Johne's Disease has been frequently reported from organized herds of government, semi-government and state government (Mathur et al., 1981, Kumar et al., 1988, Koul et al., 1989, Sharma et al., 1987, Srivastava and More, 1987, Singh et al., 1998, Ram Kumar et al., 1998, Tripathi and Parihar, 1999, Goswami et al., 2000) and in farmer's herd from slaughtered goats (Kumar, 2004) in India. JD is endemic in goats, sheep, cattle and buffaloes population of the country (Singh et al., 1996, Kumar, 2002, Singh et al., 2007 a, b, c, d, Kumar et al., 2007 a and b, Yadav et al., 2007). However, Information on outbreaks of JD in goats is not available in India. Study aimed to diagnose a rare outbreak of severe weakness and diarrhea in a newly established commercial goat farm using indigenous ELISA kit and fecal culture and suggest possible control measures.

Fecal and serum samples were collected randomly from kids (15) and adult goats (20) belonging to a herd of 100 goats suffering with weakness and diarrhoea. Fecal samples were processed for isolation of MAP using HEYM with mycobactin J. Serum samples were screened by indigenous ELISA kit. Of the 35 fecal samples, 77.1% were positive in culture in less than 2 months of incubation. Individually, 80.0% young kids (3-6 months of age) and 75.0% adult goats were positive. None of the samples were contaminated during incubation and no fast growing mycobacterial colonies appeared. Majority of the cultures were pauci-bacillary (65.7%) and only 11.4% were multibacillary or in super shedder category. Of the 35 goats, 40.0% were sero-positive in plate ELISA kit. Comparative evaluation of fecal culture with ELISA kit showed that fecal culture detected, 27 (77.1%), goats as compared to 14 (40.0%) sero-postived in ELISA kit. Independently, 48.5% and 11.4% cases were detected by fecal culture and ELISA kit, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of plate ELISA kit was 37.0% and 50.0%, respectively. Diminished humoral response due to anergy in advanced clinical stage may be responsible for lower sensitivity of ELISA. Outbreak was confirmed as that of Johne's disease caused by MAP. For control, farmer was advised vaccination-using indigenous MAP strain, which was highly fruitful and improved the condition of animals, when again visited the herd after 2 months.