Caseous Lymphadenitis

[purecountrycow]

How do you treat CL? None of my goats have it but there is a goat on craigslist that has it and I was wondering what the cure was?

Thanks

 

[warthog]

Thankfully I have no experience with this, but if you do a search on here there are several post covering CL.

Good luck

 

[Roll farms]

There is no cure, and DO NOT bring home a goat w/ CL if you can help it.
It's highly contagious to other goats, so you'll end up w/ a herd of them.

Yes, you can vaccinate yours to prevent it, but it's not 100%.
And you can isolate the goat w/ CL and keep it seperated while it is contagious, lance the abscesses, let them heal, etc.

But...WHY would you want to if you can avoid it?

As someone who's dealt w/ CL long term...take my advice...DO NOT bring that goat home to a clean herd, it's just NOT worth the hassle.

 

[Ariel301]

It is incurable and very, very contagious. If the abscess drips onto the ground in your pens, on your milkstand, in your shelters/barns....the infection will be on your property pretty much forever.

"Treatment" generally consists of euthanasia or intensive management. You can manage it, but it's a pain...isolate all infected animals from non-infected animals. Do not breed an infected animal to a clean animal, to prevent exposure of the clean animal. Take any kids away from infected does and bottle feed them, so they do not have contact with the infection. Do not take the infected animal anywhere or allow it contact with a clean animal. Vaccinate all clean animals, and test them plus kids from infected animals regularly...not much fun. I just had a doe come up with it unexpectedly after she had been here for several months, and I had to put her down. The disease can kill them, even with management; goats can get internal abscesses and if those get into something vital like lungs, it's not pretty.

It would be best to buy a goat that is not infected, unless you already own an infected herd. When you buy an animal, you should ask for test results for CAE and CL, both are things you'd be best not dealing with.

 

[txcarl1258]

I read somewhere that it takes a year or so for the infection to die in the soil. Is this accurate? I think my grandma has it in her heard and myself and my wife are supposed to inherit the land and the herd. The goats came from a very well know Boer Breeder in TX. CL has not been confirmed by a vet, but I am suspicious of it.

 

[lilhill]

CL will contaminate the soil for many years.

 

[jodief100]

I would never recommend bring a CL positive goat into a herd that has no signs of it. It is contagious and the vaccine is only about 80% effective.

On a side note, my personal belief is that CL is the dirty little secret in the goat industry. Everyone is terrified of it. Most people recommend destroying any goat with any sign of it. Since most producers cant afford to do this, people hide it and are afraid to admit they *might* have it in their herd. Since the vaccine can make an animal test positive even if they arent, some are even afraid to use it.

I believe the only way to get this terrible disease under control is if we quit being afraid of it, stop being ashamed of it, talk about it, understand it better and VACCINATE! Keep in mind just becuase you have no signs of it doesn't mean you don't have it.

 

[cmjust0]

I would never recommend bring a CL positive goat into a herd that has no signs of it. It is contagious and the vaccine is only about 80% effective.

On a side note, my personal belief is that CL is the dirty little secret in the goat industry. Everyone is terrified of it. Most people recommend destroying any goat with any sign of it. Since most producers cant afford to do this, people hide it and are afraid to admit they *might* have it in their herd. Since the vaccine can make an animal test positive even if they arent, some are even afraid to use it.

I believe the only way to get this terrible disease under control is if we quit being afraid of it, stop being ashamed of it, talk about it, understand it better and VACCINATE! Keep in mind just becuase you have no sings of it doesn't mean you don't have it.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[drdoolittle]

I'm kind of worried now. I aquired a La Mancha from an aquaintance of my husband's. They needed to re-home the goat because they were moving into town and couldn't keep him. Everyone else who offered to take him wanted him for butcher----he was a pet, and the woman didn't want him getting butchered. So, I agreed to take him in. About 10 min. after the woman left, I found an abscess on his chest, that smelled and felt like there was a tumor the size of a golf-ball. I cleaned it with peroxide and have been putting triple antibiotic ointment in it---some small improvement. After seeing this post, I'm now scared this goat has CL. What does this mean for my other goats?

Does the CDT vacc. also vaccinate against CL? I'm very, very angry that this woman didn't say anything about the abcess-----she kept going on about how the goat was her "baby" and grew up with the family dog----either she had no clue about the abscess, or was deliberate about not telling me about it! If she didn't know about it, she really spent a lot of time with her "baby", and if she did know about it, wow, she really cared about her "baby". This really sucks! I thought the goat was completely healthy, as this is what she and her BF told my husband.

 

[Roll farms]

The way you're describing it sounds like an abscess, but the only way to know if it's a CL abscess or not, is to have the pus tested or a blood test.
There are other causes of abscesses.

The owner may not have known what CL was...and if the goat only got 1 or 2 a year she may have not thought much of it.

CDT doesn't protect against CL.
There is a cl vaccine from Colorado Serum that is somewhat effective (Case-bac). You can order it through Jeffers, BUT....if the goat has already been exposed via a break in the skin, the vaccine won't work. They have to build immunity before exposure, not after.

I'm not suggesting you don't vaccinate, I'm just saying it may not work after-the-fact.

Also, it takes 1-6 mos for abscesses to show up after exposure....so you won't know right away if they're clean or not, and blood tests for CL (by a vet) can be inconclusive.

I'll stop there and if you have anymore questions, please feel free to post them.