lemonpoppyseed
Chillin' with the herd
Forgive what is probably s silly question from a goat newbie! We have just two LaMancha does (one of whom is due on Easter, one who just had two bucklings), bought from a small untested herd. Now that we have kids, we've been thinking that we should be testing since
a) they're being dam raised and
b) we will want to sell at least a couple of them, and I would never want to be the cause of spreading a disease to someone else's property.
There is no vet that deals with goats in our area, and the cooperative extension website wasn't particularly helpful. Tried to do a bit of online research, and I keep seeing an awful lot of websites that talk about WHY to test, but not the specifics on how.
Are there independent labs? Do we need to find a vet that will do it, even if they don't typically deal with goats? What kind of samples will they require? Anything other than CAE, CL, or Johnes that we should be testing for? If our goats test positive, what does that mean for us? What are the typical costs associate with testing? Any and all advice would be helpful!
a) they're being dam raised and
b) we will want to sell at least a couple of them, and I would never want to be the cause of spreading a disease to someone else's property.
There is no vet that deals with goats in our area, and the cooperative extension website wasn't particularly helpful. Tried to do a bit of online research, and I keep seeing an awful lot of websites that talk about WHY to test, but not the specifics on how.
Are there independent labs? Do we need to find a vet that will do it, even if they don't typically deal with goats? What kind of samples will they require? Anything other than CAE, CL, or Johnes that we should be testing for? If our goats test positive, what does that mean for us? What are the typical costs associate with testing? Any and all advice would be helpful!