Annual Biosecurity Panel

We take herd health seriously here at JK Herd It All. To make sure that all of our goats are healthy and happy, we do an annual biosecurity panel to test for common, dangerous diseases. Our vet comes out every year, draws blood, and sends it to WADDL. WADDL is one of the most trusted labs in the country for the accurate health testing of goats. 

CAE Test

The CAE panel is one of the most important health tests because a dam can transmit CAE to her kids via milk. We bought all of our goats from herds that either test or raise their goats on CAE prevention. Just to be safe, we are doing the test here every year, too.  After we have a few years of negative health tests under our belt, we will consider dam-raising our goat kids. Until then, we’ll keep bottle raising them!

Johne’s Disease Test

Most people only test for CAE, but since we have so many cattle farms in our area, we also do the panel for Johne’s. Johne’s is spread through manure, including through hay that has been fertilized by infected cattle.

CL Test

The CL blood test has debatable accuracy with a lot of false positives and negatives, but we do it anyway because it’s part of the panel through WADDL. If one of our goats ever develops an abscess, we will test that for CL, as well. That test is the only truly accurate one for CL. 

Other/Future Tests

We’re considering adding tests for Brucellosis and TB next year in 2024, once we have more does in milk. Those diseases aren’t very common in our area, but since we have brought in livestock from all over the country, we want to make sure all of our bases are covered! Both of those diseases can spread to humans through unpasteurized milk. Wisconsin doesn’t allow anyone to sell unpasteurized milk and also forbids the sale of ANY milk without extensive inspections and expensive licensing, so we only use it here for personal use. We drink it, cook with it, use it in our gardens, and give it to our animals. Because of this, we want to make sure we’re as safe as possible by testing our herd.