Scrapie is the most common reportable disease of goats and sheep in the United States today. Scrapie is a difficult disease to diagnose and is always fatal. It can take up to six years or more for clinical signs to appear. Scrapie is in the same category as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or “mad cow disease,” and chronic wasting disease (CWD) of deer and elk. There is no evidence that scrapie or CWD can spread to humans, either through consuming the meat or dairy products or by handling infected animals; however, the industry can still be subject to the negative public perceptions affecting the cattle industry. Scrapie is a disease of both sheep and goats; however, it is rare in goats.
Symptoms: Scrapie is spread through direct contact between sheep and goats. The cause is an abnormal prion protein. It is transferred through contact with the placentas or fetal fluids of infected sheep. The prion first invades the lymph nodes and then the nervous system.
Clinical signs have not been seen in goats less than 2 years of age and usually progress slowly over a period of one to six months. Animals suspected to have scrapie will show characteristic changes in gait, tremors of the head and neck, behavioral changes, lip smacking, loss of coordination, increased sensitivity to noise, rubbing against fences or feed bunks, skin/ wool biting, and progressive weight loss with a normal appetite. Genetic testing can be used in sheep to identify a scrapie susceptibility gene; however, such a gene has not yet been identified in goats.
Videos of clinical signs may be viewed and information on the eradication program is available at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/animal_diseases/scrapie/
Also to learn more on scrapie click this link http://www.extension.org/wiki/Scrapie
