Caseous Lymphadenitis

I was doing a paper on CL last year (which I never finished, lol)

1- Don't panic!
2- Isolate the goat (metal floor on that trailer, too, as CL soaks into wood) while you confirm diagnosis.
3- Test, testing the exudate from an abscess is the most accurate way, blood tests are very interesting in their interpretations. For detailed info on blood test results, I recommend talking to the pathologist at WADDL, very informative!
4- If the goat is + dispose of or make some big, bad decisions... Disposal- this would be the time that you might want to have the renderer come to get the carcass...or burn the carcass, yuck!

Now, if you have a goat with an abscess it might NOT be CL, so don't panic! I had two goat injure themselves and get big hematomas that looked just like abscesses, in a similar location. I've had a buckling get a fox tail awl abscess (the awl worked through the skin in his mouth into the layer between his jaw skin and muscle) that we freaked over. Not every abscess in a "CL" location is a CL abscess!

Now, if the goat has come from a CL exposed/positive herd, or is CL +, that is different. Then you can panic!

We had CL in our dairy part of the herd, they were isolated with the CAE positive does who were the backbone of our milk. The does were kept shaved so we could see abscess immediatly and most were removed by me unless it was on the jaw, then my vet would. We removed the abscess whole and sent it to UC Davis for testing. Because of the agressive way we treated this we never had it pass and there were 25 does per pen. Scotia would have an abscess a year, usually always coinciding with kidding (I guess for her the most stressful time of year because she also was the hider of when she was kidding, never jumping a fence in her life, until in labor and finding her out in the woods with 3 little ones). Back then it wasn't 'she came from a herd who had CL' it was more like we didn't really know what it was, or how virulant it was so we all did crazy things, sliceing and diceing etc...the nonchalant way most deal with CAE now. My vet knew better and wasn't thrilled I was keeping the does after the diagnosis. But I needed the milk.

I gave up my milk contract when my oldest daughter graduated from High School and sold her nubians to pay for college, that area layed fallow, and then I got into boers (their crosses with nubians were the guinea pigs to see if the trees and fence posts were infective, they were not....the barn was torn down an the whole area is actually my new garden today. For years it was pasture only.

Test, you have to find out, and not every lump and bump a goat gets is CL.

If you purchased these from the same farm, it's pretty likely if one has CL all has it. If you let an abscess burst onto your place or lanced it, it's pretty assured most of your goats have it, worse is that your barn becomes infective. One goat bursts and abscess on a splinter on a wooden key hole feeder, this same splinter now has CL on it, the next goat then pricks herself on the same splinter and becomes infected. Corny on your hoof trimmers can infect one goat after another as you trim feet and draw blood, or trim feet and have a doe in nasty barns you didn't infect at a show, or shaving, it's how sheep herds become infected at shearing time.

Find out for sure what is going on and let us help you. Vicki

CL is one disease I would be pretty strict about. CAE is just much easier to prevent and get rid of...but CL is hard to kill in an environment. I would be thinking hard about how important your current goats are to you and how hard you are willing to work to get rid of this. Can you feasibly set up a whole new area, shelter, feeders, etc to put clean stock in? You can get kids out of infected stock, pull at birth and raise on pastuerized milk, keep in your "clean" area being super careful not to cross-contaminate with your clothes, boots, feed buckets, etc. Test and test and eventually weed out every positive goat and let your old facilities rest for a few years. If you have accurate test results and your goats are indeed positive, you will be fighting this for a few years unless you decide to ignore it. Also...you will have a hard time honestly selling breeding stock. I would buy from someone with CAE as long as they test and pull kids, etc but I wouldn't take the chance with CL.

The other option is to start over....which may be the quickest but not always possible either. You still would need new barns/ground and you still will be on pins and needles wondering if it will show up again.

If I have a goat come down with a lump, the first thing I do is assess that goat, is this goat important to my herd? has this goat been on my farm long? Is it a recent addition?
If its' a recent addition and not important to my herd overall, the offending goat is whisked off to the nearest auction/hungry family OFF my farm. I do not put them down on my place. I deal with CAE the same way if I would find a suspect.
Now if the goat has been on my farm a while, or important. I quarantine and test. There have been a few weird lumps over the years that were nothing. I Haven't had a test come back yet positive on CL. After reading all that Vickie has posted over the years I think I've probably overzealously sent around half a dozen or more goats to an early death due to bug bites. arrrgh.
I did have Two Saanens come down with weird neck lumps this year in the same place, that went right back down again. It was a huge spongy allergic reaction on the upper neck line right where the hair is missing due to constant rubbing on the stock panels to eat their hay. Scared the crap out of me, but They were both born here and the one is 7 yrs old. And only been off the farm for one show. so highly unlikely for CL, the lumps came and went so fast they didn't get tested. : ) must have been bug/sun combo