Sanitary involvements of management of colostrum in caprine herds

Abstract

Colostrum represents the first source of immunity for the ruminants, and thus determines its resistance to disease during the first hours of life. However, colostrum intake could be itself the way of transmition of several diseases, as paratuberculosis, caprine arthritis-encephalytis, or micoplasmosis like contagious agalactia. This risk could be avoided by means of an artificial rearing program which should include correct management practices for colostrum. Between them, the treatment of colostrum represents a critical point. In this sense, thermic treatments have been used to higienitize colostrum, showing different results about microorganism viability. Nevertheless, it should be considered the negative effect of these treatments over nutritional components of colostrum, particularly the loss of immunoglobulines. As an alternative to thermic treatments, there have been experimentally assayed other methods as the addition of sodium dodecyl sulphate, which inactivates AIDS virus in breast milk, and others as liophilization or high pression methods. In this works, apart from the effect of the treatment should be also taken into account its economical viability and on-farm feasibility.