For one thing, it’s good to review what’s available for treatment and prevention and what could happen if they were not allowed.

As well, new diseases will inevitably arise, requiring new treatments and the funding into their research and development.

It is with a heavy heart that I heard recently of the many agricultural federal research facilities that will be shut down.

How do we test new products or develop new varieties of plants and test and validate growing or harvesting techniques without qualified researchers trying to answer these difficult questions and work doggedly to make the livestock industry safe?

The two protozoal diseases I am referring to are coccidiosis and cryptosporidiosis.

Coccidiosis was once a very common disease in slightly older calves and feedlot animals.

In the last several years of practice, it was getting rarer and rarer to see a case.

The big question is, why the improvement?

Both protozoal diseases have a life cycle that starts with an egg or oocyst, and then lives in the intestinal cells, destroying them before the eggs start to appear in the manure.

Coccidia

With coccidian, this whole life cycle takes about a month.

Again, prevention or control starts with treating before animals are likely to start to contract it.

This condition can be largely prevented with ionophore products such as rumensin or bovatech provided in complete feed rations in the feedlot or put into minerals for calves or mixed into pellets.

All cows carry some coccidia, but it is the calves that get clinical disease.

Cows will increase shedding before calving, which is why producers used to treat their cow herd to prevent shedding and infection of newborns.

This all has changed considerably in the last 10 to 20 years.

A product called toltrazuril (Baycox) was developed as a specific preventive for coccidiosis. It is given more as a preventive long withdrawal, but also used on young animals, and specifically for cocci in pigs and sheep as well as calves.

Veterinarians often prescribe antimicrobials such as potentiated sulphonamides If cocci get out of control, but by then the damage has already been done and calves suffer a big setback.

Prevention is key so that less antimicrobials are used.

My big worry is that in these antibiotic-free programs, there was talk about ionophores falling into disregard, which would be a very bad move long term.

Practices such as manure cleaning help with biosecurity, of course, but the oocysts are very small and very resistant in the environment and so a very pesky thing to totally eliminate.

Crypto

The other protozoal disease is cryptosporidiosis, which these days commonly comes to mind if you hear of a bad scours outbreak in a vaccinated herd.

Very bad diarrhea in slightly older calves is hard to treat and recover from and is very contagious because one clinical case quickly spews out millions of eggs that other calves can ingest.

This is also the disease that people can catch from handling calves, and many a technician at a clinic or farm worker has contracted crypto over the years.

That’s another good reason to prevent this disease.

It is likely the most common zoonosis that people contract from cattle besides ringworm.

Veterinarians in Manitoba figured out about 20 years ago that toltrazuril works to prevent cocci and crypto.

They started compounding the toltrazuril in capsules for oral use and these diseases pretty much disappeared.

I don’t know what percentage of herds have been prescribed this treatment, but it is quite high in many beef-producing regions across Western Canada.

It is now compounded by an Alberta company for veterinarians.

It is given as an oral pill at birth or shortly after.

This is something that your veterinarian would have to prescribe.

Toltrazuril is the best example I can give of an extra label usage of a product to treat disease that went viral (word of mouth) between veterinarians.

This also means our friends in the medical profession don’t have to treat crypto in people.

The disease is still around and recently made the news when it got into the water supply of an Indigenous community.

It would be nice if research could eventually be done to allow on-label use of this medication.

However, in light of the recent closure of federal research facilities, we may need more products to go extra label through our veterinarians, which puts a lot of pressure on them.

The good news is that these medications are used only on young animals, so the long withdrawal requirement becomes a moot point because they are six months or more away from slaughter.

If you have had trouble with either crypto or cocci — even one case — ask your veterinarian for their thoughts on using toltrazuril in its many forms.

We need to all think more about timing for both lice and internal worms so that control products can do the best job possible.

We can also save money if treatment proves unnecessary.

Easier methods are being developed to determine parasite levels to make the treat-or-not-treat decision easier.

With lice, kill rates are better if we wait until well into the winter.

They become active in the winter, so a warmer fall will see them emerge later. This is why we will see lice outbreaks in a very cold winter, especially if treatment was too early.

It’s also why we don’t have lice problems when the winters are milder.

There are only a few good products left for lice control, and they are getting fewer all the time. The products that are left have very specific treatment application methods and times.

In the old days, before good treatments were available, producers would cull animals that carried an obvious lice burden.

Over time, producers essentially began selecting for a type of genetic resistance to lice.

Cattle oiler products are good for lice and flies, but while lice are controlled in the winter, flies are managed in the summer when populations become high enough.

The U.S. cattle sector has fewer problems with lice because of the warmer climate, but that means more issues with internal worms, which aren’t as much of a problem in Western Canada.

They are the worst in sheep, but bison are also bad.

With bison, I have seen worms kill some animals if they aren’t dewormed.

We see pockets of high incidence, and to complicate matters, some species of worms are more harmful than others.

Also, some species don’t lay as many eggs, so finding even a few species of certain types is significant.

Work done by Merck Animal Health in North America and Dr. John Gilleard found that an egg count of 10 per gram could have a significant impact on weight gain.

As well, the higher the worm count, the harder the animal’s immune system must work at getting rid of them, making them more susceptible to other infections. We call this co-morbidity, which can increase the incidence of conditions such as pneumonia and coccidiosis.

Fecal counts are a good way to determine worm loads in a herd, which are made easier by pooling samples done at the lab.

If done properly, a few pooled results can provide a good idea of what the worm population is in a herd.

These are best done in the fall when worm results will be highest.

It also gives producers a really good idea of how contaminated or not contaminated their pastures are.

Even if these fecal results are done every few years, it still lets producers know what they’re up against.

Maybe cattle can miss deworming for a year or maybe the count is high.

There are management strategies that can help eliminate worm burdens or keep them low.

Pasturing on higher grass (greater than six inches) ensures that cattle will rarely come in contact with the larval stages of worms.

Our cold Canadian winters kill a high percentage of the overwintering larvae, and dessication in the summer also kills many.

With bison, increasing the time between rotational grazing is helpful.

Also, producers could take a crop of hay and leave a year in between grazing, which is even more beneficial for removing worms.

Besides the pour-on products, there are others that can be put in the drinking water, fed or put in the minerals in the summer.

There is also a product that has a double release. The only problem here is that the first release may be wasted if cattle were treated the previous winter.

Spending some money doing fecal counts and parasite checks may allow producers to skip deworming. This then lessens the likelihood of resistance.

Remember the 80-20 rule: 80 per cent of the parasites are in 20 per cent of the animals, increasing the importance of determining the right 20 percent to treat.

Also if checking for parasites, it’s best to check older calves in the fall or yearlings. Cows will likely almost always have much lower counts than the older calves or yearlings.

Some clinics will do parasite checks in-house.

It’s best to avoid unnecessary deworming and lice control.

We need to use the products we have properly because I don’t see any new ones coming down the line.

There are sporadic reports of liver flukes and lungworms, and if they are diagnosed in your area, it would be a good idea to talk to a veterinarian about how and when to treat.

Changes in how parasites are managed may see less product used overall.

As well, ensuring products are used at the right times and when needed should lead to better control.

Roy Lewis works as a veterinarian in Alberta.