Costs of disease are usually thought of in terms of animals that die. However, those are usually only a small portion of the true cost of disease. Animals that become temporarily disabled from disease have to be treated which means veterinary fees, medications, feed, housing and labor. During their disease they will not gain weight or they will not reproduce which means lost productivity. The good news is that at some point they will recover and go back to work. The bad news is that these animals never really catch up with their contemporaries and will be poor producers forever. They won’t weigh as much at slaughter, their carcass won’t grade as well, there will be more condemnations and carcass trim and of course you will need to hold the animal until all drug residues are gone. Animals that are permanently disabled from disease require the same costs in veterinary fees, medication, housing and labor to treat but unfortunately, these animals will never return to production and will either die or be euthanized. In this case we end up with a dead animal on which we spent a lot of time and money prior to its death. The time and resources spent with sick animals could be used more productively taking care of healthy animals.

In addition to production costs there are also costs associated with loss of markets. If you are selling fat goat kids to a local slaughter house and one of them has a big CL abscess then you have probably lost that market. If you are selling breeding animals locally to farmers and word gets out that after buying one of your does several farms experienced abortion storms then you have probably lost that market. If you are selling nationally or internationally and one of your does tests positive for any of the federally or internationally regulated diseases (e.g., Brucella, Tuberculosis) you have just been removed from that market.

There are some intangibles associated with the presence of disease in a herd. These are loss of reputation and loss of pride in your operation. It just isn’t as much fun to raise goats when there is always one limping, or dead or when people just think that your goats aren’t good enough.

Obviously, the cost of disease is high but many of these costs are “hidden costs.” Costs associated with prevention programs are usually very obvious costs. Prevention programs always entail increased labor, increased capital outlays for biosecure facilities, increased expenses for disinfectants and disposables. Somehow it is always easier to spend money to treat sick animals then it is to spend money to prevent them from being exposed to disease. The question then becomes not whether you need a biosecurity program but how much of a program are you willing to afford?

At this point you need to sit down and make a list of the diseases that you know you have in your herd already and then write a list of diseases that you don’t want in your herd. (Table 1, below, is a list of common critical diseases of goats.) Then picture your farm as it is now and picture your farm with those new diseases in it. What is the value to you of keeping those diseases out? Now picture your farm and list all of the ways those diseases could enter your farm. How biosecure are you? Is it time to step up to the next level? If it is then you need to focus on a biosecurity program that is cost effective for your farm.

Table 1. Critical Contagious Diseases of Goats

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