Ah another subject I can speak intelligently on
These are few and far between hehe. But really;
Some basic facts of CAE is that it is a retro virus, just like the HIV virus and effects goats much the same way. It compromises their immune systems to a much leaser degree though. A CAE positive animal can look totally healthy and never get clinical signs of the disease. The better their management, the more likely this is to happen. But also like HIV, once CAE goes clinical (AIDS equivalent), the goat will slowly go down hill and there is nothing or anything that can slow or prevent it. Most CAE positive does will go clinical and the average lifespan of a kid infected at birth is about 6 years before they are in bad enough condition that they warrant being put down. CAE is passed through milk to not just the infected does kids but any kid that might wanna take steal a few sucks as that doe has her head in the feeder. It is also passed through blood. Like when a positive doe and a negative doe are fighting and they both end up with bloody heads. Or when the victor does the blah blah blah tongue thing like a buck to show the loser she is the boss. Unlike HIV though, it is very very difficult for a doe to pass on CAE to a buck via breeding and vice versa. Unlike CL, CAE only lives a very short time outside of an infected animals body.
My experience with CAE on a commercial sized farm: As I have spoke of before about battling CL on Amy's CL post, I also did battle with CAE as well. And I can tell you that I would hands down rather have to deal with CAE then CL. CAE doesnt infect the ground, or hide in the lungs and can be coughed up, it doesnt live long outside of the positive animals body. There are no variables with CAE for the most part. So that makes it much easier to deal with. Here is how we dealt with it:
Positive animals (know via test results) were moved to a "positive" pen that was nearly 100 feet away from an clean animals. This was do to the CL. With CAE, you only need enough space between em to insure no contact. A 6 foot walk way for instance. Once move to this pen, they almost never get to come out except to get breed. Hoof trimmings and dewormings are done in their pen. Never had a buck come up positive even after years of breeding them to positive does. And this is pretty much their life. I believe the better food and management they get, the less likely the CAE is to go clinical.
Kidding: If you want to breed and kid out a positive doe, you are 95% likely to come away with CAE negative kids if done correctly. You have to be very vigilant and know how to tell when a doe is getting ready to kid. And when you are pretty sure the day is the day, you need to check often. You will want to either make a kidding pen or be in a cleaner part of the positive pen when the doe is ready. You will need towels and or tarps or blankets to put the kid(s) on when they come out.
When the time comes you do not want to go in fishing for kids if you dont have to. Let the doe do as much of the work as possible. You do this in order to keep the bubble the kid is in, intact as long as possible. This is what protects them from the CAE virus that is in the moms blood. So if the bubble breaks/pops, you want to then help and try to hurry the birth along. Once you pull the kid out (do not let it touch the dirty ground) clean off the face as best you can. If you choose to swing the kid by the back legs to clear out fluid from the mouth, do so after you have wiped the face clean. Here we will allow the mom to clean the kid of birth fluids from the neck down. No licking on the face or umbilical cord. This actually help the moms body to get another kid into the birth canal and read to be born faster. A few minutes of this and you take the kid inside and wash the kid. I like to rinse the kid from the ears down until I get all the birth fluids and goo off before I use dawn dish soap to wash the kid. This way there isnt any floaters in the sink as I am washing. For above the hears I use a no tears shamepoo if for some reason the head is nasty. but most of the time just a rinse of the head is enough.
By doing it this way we have never had a kid come up positive out of a positive mom. BUT we did have a kid come up positive after her mom tried to have two kids at once and ruptured her uterus. The mom bleed heavily inside the uterus and that in turn infected the kids.
Of course these kids are bottle raised. We allow these babies to grow up with know negative babies. I know there is speculation can be passed through saliva and to be totally honest I dont know. We have never ended up with a positive kid to be able to test it. But as with HIV I would highly doubt it. These babies are raised on milk from negative dam (tested right before kidding season). This way we can test the kids earlier then normal. Even with negative results, when these kids are old enough to kid themselves, we still do not allow milk from these animals to be mixed with milk from other animals until 2 full years or two freshenings of negative tests have been done. This is a little extreme but its better to error on the side of caution. After that time, we know they are clean and no longer worry about it. The positive does on the other hand are never milked. They kid, we take the kids and they dry up.
So although there are some important steps to follow, its really pretty easy to contain CAE and to manage it with just a little bit of dedication and eventually, eradicate it from your herd.
