• Purchasing bulls free from JD.
• Ensuring calves do not graze in hospital paddocks.
• Ensuring young stock are at least 2 years old prior to contact with adult stock.

The greatest body of evidence regarding the management of Johne’s disease in cattle comes from the US, where 22% of the dairy herd and 8% of the beef herd have been reported as having the disease. Management programmes designed to control the disease are steadily reducing the prevalence of disease in the US flock (e.g. Minnesota JD Control programme1,2)

Basic prevention strategies utilised in the US include:

• Isolating young stock from contaminated environments. 
• Reducing newborns' exposure to manure from adult animals by separation.
• Bedding in maternity pens should be changed between cows.
• Avoiding manure contamination of feed and water sources.
• Using colostrum from Johne’s negative animals and not pooling colostrum.
• Identifying and removing super-shedders from the herd. 
• A super-shedder sheds MAP in their faeces at extremely high levels, up to 10,000,000 bacteria per gram of manure.  This can result in false negatives for cows that are not truly infected, but which may appear to be so due to consumption of the organism from the environment, that simply “passes through” their systems.3