Managing Ticks in Cattle

Ticks are small blood-sucking parasites that live on blood from larger animals like cattle, goats, dogs, deer, sheep and other mammals, although they may also attach themselves on humans. Ticks feed on the warm blood of their hosts because they need the nutrients from blood in order to grow, develop and lay eggs.

Without blood, ticks can’t do any of this. Mr Benard Kebba, a veterinary officer in Kayunga District, says a tick is an enduring parasite that can take its time moving on the body of its host, until it finds a suitable place where it can begin to suck blood.
Ticks stay in low grass and sometimes trees, waiting for a susceptible host to walk by and if they attach themselves to a host, they will find their way to a warm, moist and dark place on the body like the crotch, armpit, around the anus, ear, or udder where they will insert a probe into the skin and begin sucking blood.

Some ticks secrete a material on which to fasten themselves to the host and after sucking blood it detaches itself from its host and falls to the ground.

Like other human beings or animals, a tick can also starve to death if it doesn’t get food. However, a tick might take several days without feeding and still remain alive.

Ticks are black or brown in colour and are of two major types namely; the soft tick and hard tick. The primary difference between the two is the shield-like coat on hard ticks which soft ticks do not possess and instead have a soft, leathery exoskeleton.

Ticks multiply rapidly during rainy or cool seasons. It is the reason why the incidence of ticks is higher during rainy seasons than during hot or long droughts.

Mr Kebba says that this is because high temperatures tend to destroy ticks and all eggs laid on the ground or in the soil. A female adult tick lays between 2,000 and 3,000 eggs in cracks or holes in the ground.

A tick begins its life as an egg. When the egg hatches, a larva emerges. The larva lacks legs but looks a lot like an adult tick. Its first host is usually a small mammal as it has to find a host in order to grow.

After feeding, the larva drops to the ground to digest its food and begin to grow. After one to three weeks, the larva molts and becomes a nymph.

An adult tick has only one job, that is to reproduce. In hard ticks, the female attaches to a host and feeds, often for more than 24 hours, before mating.

The male tick feeds before mating as well, but it is usually a fraction of the size of the engorged female when the mating takes place. Often, the male dies after mating, and the female dies after laying.

Mr Kebba says that these parasites are blood feeders that cause anaemia in animals that are highly infested. Their bites also cause tick-borne diseases like Lyme disease, which is a potentially serious bacterial infection, transmitted through certain species of ticks.

Lyme disease
Lyme disease manifests itself in many ways and, if left untreated, may progress through several stages. The disease is difficult to diagnose clinically because early symptoms often mimic the flu; that is, fatigue, headache, stiffness or pain in neck, muscles or joints, fever, or swollen glands. The most definitive early symptom is a gradually expanding circular or oval-shaped red rash.

East Coast Fever
Another tick-borne disease is East Coast Fever locally known as amakebe in Luganda. Symptoms of this disease include high temperature and fever. Initial signs of the disease include anorexia, pyrexia and enlargement of the draining lymph nodes and diarrhoea.

Although East Coast Fever can cause a chronic wasting disease, most infections are fatal within 18-30 days. It can be treated by injecting the sick animal with Parvaquone.

Anaplasmosis 
Other tick-borne diseases include anaplasmosis. A cow with this disease has high temperature and passes out ball-like dung which looks like goat droppings.

Babesiosis
Babesiosis is another tick-borne disease. Cattle with this disease passes out blood in its urine, has fever and high temperatures.

Mr William Ssebowa, an Animal Husbandry Officer in Kayunga District, says all these tick-borne diseases are fatal if not quickly treated.

They also cause weight loss and reduction in milk production in cattle. This is because a cow infected with one of these diseases neither feeds nor drinks well.

Prevention of the pest
He adds that ticks can be eradicated through dipping or spraying of animals with acaricides such as Protaid, Amitix, Alfapor and Decatix and many others.

Those farmers with small numbers of animals can use a knapsack sprayer to spray acaricides on animals infected with ticks but those with big herds are advised to use the dipping method as this minimises wastage of the acaricides. 
Dipping provides the quick and effective way of killing ticks from animals because it ensures that acaricides spread on all parts of the animals.

Mr Ssebowa further explains that the dosage rate of the acaricide to be used depends on the prescription of manufacture of the acaricide.

The farmers are advised to spray or dip their animals weekly to eradicate ticks but if the tick incidence is high, spraying or dipping intervals may be increased to two or three times a week.

Before spraying or dipping cattle or any other animal, it’s advisable to give them water first to reduce chances of animals drinking acaricides when they are thirsty.

Dipping or spraying animals is recommended to be carried out during cool hours and when rain is not expected so that rain water will not wash off the acaricides from the animal before they kill the ticks.

Mr Ssebowa also says that control on animal movement or quarantine can control spread of tick-borne diseases and ticks themselves because ticks don’t move long distances.