for years to come.... do you test your cattle?

We have no intention of keeping a sheep with Johnes, not least because we have cattle.

As I said in the OP, Gwenneth will not run with young sheep nor cattle, nor will they graze pasture where she has been, while we decide what is happening and what to do.  Pasture she has been on will be hard grazed by the ponies after her, and no sheep or cattle will go on it until spring.  If she has Johnes, or the balance of probability is that she has Johnes, she and her daughters will be going.  However, if she recovers her condition, then we think we can probably conclude that it wasn't Johnes, just a sheep which can't do 2 Shetland x lambs off good grass, and then it's a different set of decisions we have to make about her and her daughters.

Since writing my OP, we have arranged with our vets that they will have a look at Gwenneth and we will have  a discussion when they come to do our annual TB test, which is now booked for the beginning of November.  I have a grazing plan until then which keeps Gwenneth with the lambs who will leave us this year or after the winter, and on ground which will have only those specific sheep and the ponies on it between now and spring.

We may decide in the interim that we will send her off anyway, but we would like a diagnosis if possible so that we know whether we want to consider keeping on a daughter.  The abattoir vet will only do an inspection to look for signs of Johnes if our vet instructs it, so we need the vet to see her before we send her off.

No we don't test our cows.  I brought Hillie and her daughter Flare with me from Cumbria, where the herd had been tested twice and was negative for Johnes and BVD.  The incumbent Dexters when I arrived (since sold or eaten) were aged and fit, so no reason to think they had Johnes.  Hillie died unexpectedly, aged 12, this April, and we bought two in-calf heifers locally to replace her and Flare.  If the vet thinks we should test them then I am sure we will.

[SallyintNorth]

And the update is that Gwenneth remains happy and perky, but skinny, and the vet suspects Johnes too.

FEC was negative for fluke, low-med worms; nothing concerning.

Blood test results will be here this week, but the blood test for an individual sheep has a very high - up to 60% - false negative rate, so only a positive would be informative.

The ewe herself, and all of this year's earlier lambs bar one, are off next Monday anyway.

If the blood test comes back negative, we will discuss options for further diagnostics with the vet.  There is a very accurate faecal test but it takes 16 weeks and is quite expensive, so my thinking is that we collect faeces and send them off but also order a post mortem at the abattoir.  Again, a negative would not be definitive, but a positive would mean we could cancel the faecal test.

I will update again when we know more.

[SallyintNorth]

So, the blood test was negative, much to the vet's surprise.  Even though the test has a very high false negative rate, the vet had thought that because the ewe showed clinical symptoms, it was more likely that the blood would come back positive.

We had the abattoir vet do a PM and they found nothing.  Not the characteristic thickening of the ileum - which again, absence doesn't mean it's not Johnes but presence is diagnostic - but she also found no other problems which could explain the symptoms : no tumours, enlarged organs, nothing.

So, because we really want to know, of course, for knowing what if any management we need to do with our younger sheep and our new young cows, we had collected some faeces before we sent her off, so that we could have a faecal test if the abattoir PM was not informative.

The lab had said that in the circs - presenting clinically, serology negative, PM negative - they thought that the much quicker PCR faecal test would be accurate enough, and that if it also came back negative, then we could be pretty certain that it wasn't Johnes.  So that's been done and was negative.

Which is great news for the rest of the flock and the young cows, and it means I can relax my mental gymnastics working out who can safely graze where and when, what piles of pony poo are safe to be spread back on the fields, etc, and means anyone can graze anywhere over winter and next spring, which is a great relief.

But as to what was going on with Gwenneth...  we will never know.  We can keep her good daughter on, but it's very sad, she was a good sheep and the last pure Zwartbles here.