5 things every beef producer should know about Johne’s disease

As a seedstock producer and a cattle veterinarian, having a healthy and productive herd is a top priority for my herd and my clients’ herds. However, one of the most concerning diseases I am diagnosing more and more frequently in beef cattle is Johne’s disease. Despite the fact many beef producers have never heard of the disease, I am here to tell you the beef industry does have a significant problem with Johne’s disease. Even though it is a disease most in the beef industry don’t like to talk about, now is the time to get serious and start having honest conversations about it.

Amanda Kreuder

Here are five things every beef producer should know about this disease.

1. Johne’s is not just a disease of dairy cattle

That’s right, and I will say it again: Johne’s disease is a problem in beef cattle. Over the past decade, the number of beef cattle diagnosed with Johne’s disease has steadily increased in diagnostic labs across the country.

While it’s still not as common in beef cattle as it is in dairy cattle, that doesn’t mean Johne’s disease isn’t out there waiting to cause problems in your herd. In fact, many herds have had cows or bulls infected with Johne’s but just didn’t know it.

Unfortunately, this means often by the time a herd diagnoses their first case, it is only the “tip of the iceberg,” particularly if the affected animal was born and raised on the same farm.

Learning to recognize the signs of Johne’s disease (which most commonly include weight loss and loose manure despite a good appetite) and having your veterinarian test any animals with these signs before they go to the sale barn as a cull animal is an important first step in controlling the disease on your farm.

2. Young calves are most at risk for becoming infected with the bacteria that causes Johne’s disease, but we don’t typically see the effects of the disease until they are adults

The highest-risk animals on your farm for contracting Johne’s disease are the youngest animals on the farm. While there is some data to suggest cattle can become infected as adults, by far the most likely time for the adult cow you purchased last year to have acquired the disease was when it was a calf.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of animals will not show signs of infection until they are 3, 4 or 5 years old. Some may even be as old as 9 or 10 before showing signs. This makes it very challenging to keep the disease out of your herd, as animals carrying the disease can look as healthy as an uninfected animal walking in the sale ring.

If you have added any new animals (and this includes bulls) into your herd, you are at risk for having purchased Johne’s disease too, regardless of whether they came from the sale barn or an expensive registered sale.

3. Minimizing contact of calves with the manure of adult animals is key to preventing the spread of Johne’s disease

The bacteria that causes Johne’s disease are shed in the manure of affected animals and can establish a new infection when a calf swallows contaminated manure. Have you ever seen a calf nursing on a dirty udder in the springtime? That is likely manure, not just mud, and is a prime opportunity for infection.

Because young calves are most susceptible to becoming infected, it is critical we minimize contact of calves with adult manure.

On a dairy farm, we can remove calves from their dams at birth and control their environment – but no such luck in the beef industry. Instead, since we cannot completely eliminate the risk of exposure, we must do everything we can to minimize it.

Decreasing stocking density to decrease manure build-up around calving time, maintaining well-bedded clean calving pens and packs or calving on pasture are all important ways to help decrease the amount of manure to which a young calf is exposed.

Avoid creating areas where cows congregate and manure builds up and can splash on udders, which means hay rings and feedbunks are higher-risk than rolling hay bales out on pasture for winter feed. Farm ponds cattle stand in, particularly if they are the only water source, are also extremely high-risk, as is using the same loader bucket for manure clean-up and feed handling.

As an added bonus, decreasing manure contamination to decrease the spread of Johne’s disease will also help decrease the risk of calf scours as well.

4. Just because an animal tests negative for Johne’s disease doesn’t mean they aren’t infected

Unfortunately, Johne’s disease is very difficult to diagnose in its early stages. For the first year or two at least, and usually a lot longer than that, it is next to impossible to tell whether an animal is infected with the currently available tests.

That means even if you listened to your veterinarian and tested the bull you purchased last year, that bull may not be negative next year or the year after.

There are two main ways to test beef cattle for Johne’s disease: a blood test and a manure test. The closer an animal gets to actually showing the clinical signs of the disease, the more likely they are to show up as positive on these tests as being infected.

A positive result on the manure test is particularly concerning, as that meant the animal is actually shedding the bacteria and can infect other animals in the herd, although they may still look perfectly healthy themselves. Because there is no treatment or cure for Johne’s disease, once an animal is diagnosed as positive, the best recommendation is usually to cull the animal to prevent spreading the disease on the farm.

5. Communicating now with your veterinarian to determine your herd’s risk for being affected by Johne’s disease and whether whole-herd testing may be appropriate in your herd is the best first step to controlling this disease

For some herds that sell seedstock, your veterinarian may recommend every adult animal on the farm be tested every year. For other commercial herds that sell calves as feeders and purchase replacements, testing all animals ever year may not be economically feasible.

However, even for commercial herds, studies have shown Johne’s-positive cows wean calves that can weigh over 100 pounds less than calves born to negative cows, are less likely to breed back and will definitely bring less at the sale barn as a thin open cull cow.

If you are purchasing bulls or replacements from a breeder, start asking if they test their herd for Johne’s disease and have a control program in place. Ask your veterinarian to test suspicious animals on your farm and ask them to evaluate your herd for risk areas.

In summary, the most important thing the beef industry can do now is start having an honest conversation about this costly disease.