Supervisor: Drs. G. Keefe, S. McKenna
Thesis title: "The use of individual milk, bulk milk and environmental samples in a voluntary Johne's Disease control program"
Description of project:
Twenty-seven herds that are already enrolled on the Atlantic Johne’s Prevention Program will be studied. These herds will be strategically selected to ensure that herds with low or moderate prevalence are equally represented as compared to high prevalence herds. These herds will be sampled twice a year using both a milk and blood ELISA along with pooled fecal culture. Additionally, the same herds will have environmental cultures performed four times a year. This will continue for two years. The advantage will be that we will have data from herds with low prevalence and high prevalence, along with being able to make cross-comparison between two types of ELISA’s along with pooled and environmental fecal culture. The objective would then be to use this data to make a more valid decision on what testing modality would be the most cost efficient, convenient, yet yield reliable results for decision making with respect to Johne’s control.
