[reedos]

My friend and goat guru -John the goat man- was telling me yesterday that he was seriously considering gaining acreditation status for his Golden Guernsey herd and explained that it was becoming more common and that he felt he had no choice but follow other herds in doing this. I nodded wisely as he was talking to me about it without understanding much of what he was on about!


can anybody explain in simple terms what the pros and cons are please, not that i'm thinking of it for my tiny herd!

[Lesley Silvester]

I'm nodding wisely here as well.

[wytsend]

Acredited status is relevant to CAE...............It is a slightly different set of rules but roughly is 3 tests 6mths apart, and then every other year.

BUT..............it also means you can only have stock in from similar herds.  It is very restrictive as is the Scrapie Monitoring status.  There are indeed a number of herd that are accredited and I suppose does save money on the annual testing but only you can answer whether the additional restrictions are worth it.

Also if you show goats, you have to state the fact on the entry form because Accredited herds are separated and obviously must not touch another goat whilst on show ground.   It is also difficult to stop other people touching your goats.

[reedos]

Thanks for the reply Wytsend, like I said we've no intention of doing it for our herd, but I wanted to understand.


On the face of it, it doesn't look like a good idea to me, you seem to voluntarily limiting the gene pool from which you can breed quite considerably and given there is a fairly limited golden guernsey gene pool to begin with that surely can't be good can it?

[wytsend]

The scrapie monitoring scheme almost destroyed the pure Saanen..............there were only two breeders on it....me and one other.    I opted to leave the scheme & import stock from Holland.

Now there is new blood available.    In 2011/12 there were only 40 odd kids registered...............a very dangerous situation !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tizaala]

As with most schemes dreamed up by Brussels and Defra, they never give a thought to the choices of breeders when it comes to  picking new stock. Good stud billies are getting to be a rarity for the discerning breeder and these schemes just limit the genepool even further.

[Anke]

Well the CAE (and with that the MV scheme for sheep) hasn't got anything to do with limiting the gene pool, if everybody would do it. Unlike scrapie, where the a large number of breeding males in particular were excluded because of their genotype, CAE and MV are (as far as I know) not linked to genotype, but are acquired viruses.

So really  the problem is that it is not a compulsory scheme for every goat/sheep breeder and therefore only limits the gene pool because not all of us can justify the (initial) extra expense of joining. And because it makes life difficult if you show your stock, it is again not something most of us want to do. And the reason it is not compulsory is that there is (to date) no proven link to human disease (either via milk or meat consumption).

But the commercial sheep sector I think is now moving ever more to MV accredited status, if you look at the number of tups for sale for example.