Perhaps all of you fellow Michigan residents are better informed than I am, but I am posting this just in case so you don't receive an ugly surprise like I did. It is now illegal to transport cattle or goats except to a terminal facility (slaughter house)without appropriate TB free status papers. You can transport them to an auction place where they HAVE to be sold as slaughter animals. I just didn't think it applied to young baby goats and I was not prepared. I just had to sell 7 gorgeous buck kids for slaughter when I thought they could be bought by 4-H kids for market projects.

Also, effective January 1 of 2003 all goats and cattle MUST have been tested or you are in violation of the law. Get tested folks, even if you do not intend to buy or sell!!!!

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), April 20, 2002

Answers

Also the state pays the fee for this testing. A good site on the subject is www.bovinetb.com Our milk cow was tested last year, with a clean bill of health.

-- Suzanne (weir@frontiernet.net), April 20, 2002.

The state will only pay for the first whole herd test on goats or beef cattle. We have a herd of Pygmy goats show & sell in several different states. Rules will very state to state what they except, we found it easist to become USDA certified. Which requires a whole herd test negative 2 years in a row, & yearly test there after. Also remember for goats scrapie requirements are also in affect, info can be found on the USDA site.

-- Gail Brinkley (dinsmore@qtm.net), April 20, 2002.

Diane, your're in VA right? if so these are the requiremnts for TB testing for accrediation. You must test 2 yrs on a row negative and then you are accredited. Its fairly easy and we did it because we show a lot. Costs a kings ransom to test before every show. Also, health papers will state TB status of your herd, can't move them if they are not tested for TB/brucellois too.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), April 20, 2002.

Does that mean if we move to Michigan we can't bring our livestock (sheep and goats) until they've been cleared for 2 years?

-- CJ (sheep@katahdins.net), April 20, 2002.

No, it doesn't mean you have to wait 2 yrs to move your goats. Thats only if you want the accrediation. You can still move them if you have your vet do the TB and Brucellosis tests. In VA they were required for health papers to move livestock to outside states.

what accrediation does is save you money if you show and travel to a lot of shows like we do. It saves $ on doing the TB test every time you need to show, etc.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), April 20, 2002.

Accreditation, certification, registration - the first hook in the catching of slaves.

-- charles (cr@dixienet.com), April 21, 2002.

I am in Michigan and this has nothing to do with accrediation; although in the counties that no TB has been found at this point one test is enough. Many Michigan counties in northern Michigan have TB running rampant among the white tail deer herd and now into beef herds up there. Michigan has lost it's TB free status and other states are quaranteeing us, so the government has declared that every beef animal, dairy animal...including goats, must be tested for TB by the Jan l 2003. In the "active" counties no one can move any livestock out of the county without a certificate of whole farm TB negative test for two six month periods. No beef animal or dairy animal is to be bought our sold without TB free status unless it is to a terminal facility (slaughterhouse) or at auction to be slaughtered within 5 days.

You may move animals in to Michigan..........just not out with out the proper papers. So you see, it is not about saving money or anything like that.......it is the LAW. The law in Michigan is changing as the situation warrants, which is why I posted this. I was totally unaware that the law had changed so much in a year. This has nothing to do with the scabies program.....it is a Michigan TB law. We can use the same tags that are given at the time of the TB test as our tags of record for the scabies tracking program. Registered animals that have been tattooed need not be tagged (same as scabies program)

And yes, if we were to have a paranoid bent, this would be particularly disturbing!!!!

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), April 21, 2002.

Amazing the response from Government with Animals...

My friend died from TB...a long 9 month and Bankrupting hospital stay. He contracted TB from a worker at a restaurant he routinely frequented for lunch....

This worker was an Illegal Chinese Immigrant...who was active TB...

But then of course our Government NEVER checks ANY foreign person entering this country for ANY disease....no matter HOW deadly.

-- BC (katnip364@aol.com), April 25, 2002.