Johne’s Disease: Cattle

Prevention and Control

Whether you raise purebred seedstock, grade seedstock, or production animals, you need to have a Johne's disease herd plan. The specifics and intensity of a herd plan strategy will vary. To be effective, it must fit your immediate and long-term goals for your farm within available resources. You can't begin too soon. The vital tools are prevention, management, testing, culling, and in some cases, vaccination. To decide how you'll use these tools, you will need to consider these questions about your goals:

• Do you want to be able to sell replacement animals?
• Do you want to attain a marketable test-negative herd?
• Do you want to improve herd production and herd health?
• If you have a test-negative herd, do you want to prevent infection?
• If you have some test-positive animals, do you want to control the infection to keep it from spreading?
• Do you want to eliminate the infection from your herd?
• Do you want to do all of the above?

We have worked with the University of Wisconsin-School of Veterinary Medicine to develop online training programs for you and your veterinarian to use in getting started with your Johne’s disease control program. Talk to your herd veterinarian about completing a Johne’s disease risk assessment for your farm and developing a herd management plan (RAMP). The RAMP is designed to reduce your risk of introducing Johne’s disease onto your farm and to maximize your efforts in controlling it if already there. Both producer and veterinary training modules are available at http://ce.vetmed.wisc.edu/Johnes Disease.

Recommended Management Practices To Prevent or Control Johne’s Disease

Dairy Producers: Take Proactive Steps to Prevent, Control Johne’s Disease

Beef Producers: Take Proactive Steps to Prevent, Control Johne’s Disease

Johne's Disease Q&A for Bovine Producers 

Testing

Johne’s Disease in Cattle - Testing

Culling

Working with your veterinarian to develop an individualized herd plan will help you to make decisions on whether and which animals to cull. Effective culling requires good herd records and individual animal identification. Your specific operation and herd goals, resources, etc. will help determine when and whether a test-positive animal will be culled.

Vaccination

Vaccination