Vaccines that control grubs and lice could offer new environmentally friendly weapons in the fight against the most common winter parasites in cattle.
Doug Colwell, a parasitologist with Agriculture Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, said a vaccine could reduce the amount of parasite-control drugs used in Canadian cattle herds.
“It’s forward-looking research to provide producers down the road with alternatives that are usable,” the Alberta researcher said.
Grub vaccines have been developed and are being refined, while the work has just begun on lice, he said. It’s a long-term project, so commercially available vaccines are not likely this year, he added.
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Vaccines would eliminate the need for costly repeat applications of drugs and reduce their “off-target effects.”
Drugs pass through the animals and into their manure, which hosts numerous insects such as flies that the drugs can kill or harm.
Colwell prefers a “biorational approach” to parasitic control that stimulates an animal’s normal immune response to control the parasite on its own.
That research has led to studies examining and identifying the bacteria that lice depend on to survive. He hopes to use that as a potential target for the vaccine.
“If you can kill the bacteria in lice, maybe you can kill or sterilize the lice.”
Colwell said pharmaceutical companies are developing few parasite control products for food animals. Their efforts focus more on products for companion animals, where markets are more lucrative and products are easier to register.
Many parasite control products are 15 years old, so resistance to the drugs is now starting to appear, he said, leaving farmers with few alternatives.
