The diagnosis of paratuberculosis is a major problem. As part of investigating diagnostic strategies for paratuberculosis infection, serial results from various diagnostic methods in progressive experimental infection in goats has been evaluated. 23 goat kids were divided into three groups: the infected, contact and control, comprising 10, 5 and 8 goats, respectively. Animals of the infected group were orally inoculated on 7 occasions after every 2 days with 5 ml of inoculum containing 2 x 10⁹ Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis per ml. Lymphoycte proliferation test using johnin PPD detected paratuberculosis infection from 60 days post infection onwards. Johnin PPD was found to be a better antigen for the proliferative assays as compared with sonicated antigen. Delayed type hypersensitivity also detected an early infection but found to be non-reliable and non-specific. Faecal smear examination after staining with Ziehl Neelsen's (ZN) technique detected more goats as positive than bacterial culture and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay. The PCR assay was found to be a better method than bacterial culture and had shown better sensitivity in the tissue samples as compared with feces. Tissue impression smear examination after staining with ZN technique has same detection rate as the bacterial culture and fecal PCR. Lipoarabinomanan (LAM) based ELISA was better than indirect ELISA and agar gel immunodiffusion (AGID) test, and started detecting goats from 150 days post infection onwards. Indirect ELISA was found to be more sensitive than AGID test. Histological examination was confirmatory and detected 5 goats as positive. The result indicates that no single test provides an accurate diagnosis in the early stages of infection. As the disease progresses, ELISA could be a sensitive method for the screening of animals.