Ontario dairy industry’s Johne’s program wraps up

by SUSAN MANN

When dairy industry organizers of the voluntary Johne’s education and management assistance program began the initiative almost four years ago, they thought Johne’s wasn’t a major problem in Ontario.

And now that the program is finished organizers have confirmed the province is a low-prevalence region for Johne’s, an incurable but preventable bacterial infection that affects the intestines of ruminants. Cows infected with Johne’s produce less milk even if they don’t show signs of sickness.

“Our prevalence for Johne’s is what we expected so far,” says Dr. Ann Godkin, chair of the Ontario Johne’s program industry working group and a provincial agriculture ministry veterinarian.

Dairy industry organizers budgeted for a 75 per cent herd participation rate in the program that wrapped up last week. Instead they got a smaller number – 55 per cent of all herds in the province completing it – but there were far more cows than organizers initially thought there would be.

About 170,000 cows went through the program. “Originally we budgeted for smaller herds,” Godkin explains, but many of the province’s larger herd owners participated as well.
 
The education and management assistance program ran from January 2010 to Oct. 31 and was designed to give farmers management solutions to Johne’s. Farmers in the program meeting certain requirements were eligible for financial assistance for Johne’s testing and removal of cows highly likely to infect other cows. It was funded by industry and government and administered by the University of Guelph.

Of the participating herds, 640 or 27 per cent had at least one positive test. Seven per cent, or 167 herds, had a high titre result and 117 of those removed the high titre cows that were identified, according to a report released at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario fall regional meetings last month.

In an earlier interview, Godkin said a titre is the amount of antibody measured by the ELISA test in the cow’s milk or blood. The amount (titre) is converted to a Johne’s score. A high titre cow is one with a test score of 1.0 or higher on the blood or milk ELISA test.

Godkin says they don’t know “anything about the herds that didn’t participate, at this point.” Organizers don’t know if farmers stayed away because they didn’t think they had a problem or because they knew they did and “they were concerned about being involved in it,” she says.

Organizers also nailed what the risks are for introducing and spreading Johne’s within Ontario herds. The biggest risk factor for introducing Johne’s into a herd is buying cattle. For spreading the disease among a herd the risk factors include group calving pens and mixing colostrum from multiple cows and feeding it back to calves.

All Ontario farmers will be getting some extension materials from the program next month, including recommended guidelines for Johne’s prevention. At the Dairy Farmers of Ontario annual meeting in January, Dr. Mike Collins will discuss what’s next for Johne’s. Final program information will also be featured in a story in the December issue of The Milk Producer magazine published by Dairy Farmers of Ontario. BF