Dairy Pest Management (arthropods)

There are 10 major arthropod pest species affecting dairy cattle including six fly and four louse species. Damage inflicted by arthropods falls into two categories: direct damage and indirect damage. Direct damage includes blood loss, introduction of salivary secretions, tissue damage, reduced value of saleable animal products, and annoyance. Indirect damage includes transferring pathogenic organisms and decreased vigor. Pest management procedures follow integrated approaches discussed elsewhere in this publication. To be successful, the tactics utilized must disrupt the arthropod life cycle at several places. At any given time, cattle can be infested with several species of arthropods and as parasite levels rise and fall with the seasons, animals often experience compensatory gains offsetting earlier damage. However, when considering losses in milk production, compensatory gains are not applicable. Determining which species is responsible for a given amount of damage is difficult. A consensus on the losses as well as the costs attributed to arthropod infestations on dairy cattle is not available. The monetary figures presented here have been estimated for all cattle (beef and dairy) in the United States (1). Most studies investigating the effects of individual parasite species have been limited to beefcattle.