A Vet Discusses CAE in Goats

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Description

In this episode, Deborah Niemann welcomes back Dr. Melissa Holahan, a small ruminant veterinarian, Nigerian Dwarf breeder at Chubby Acres, and owner of Caprine and Ewe, to revisit a disease that still catches many goat owners off guard: CAE (Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis), recently renamed Small Ruminant Lentivirus (SRLV).

They break down what CAE is, why it can quietly enter a herd with zero outward symptoms, and how it spreads, especially through milk and colostrum via white blood cells. Dr. Holahan explains what “slow and progressive” looks like in real life, why goats can test negative early and later turn positive, and how to approach herd testing responsibly, including age timing, yearly screening, quarantine, and retesting before introducing new animals.

You will also hear a detailed, practical discussion on testing options (ELISA vs. PCR), what to do with a positive result, and why a single test should never trigger an immediate euthanasia decision. Deborah shares her own experience with a long-lived doe that repeatedly tested ELISA-positive but had negative PCRs and never spread CAE, highlighting the importance of confirmatory testing and working with trusted labs.

Finally, they walk through real-world management strategies for CAE-positive goats, including snatch-raising, colostrum and milk handling, heat-treating guidelines, and biosecurity considerations at shows. Whether you are building a herd, buying goats, or simply trying to reduce disease risk, this episode offers clear, calm, science-based guidance and reassurance that CAE is manageable when you understand how it works.

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Transcript

Intro  0:03  
For the love of goats, we are talking about everything goat, whether you're a goat owner, a breeder, or just a fan of these wonderful creatures. We've got you covered. And now here's Deborah Niemann.

Deborah Niemann  0:18  
Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode. Today, we are going to be talking about a topic that we covered originally five years ago, when the podcast was brand new, actually maybe six years ago. We talked about this topic with a vet from Australia because I was really intrigued by the fact that she had a website talking about making Australia CAE-free. 

Deborah Niemann  0:40  
And CAE is short for Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis, and it is a fascinating disease that really surprises a lot of people in a lot of ways when they get started with goats. So I am very excited today to have back on the show again from different topics related to diseases, Dr Melissa Holahan, who is one of those incredibly rare vets who has herd of Nigerian Dwarf Goats at Chubby Acres and also a private small ruminant practice called Caprine and Ewe. And she is spelling E, W, E as the other small ruminant. Welcome to the show today. Dr Melissa.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  1:21  
Thank you, Deborah, and thanks for having me again. And always fun to talk about goats.

Deborah Niemann  1:26  
Yeah, I know I love it. So I was really excited when I saw that you were talking about the topic of CAE at the ADGA Conference last fall. I could not go because I had to be somewhere else. But a friend of mine saw it and was talking about all the great things you've discussed. And so I said, You know what? I think it's time we revisit this on the podcast. So I'm really happy that you're here today to talk about this. Now, a lot of people think that they can just go buy some goats, and if they look healthy, they're golden. And that is not the case. There are actually several diseases that goats can have that are asymptomatic, meaning that the goat doesn't show any symptoms. They look completely healthy, even though they're walking around with a disease that is highly contagious and incurable. So let's start by talking about what exactly is CAE. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  2:12  
Yeah, so I always start with like the big three. So kind of people can put in perspective the three big diseases that we think about when we're talking about small ruminants. And small ruminants for this topic are mostly sheep and goats. Although we're focusing on goats, a lot of these diseases can be seen in sheep as well. The big three diseases are CAE, CL, and Johne's. And so we're talking about CAE today, and this one, honestly, is the one that I always say is probably the easiest one to get rid of in your herd. If you were to pick, like, which of the three diseases, if you had to have one in your herd, would you pick? And CAE would probably be my choice, and we'll go through why that is in the next hour, but CAE is actually now renamed Small Ruminant Lentiviruses or SRLV, but for the topic, for tonight, we're going to be talking about goat it's going to be Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis or CAE, and it's a viral disease of goats caused by a lentivirus. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  3:11  
And so when people think about lentiviruses, the big one that comes to mind in humans, or the only one actually in humans, is HIV in people. And so it's a slow growing virus, it is lifelong. So that means, once the goat gets infected, as you already said, they are permanently infected. The reason that it's been renamed is, in more recent years, they've actually found that, when originally it was discovered, they had OPP, which is Ovine Progressive Pneumonia, and they used to think of that as the sheep disease, and then CAE or Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis as the goat disease. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  3:45  
But in reality, now they feel like it's more appropriately named Small Ruminant Lentiviruses. So it encompasses both viruses, because sheep and goats can actually give the lentivirus to each other, so it can cross over, but it's mostly a viral disease. In this case, once they get it, they're usually going to have it permanently. So our goal, especially as a veterinarian and as someone that breeds goats, we want to try to keep it out of our herd in the first place.

Deborah Niemann  4:07  
Yeah, exactly when we say that it's a slow, progressive disease, can you explain what that looks like in real life?

Dr. Melissa Holahan  4:14  
Yeah, I think the easiest way to explain that would be to give a good example, and the most common example that we see with mode of transmission for CAE is from milk, from the mom to the kids, so from the dam to the kids. And so when we're talking about viral diseases, in this particular case, it's actually carried in the white blood cells. And there's specific white blood cells it's carried in. But the main thing to remember is anything that has white blood cells could act as a mode of transmission. So milk is a big one. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  4:45  
When we think about somatic cell count, you know, what are we really counting there? We're actually counting the white blood cells. And so there can be a lot of white blood cells in milk, but we can also see it in other secretions, so things like blood contaminant from shears, from hoof trimmers, those type of things. We can also see it to a lesser degree in seminal fluid, so processed through semen, but anything that has white blood cells. And so in the case, from the dam to the kid, they're going to have transmission of the CAE virus through the milk into the kid. And from there, those white blood cells will actually set up camp in the tissues.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  5:22  
And what starts off as an RNA or retrovirus actually can be common start to replicate in the DNA of the actual host. So the infected animal, in this case, the kid, and once it's infected and integrated into the tissue of the animal, it's usually going to set up camp there and be lifelong. Again, another good example be like herpes virus infections. And the reason that that's important for us in CAE in goats is because it also explains why we can initially not see it, and then when we start to see an animal that has a stressor, any type of illness, sometimes these latent viruses, so they're sleeping basically, can be activated and can become infectious and start to become positive on our test results, whereas they might have been low grade or latent or sleeping in the initial phase of the infection.

Deborah Niemann  6:14  
Okay, so you just mentioned test results there, which opens up a whole another topic for us. You know, some people might think like, oh, so I just need to get a goat tested before I buy it, and then I'm golden if it's negative. But unfortunately, not that simple. So can you talk about testing?

Dr. Melissa Holahan  6:30  
Yeah, so back to the clinical signs. And why testing, I think isn't so important, is because I think they say up to about 70% or more can be non-clinical so no clinical signs seen at time of disease. So this is one of those diseases that can in goats walk onto your farm. A goat that may be positive is going to have no signs of clinical disease, completely healthy on the outside, and test positive. So where I start with testing is I usually start at the young and kind of work my way up, and then I also talk about what kind of animals should be tested coming into the herd. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  7:04  
So for me, and I'll use my own herd as an example, I test once a year now. I used to test every animal, obviously, that came into my herd, and then I would test every six months, and then once I knew I was negative those first couple now I test yearly, and I actually choose to test my herd in November or December, and the main reason for that is because I can test everybody on my farm. Typically, at that point, everybody on my farm is greater than six months of age. And so whenever we do testing, we want those animals to be at least six months of age or older, because that will help us get rid of those possible false positives. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  7:39  
So when we test I should back up for a minute. We're usually going to test antibodies. And so our main screening test is the ELISA test, which is an antibody test. And so whenever you have an infection, what's your body going to do? It's going to create antibodies to that infection. And what we're testing with this screening test is the actual antibodies. So you can have antibodies if you're infected or if you're exposed doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be infected for life in the situation of a young animal. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  8:05  
So if a young animal ingests colostrum that maybe is heat treated and has broken down RNA CAE virus, or potentially has CAE virus, they could potentially clear it in the early stage, when they're young, they're going to have those maternal antibodies, so maternal antibodies from the mom or from the dam that could confuse testing and cause a false positive. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  8:27  
So in order to kind of get that out of the way, I usually tell people, wait at least six months, nine months, ideally, so you just don't have any of that wiggle room or window in there, but at least six months of age before you test. And then from there, I would test every adult yearly. Where it gets confusing is when you start to add animals to your herd. What do you do then? Well, there's a lot of ways to answer that question, but for me, first and foremost getting animals from herd that's already been tested, and ideally, one step further, has been tested on multiple years and has been negative over multiple years, because that's going to be more trustworthy that that herd is truly CAE negative across the board. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  9:04  
And taking that animal, depending on how old they are, testing them while they're in quarantine, which hopefully we're all doing, we bring a new animal into our herd. We're not just putting it right out with the rest of our animals. Hopefully we have at least a 30 day quarantine period, and then ideally retesting them before they go into the herd. So you have two time points where you know for sure that animal has had two negative test results before introducing them into your herd. And that goes across the board for, you know, an eight month old animal or a two year old animal that's being introduced into your herd.

Deborah Niemann  9:35  
Okay, so if a kid has a mom that is CAE positive, and you test it before it's six months old, then it could test positive, even though it's not really? 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  9:47  
Yeah, so in that situation, more likely if it's CAE positive mom, that kid has nursed from that mom and probably raised by that mom. Odds are that that animal is probably going to be a positive animal. The only time that you might have situation where that is incorrect is there is some research that even in CAE heat-treated colostrum. So you have a CAE positive milk, or CAE positive colostrum here, and you heat treat it, you've essentially killed the CAE virus, but you're going to feed it to those kids now to hopefully keep them negative, those particles, even though they're broken down, viral particles, can still cause reaction and could still cause some antibodies. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  10:31  
The other situation is you can have antibodies from the dam that can be transferred to the kid and can cause a false positive in that early six months. So it's usually going to be from a CAE positive animal to a kid, where the confusion is on whether or not they're positive or negative, which is why we usually just recommend to wait until they're at least six months of age, so that you don't have that maternal antibody confusion in there. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  10:57  
Again, there's no vaccine for this disease, so it's not like we have the confusion of a vaccine stimulating antibodies. When antibodies are there, it's going to be a or b, either that animal is truly infected and infected for life, or that animal has been exposed and maybe isn't truly infected. And so that's where CAE testing with an ELISA is a really good screen test. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  11:19  
But then you have to talk about, if you get a positive result, what do we do with that? And I think the easiest thing to do, and also the hardest thing to do, is to wait 30 days and just retest and or use a different lab. If you were using, maybe a university lab, I think is going to be the most common and trustworthy test results. But if you weren't using a university lab to begin with, potentially using your recheck testing at a university lab for better results. For those people that don't know the difference, Sometimes there's a lot of different test labs out there, but university labs are going to be validated and are vetted every year based off of what codes they have to do and what standards of care and guidelines that they have to meet every year, and so they're going to be using the most USDA accredited and the most trusted test modalities out there, so you're going to know for sure that's a positive test. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  12:13  
The other thing you can do, which gets a little confusing, but you could also test with a PCR, and not a lot of people do that. There aren't very many labs that have PCR testing available. I think MSU Colorado, I think Purdue. There are quite a few university labs out there that offer it. And when you do a PCR test, what we're testing for there is, instead of testing for antibodies, which is what the ELISA test for, PCR is testing for the actual RNA particles. So it is very sensitive, but those RNA particles have to be intact for there to be a positive test result. So a positive PCR is usually going to be pretty trustworthy, but a negative PCR doesn't always say it's been ruled out, but that can be sometimes used to be a confirmatory test when you're wondering.

Deborah Niemann  12:57  
I'm going to use myself as an example here, and also like, what not to do, because now I'm just like, I wish I wouldn't have done that. So when I was building my herd, I only bought does until 2005 I buy a few bucks now and then, but I stopped buying does after 2005 for biosecurity reasons, but also because I want to keep all my babies. So why should I go buy somebody else's does when I want to keep all mine? And so anyway, I had this one doe that I had purchased. Her CAE came back positive. At that time, Washington State was the only lab that was doing the ELISA, and so I didn't have another lab to go to for another Elisa. 

Deborah Niemann  13:34  
And so they said, What you just did – You know, we'll wait 30 days. Test again. It came back again, positive. And then I waited, like a couple months. I tested again, I came back again positive. In the meantime, this goat is living by herself, getting fat because she's got no competition for the hay. And the thing is, not only had that doe already had kids of her own in my herd, but I had used her milk raw to feed other kids. 

Deborah Niemann  13:58  
And so I called the pathologist, and I said, you know, wouldn't at least one of these kids have tested positive by now? And she said, yeah, so I'm glad you didn't put her down, because this does sound like a potentially a false positive. And so we decided to do a PCR on that doe as well as every kid that had ever gotten her milk, all of the PCRs came back negative. And at that point, I quit testing that doe, but I kept testing everybody else. But I'm like, Okay, well, it's a waste of money to test her. She's just testing positive all the time. Now, I wish I would have kept doing it, just to be curious. She actually lived to be the oldest goat ever on my farm. She lived to be 16 and a half years old, as healthy as could be. So what was going on there? Like, why was she testing positive on the Elisa, but clearly didn't have it because, like, nobody, like, you know, we've gone now well over 20 years with 100% negative results on all of our tests.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  14:53  
And all of her kids were negative after that point as well. And you were dam raising them? 

Deborah Niemann  14:58  
Yes. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  14:59  
Yeah. So they were all getting her milk. 

Deborah Niemann  15:01  
Yep.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  15:01  
Yeah. So, I mean, there's a couple things. I mean, that is definitely one of the rarities. I would say, if you didn't have multiple years of kids to prove that at that point, there hadn't been any transmission of CAE to her kids, I would say that most likely she had CAE and her first batch of kids cleared it, because, just like Johne's disease, going to a different disease for a second, but just because kids ingest Johne's in feces at a very young age doesn't guarantee that they're going to have Johne's as an adult, right? Yeah, it sure jacks up their risk of getting Johne's. But every person and every animal has a different immune system, and some immune systems are much stronger, right? So in her case, it was the ELISA and not the AGID? 

Deborah Niemann  15:50  
Right.  Yeah, Eliza, 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  15:52  
Okay, because the AGID, kind of older test does actually have some like, you could see it actually be false negative and a false positive. Is not as good of a test anymore. So that one actually has kind of fallen out of favor. Most people don't use that one anymore. So the ELISA antibodies, I'm wondering if she just had some cross reactivity, which comes up a lot more when we're talking about Johne's disease. And we're testing for antibodies in Johne's disease as well, right? So we're not actually testing for the disease itself. We're testing for our immune response to it, so I wonder if there was just some cross reactivity to that test. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  16:26  
I'd be really curious to see if, in her CAE positive test, even with this, the couple positives that you had done before you stopped testing, what the actual level was, if it was like really, really high, or if it was just above the suspicion rate

Deborah Niemann  16:43  
It was low. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  16:44  
Yeah, so, and that's where I use that most of the time, your case is the exception to the rule, because most of the time when you have a positive CAE is one of those diseases as a veterinarian that I right away start talking to the client about that we likely have CAE here and that we're going to need to do a confirmatory test. But the vast majority of these goats are positive, they're testing positive, on the kind of flip side to that when we see Johne's and we're doing Johne's screening test to do a comparison of two of these diseases, when I see a positive on that screening test, I usually tell my clients, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't freak out. Stay calm. And we need to do a confirmatory test there, because usually, in that case, it's usually a low normal, or, I should say, a low high, and then I can usually tell if it's super high on the Johne's test or super low. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  17:35  
So in the CAE test, it's pretty similar. But again, once they're positive on that test, usually with the ELISA, they're truly positive. I think in your case, there probably was some cross reactivity. And really kind of a cool thing to have that knowledge in your background, to know that there are some exceptions, which is why I think people should work with their veterinarians and the labs at that case, I'm sure WADDL right is probably who you talk to, because some people might think, Oh, I'm just going to euthanize this animal. I got to get rid of this animal. It's positive. And I think to me, if there's any myth or any take home point from the podcast tonight is, don't euthanize an animal just based off of a positive test. And to just sit back for a second and think about it, and think about what are your herd goals? Even if she is truly positive. There's a lot of stuff you can do to manage that disease.

Deborah Niemann  18:25  
Yeah, exactly. And I know I got started in goats early enough that there were still a lot of CAE positive herds and people who were managing it very successfully. So let's go ahead and talk about that and say that you do find out that you have a true positive goat. Talk about some of the management things that people can do.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  18:46  
Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is talking about what their management goals are like, what is that animal being used for? Or is that animal in a breeding program? So the risk is going to be higher, because when we talk about disease transmission of that positive goat, it's going to be the highest, if we're breeding that animal, still right? So that's the highest transmission is going to be from dam to kid. So vertical transmission. Horizontal transmission happens, but it's just not as well documented. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  19:09  
And when we talk about horizontal transmission, that's usually from adult to adult, but there's really no studies out yet. I feel like there's a lot of universities talking, and there's people kind of gathering more information, but when they talk about vertical transmission, it would be more common to have adults, let's say, with like tears or saliva or respiratory secretions, all of those things could have white blood cells. And you know, just like us, if you're sneezing on somebody next to you, there's a potential that you're getting white blood cells from them. Is it low? Sure. Compared to a kid nursing from a mom with white blood cells and high inflammation in that udder right after she's kidded out, the risk is much higher there, right? So there is some vertical transmission. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  19:56  
But what is the goal of the herd? And if you wanted a zero tolerance, which, I don't know if you really need to have a zero tolerance, but if you wanted a zero tolerance, you wouldn't breed that animal anymore. And even then, you're still probably looking at a one to 2% chance that she could vertically transmit the disease to her herd mates, you know, the other adult or the other kids in that herd that aren't nursing off of her, they're just coexisting in a small we'll just call it a small farm, right? And you know how goats sleep? They all sleep right on top of each other, so they're all close together, no matter what kind of space you have them in. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  20:28  
So I would say, if there was a zero tolerance, we don't breed that animal anymore. However, if this is an animal where you really are interested in those genetics and you really do want to continue breeding that animal, then the purest approach is to do the snatch raising, and there's a lot of different terminology for that, right? But basically you're snatching or pulling the kids right at birth, and ideally, in a best case scenario, you know when that goat was bred, so that you could induce that animal and have a pretty tight window on when that goat's going to kid out, so that you are present and you can actually snatch those kids, preferably while they're just coming out, and wet, clean those kids off, get those kids away from the mom. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  21:05  
And then you have another choice to make. Again, purest approach would be going to a colostrum replacer instead of doing heat treated colostrum. But you could also do heat treated colostrum from another goat, or colostrum from another goat, that you know for sure is CAE negative, and so that the kids are still getting a high quality colostrum, which really helps with the longevity of, you know, their immunity for life, right? But then you don't have the high risk of colostrum. I think doing colostrum from CAE positive goats is doable. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  21:36  
You just have to really make sure that you are heat treating that colostrum. And this is always a big point for everybody, like, what is the temperature? And the consistent temperature that everybody talks about is 133 to about 135 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. And so if you can go above, like 139, 140 but you'll talk to a lot of people like Fauna Smith and Dr Rao and everybody like you go above that, you're going to turn it into colostrum pudding. And so you don't want to go much higher than that, but you have to hold that temperature for an hour in order to kill off the CAE virus and not completely destroy the colostrum for all the good things that it has, right? So you definitely can do that, but it usually about 133 to 135 degrees. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  22:19  
And I like to do that if I'm heat treating anything for any reason, I like to use a sous vide, a water bath, because I think that it kind of holds a consistent temperature. And most of them nowadays are pretty cost effective. They're maybe like 80-90 bucks. They last quite a long time, and it circulates all of the water. But you have to make sure that when people are heat treating that they remember it's the temperature of the colostrum that has to be held at 133 not the water bath that's circulating around, so making sure you've got appropriate thermometers in there and double checking that so CAE negative colostrum, or a colostrum replacer.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  22:54  
 And then those animals are raised on bottles or pan fed, or however you want to raise them away from mom until weaning and again, what are they raised on from there? Well, ideally, it's CAE negative milk. CAE milk that has been heat treated or milk replacer. Again, you know, layers of risk, right? You might be taking a teeny, tiny risk with the CAE, heat treated milk, a small risk, maybe other diseases transmitted, if you're just using milk from other goats, and then colostrum replacer. You know, sometimes there's a give and take with colostrum replacers, or milk replacers as well. But I think that's going to be kind of your black and white approach to trying to get it out of your herd. 

Deborah Niemann  23:34  
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the colostrum replacer. First, I want to stress that this is not the same thing as colostrum supplement. I hate the fact that they sell something called colostrum supplement because you do not need it. It's a worthless product that's just put out there to make money. It does not have the antibodies in it like colostrum replacer does. But even when you get into the colostrum replacers, some are better than others. So that was one of the big takeaways that my friend got from your session at the conference was she said you had some really good tips about what colostrum replacers are best.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  24:07  
Yeah, so I have been asked to give that talk again at the ADGA convention in October, so it will be coming up again for those that missed it, and I'm happy to provide any notes that people would like from that, but I really like the, it's the colostrum gold. It has a red and gold label, and that is my favorite one. And I think that that one kind of has the highest but the biggest thing is not every one of them is created equal, yes, but you're really just looking and trying to pay attention to how many IgG grams of colostrum, or grams of IgG are in the colostrum. So lots of different labels. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  24:47  
Okay, so my favorite is the bovine IgG, and it's colostrum 200 and it's by SCCL, and that's the Saskatoon Colostrum Company, and that one basically has the highest amount of IgG in it, which means that you don't have to give a ton of it to get the effect that you need. As far as getting the amount of immunoglobulins into those animals. And I go through because it's not very straightforward as far as the math goes, because I think that's the next big step, is getting the math right. But that bag usually has about 60 grams of IgG in it. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  25:24  
And so when we were talking about this and kind of going back and forth and trying to figure out a hard and fast rule on, well, how much of that do you feed goat kids? We talked about splitting one of those bags between four standard kids. And again, there's some math that goes into it, but basically one of those bags would feed four standard kids. And I think last I had checked, I don't remember the price off the top my head, but I think it was like 40 or 50 bucks a bag. And that just also goes to show you, if it's not expensive for a colostrum replacer, it's probably not a great one. This is definitely one of those things where you get what you pay for, and the cost is really important. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  25:47  
So you want to get the one where you're like, oh, that seems expensive, because you are getting more bang for the buck there. 

Deborah Niemann  26:08  
Yeah, exactly. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  26:09  
Yeah. No, I feel like colostrum replacers can be really great if they're the only tool you have. Or you really want to take a purist approach, and you don't want to have any milk from your farm. Like for me, if I was going to do something like that, I would rather have colostrum from goats on my farm that I know are really great dams that have really high quality colostrum from Brix measurements, and I'm going to store some of that back if I need to use colostrum for another kid for any reason. And I always have colostrum replacer with me as a veterinarian, but I'm really going to try hard to find another source that's trusted and hopefully disease free before I move to a powder colostrum replacer. Again, they're really good, but I always feel like most of the time I have something frozen that's going to be a better option.

Deborah Niemann  26:55  
Let's say somebody does wind up with a goat that actually has CAE what kind of symptoms are they going to see if the goat becomes symptomatic? 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  27:03  
Yeah. So the clinical signs for CAE can vary depending on the age, but the most common sign we should reiterate is no clinical signs at all, which is why testing so important. But when we talk about young kids or the disease in our younger animals, we're usually going to see the neurologic form where they're infecting the central nervous system, and that can vary from in coordination to tremors to seizures and anywhere kind of in between. So I always tell people, if a kid is acting strange or having trouble walking or acting kind of drunk, like to really hone in on that and figure out what's going on there. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  27:38  
Unfortunately, a lot of times when we see CAE in kids, the majority of them are going to be less likely to resolve those clinical signs on their own, and oftentimes they progress. The more common one that we talk about is the adult version, and that's usually going to be kind of the things that people talk about is walking on their knees, or big knees. And I hate using that terminology, because the inflamed joints, they're usually actually walking on their Carpi, so they're walking on their wrist and not actually their knees. But you'll commonly see some of these more severely affected animals with really swollen joint, or big carpus or wrist, and they're actually down on their wrist instead of walking on all four legs, because it's more comfortable to rest like that. It takes off pressure on those joints, and so they prefer to sit like that. That's probably the more common one that I see in the veterinary field, in our older animals, where I'm usually like, oh, that's probably CAE. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  28:34  
And then less common nowadays, but one that used to be talked about a lot is hard bag or hard udder that can be seen in goats as well as sheep, but essentially that's viral mastitis, where the mammary gland itself just becomes hard and not very much mammary tissue left. So there's not going to be much milk production, and that translates to production and management because those animals aren't getting enough nutrients and enough milk. So you're going to have weak kids or weak lambs. If we're talking about sheep. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  29:03  
You can also see pneumonia in the lungs. That's kind of where the ovine progressive pneumonia comes from, or the opp version. And we can also sometimes see it in other aspects and other areas of the body, but usually those are going to be the big ones, is the neurologic disease and the joint disease, hard bag. But I think for the most part, the most common is animals that are asymptomatic. Which also circles back to the biggest question that people have is, why do I care about CAE and why should I have a CAE negative herd? And in reality, you could play the both sides of that, but for me, I'm always a “do no harm to the animal,” and if I can prevent the disease from ever being transmitted to another animal in my herd, that's going to be my number one goal. Because I can't tell you how sad it is to have an animal with swollen joints, painful joints, and I have them on multiple pain medications and multiple modalities. And I can't keep those animals comfortable anymore, and then we have to make decisions for them. So I'd rather prevent this from happening if I can, which I feel like, we do have testing nowadays where we can do that quite easily.

Deborah Niemann  30:11  
Yeah, exactly. Because it really gets down to quality of life for a lot of these animals. Ultimately, it's like, CAE is not lethal. It's not usually going to kill them, but if they can't walk to the hay feeder or to the water bucket, that is really not a great quality of life. Are there some persistent myths about CAE that you would love to see disappear?

Dr. Melissa Holahan  30:34  
I think the biggest myth is that CAE positive goats should be immediately culled or euthanized, and I think that that is farther from the truth, because I think it's a very manageable disease for me. I think making informed decisions about what you do with a CAE positive goat is really important, and I know it can be really scary when people see that positive test result and your initial reaction is to be more reactive. Then step back and think about getting education, repeat testing, and then kind of really diving into good management. And what is your management on your farm, and how can we adjust the management to help reduce the risk of that infection spreading through other animals? So I think that's the biggest one, is like the black and white version that they should all be culled. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  31:22  
You already really said it. You know, I think that it's not a mortality issue. It's more of a management disease issue, and like changing our management to help reduce the risk of that. I've said this on other podcasts and other interviews before, but I think it's also important to just reiterate that positive diseases in your herd is not a failure. I think still, we have so much drama in our dairy goat world and social media, and people want to try to sweep it under the rug, or they want to exploit somebody, a breeder, because they have a CAE positive goat. And I think that that's really kind of the worst thing we can do, because I think having open discussions about the diseases is really important, and it's what you do with that positive result that I think defines who you are as a breeder and who you are as a farmer and how you're raising these animals, and not necessarily that you have a CAE positive goat in your herd. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  32:15  
I think that the more years you do this, the more you're going to see positive results. I know a lot of herds that have positive CAE animals in their herd, and they all manage them differently, and none of the ways that they manage them are wrong. It's just dependent on what their goal is as a breeder and or, you know, what type of genetics they have in their herd. So I think that that's the biggest thing, is people think of it as a oh, I want to hide it, that I have a positive animal. And I think in reality, the people that talk about it and educate, and then also those breeders that talk to the people they've sold goats to, and educate forward, I think are really the ones that are doing well by their animals, because they're making it a discussion, not something to hide.

Deborah Niemann  33:00  
I think that's why the testing is so important, is that you can't prevent transmission of a disease that you don't know is on your farm. And somebody contacted me a few months ago and said, You know, I heard that the test for CAE is not 100% accurate, like you can get false positives or false negatives, and so is that true? And I said, Well, yeah, no test is 100% accurate. And she's like, why are you using it? Then why? Like, why shouldn't I just stop? So I had my answer, but I'm curious, what would you say to somebody who said that?

Dr. Melissa Holahan  33:34  
Yeah, so no test, CAE or any diagnostic test is 100% and so we're using it as a knowledge tool, not a black and white tool. And so for me, it's a great knowledge tool because it is actually a very trustworthy test. We know a positive ELISA is going to tell you exposure or infection, and most of the time it's infection, but we also have to go back because it's a screening test. We're screening our entire herd, usually not just an individual animal, although we do still use it as an individual animal test. It's a much better test as a screening tool across the herd, but those positive animals we're now going to follow up on, right? We're screening so that we can prevent the disease from going from one animal to multiple animals, and then your whole herd is infected by the time you know, right? So I think it's a great screening tool. I think it's what you do with it from there depends on your management. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  34:26  
And I always have the discussion with my clients before we do biosecurity testing, what are their goals and what are we going to do with a positive result if we have one? Because if the answer is nothing, then yeah, sometimes it may not be a test that you need to run. But for a different example, if you're raising animals and you're breeding animals and then you're going to subsequently sell those animals, then you should probably take that responsibility and test, or at least disclose that you're not testing, so that the next person can make an educated decision as well.

Deborah Niemann  34:56  
Yeah, exactly. Do we still have any questions about CAE that need to be researched more.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  35:01  
The vertical transmission question definitely is one, and there's been a couple situations where I would have really liked to test that theory, and one of them is a rescue that I work with that has multiple adult goats. Some of them are CAE positive, but they're not doing any breeding on those herds. So I think it'd be very interesting to go back to those herds year after year, kind of like, you know, your one adult go and see are more adults in that herd becoming positive, I you know, likely proving that there is vertical transmission happening in those adult herds. Because we really don't have much knowledge on that, and I think that we can all talk about, and it's a really good biosecurity discussion on when we're using hoof trimmers, we all sometimes accidentally nick a hoof, and then we have some bleeding. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  35:48  
And then, you know, what is the true transmission risk, most likely, very minimal, but always important to, you know, clean when you ever have any blood contamination of anything, I think it's also important. That's why we don't usually recommend sharing tattoo guns, you know? Because ultimately, when you're tattooing baby goats or adult goats, you're usually going to get some blood on that tattoo gun, and then you're puncturing another animal, is probably going to be an option or a way that we could transmit the disease. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  36:12  
So I think having some testing there, it'd be very hard to do that, though, because you could think about the risk of that would be very minimal. So trying to prove that that that actually happens. But I think full adult herds that have no breeding happenings would be kind of interesting to see if some of those animals are popping up positive more and more after, like throughout a 10 year period. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  36:29  
And then the other one that comes up a lot in discussion points, and something that we talked about at the AASRP, so the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners Conference, which is in conjunction with the American Dairy Goat Convention, we talked about embryo transfer IVF work is becoming more and more popular every year, and whether or not there's any true transmission of CAE through IVF efforts, whether that's through the semen or through embryo transfer. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  36:55  
And they actually have been able to prove with research that small ruminant, lentivirus-positive bucks and rams can actually transmit the disease through the seminal fluid, because, again, anything that has white blood cells, and you're going to likely have some white blood cells in that ejaculate, is going to be possible to transfer. But what they've been able to prove with some research is that you can actually have IVF babies from those CAE positive goats, and as long as they do enough washing of the embryos, I know nothing's guaranteed, right? But you can pretty much guarantee that you're not going to have CAE positive kids if you're using those techniques and you're washing the semen, and most of the semen collectors will say the same thing, you know, if you're washing the semen appropriately, which almost every semen collector does nowadays. You're likely getting most of the white blood cells out of there, but you can, theoretically, you could see it transmitted there, but there's not been anything proven from those type of transmissions to a kid.

Deborah Niemann  37:51  
Is there anything else that you think people need to know about CAE that we haven't talked about?

Dr. Melissa Holahan  37:55  
I think the big one is doing your due diligence with biosecurity on your own farm. And for those of us that really do enjoy showing, making sure that you understand that like one of the big risk factors is the milk. So when you're at big shows, and potentially there's milk contaminant, being very aware of trying to steer clear of those areas. That's why we have milk dump areas, because if we have CAE positive milk, that's where we could potentially pick it up. Goat kids have been known to do, and one of the big things is feeding pooled milk is really discouraged, because you only need one CAE positive animal out of that whole entire pooled and so that would be an easy way to transmit that to the young. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  38:37  
I think the other one is just when you're at larger areas, whether it's shows or the national show, or anywhere where there's lots of animals, just be aware of whether you have a positive or negative animal. Doesn't matter, right? Like, if you've got milk, clean it up. It's your responsibility at that point. You know, if you accidentally had an over uddered animal or an animal that sprung a leak from a teat to, you know, go back to that spot when you have a second and clean that area up and common areas where people are getting water, make sure you're not bringing milk over there and dumping milk. 

Dr. Melissa Holahan  39:09  
So I think just being respectful, I think of other breeders when we are in this goat community, where a lot of people do show and there's probably, again, small risk, but that's a risk where you can pick up CAE, and I've certainly, as a veterinarian, have seen herds that have negative herd, negative herd, negative herd, and all they do is show and they've had positive kids from taking young kids to shows, and maybe they were just being curious, because they're kids, they put their nose down and touch something. But you can never prove it 100% but presumably, because those animals have remained negative, their moms have remained negative in the herd. The only thing that was different was they went to shows. So it definitely can happen. And just trying to minimize our risk however we can.

Deborah Niemann  39:49  
So if anybody's listening to this and feeling really freaked out and scared right now, what words of assurance do you have for them?

Dr. Melissa Holahan  39:56  
I think in general, CAE is one of those diseases that, is, again, not a mortality disease. It's not a death sentence. It's a manageable disease, and it's a disease that you can manage out of your herd, even if your positive goat is your most prized goat in the herd and your highest genetic potential animal, I wouldn't discourage you from keeping that animal in your herd and just managing them appropriately. So I think it becomes a less scary disease when you can kind of sit down and methodically, kind of work through it, but just testing your animals and trying to prevent the disease from ever coming into your herd, I think, is the big one

Deborah Niemann  40:31  
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It has been great chatting with you today.

Dr. Melissa Holahan  40:34  
Thank you, Deborah. I appreciate it as always,

Deborah Niemann  40:37  
And that's it for today's show. If you haven't already done so, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss any episodes. To see show notes, you can always visit fortheloveofgoats.com and you can follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/lovegoatspodcast. See you again next time. Bye for now you.