Is the scrapies eradicatin program shelved for now? Someone told me it was today.I have tried to call the number on th web sight and get no answer. Does anyone know anything about this.

-- Bonnie (none@thistime.com), February 13, 2002

Answers

Got my answer and tags are on the way. Thanks

-- Bonnie (none@thistime.com), February 14, 2002.

I have been searching for answers myself and found 2 articles that seem to help. Here are the urls for them: http://www.boergoats.com/articles/texasanimalhealthcommission/scrapier equirements.htm

http://animalagriculture.org/scrapie/NIAA%20Producer%20Kit.pdf

Maybe they will help someone else that is trying to figure this deal out. Susan

-- Susan North tx Panhandle (arniesusan@antden.com), April 23, 2002.

I'm wanting to add a couple of dairy goats to our flock of sheep and house them together. I've pretty well figured out how to do this logistically, in terms of supplying the different nutritional requirements, avoiding geep, etc.

The remaining hurdle was the new USDA scrapie tagging requirements. Goats kept with sheep MUST BE ID'ed the same as sheep. Hard enough to keep tags in the ears of sheep long term, but probably tags would get torn out in the more active and inquisitive goat's ears. USDA says you can tattoo registered goats with your USDA scrapie ID number. Problem is, no goat registry I had contacted would allow me to use my USDA ID as a tattoo in my goat's ears, and so I would still have to tag, or get a milk cow instead. Until I found a little fledgling registry called the International Dairy Goat Registry. They WILL ALLOW me to tattoo my USDA ID in my goat's ears.

The IDGR doesn't sponsor shows, but I don't care about showing. They do have a milk test, and they will register any of the dairy breeds. While I wouldn't be able to sell my stock to show people, no show people would want to buy from me anyway, since I've no intention of showing. The main thing is I'd be able to keep goats without tagging the beasties. And, I guess if someone wanted to buy a dairy goat from me at some point, I'd be able to give them a pedigree, papers, and possibly milk test data. Probably most folks interested in buying a dairy goat aren't interested in papers, but maybe in milk test data.

Anyhow, for what it's worth, the IDGR is willing to work with shepherds. :-)

Their url is: http://www.goat-idgr.com/

-- Shepherd Lady (none@spamcatchers.com), June 29, 2002.

Call the Aphis office or USDA about this before you put tags in the ears. When I called, what they did was to write down the tattoo sequence that I use with ADGA. I only need to use the scrapie ID# if the animal is not tattooed with my ADGA tattoo. For example, a meat kid going to auction would get the scrapie ID #, a registered doeling just gets tattooed as usual. You also need to keep records on who you have sold, to whom, when, and the tattoos on the animals sold.

If they will not allow you to use your ADGAtattoo on the registered animals, and so far everyone on the goat lists says that this is what they are doing also, but you do have to have your tattoo registered with the USDA- then maybe you can put the scrapie ID# in the tail if you have Nubians or Swiss breed goats? The ADGA tattoos usually go in the ears so this shoudl work?

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), June 30, 2002.