blood tb test

David, do NOT use the blood test. If you are testing use the skin test. Oklahoma has had 12-15 false test that I know of. Dr. Roach suggested to ONLY use the skin test.

Did blood test for tb had one doe come back as suspect. We waited 30 days & our vet drew blood again test this time came back fine.

I sure hope this blood test works because I am not putting my animals through another tb skin test.....ever again.......hopefully it will be perfected or eliminated (wishful thinking) in three years when I am due to test again!

I think if you had to test one or wo animals again because of a false test that would be better then having to look at all your deer the second time (in 72 hours). That was horable.

We all had false positives with the skin test also...I am not aware that the false positive rate is any higher with the blood test than it is with the skin test. The difference seems to be with the number of days of quarantine. With the blood test they are quarantining a herd for 30 days before a retest. With the skin test, we had to have the USDA vet come oout within 10 days for a retest....as long as a person knows the 30 day quarantine is a possiblity, get any animals moved that you have sold prior to conducting the TB blood test and you should be fine.

The problems I see are that the blood test is the be all end all. If two bad test from blood are taken then your animals are DEAD. With the skin test, you have two skin test and then a blood test. Our state vet advised us to NOT use the blood test. I love the idea of it but I'm not convinced its all it should be yet. Just glad I still have a year and a half to go til my next one. Good luck to all

years ago I had an animal that was suspect on both of the skin tests. I had to chose to either kill the animal to prove he did not have TB or I had to be quarantined for 90 days. I chose to take the indemnification for the animal and had the animal killed. That is one nice thing about TB is that there is indemnification for that disease. The feds paid $3000 and the state of Wisconsin added another $1500 so I received a total of $4500 for that one animal. I know that isn't the best if you have a high dollar animal, but that is a choice each farm must make. From what I am hearing with the blood test, if an animal is a suspect with the first blood test, USDA does a second test with the same sample using a test that is better than the first, but more costly. If the animal is suspect to both tests, you can draw another blood sample in 30 days. I am not up to date on the next step, but I would guess it would be similar to the 90 day quarantine of the skin test before another blood test can be taken???



Every farm needs to decide what is best for them....the cost of the blood test is much higher than the skin test, but not having to handle the animals twice is worth quite a bit in my mind.