Ticked Off: Cracking the Code for a Cattle Tick Vaccine.
Heavy infestation of cattle ticks can cause blood loss, tick fever and in some cases death. If left unchecked, cattle ticks can significantly reduce milk production and cattle live-weight gain. Cattle ticks are most often spread when they are attached to a host animal. The infestation of cattle ticks can be controlled to varying degrees by using tick-resistant cattle, treatments with chemicals, pasture spelling or a combination of these methods.
Jason Strong from Meat and Livestock Australia says “we are involved in tick research and we have been for quite a long time.” He also says that ticks are a huge expense to the cattle industry “They’ve been a big problem for a long time [sic] – there’s been a number of studies on the impact on the industry, and there’s different numbers, but around about 146 million dollars”.
Professor Ala Tabor is working closely with the University of Queensland in Gatton that facilitate the trials, and is testing the various vaccines on steers. “I hope to develop a vaccine that will work across the world” says Tabor Lew.
All of the information on this page and the original Landline interview can be viewed: Ticked Off