Bovine Coccidiosis is a gastrointestinal illness in cattle and clinical signs of the disease are generally seen in calves from three weeks, to nine months of age.
At a recent ABP Demo Farm open day, MSD Animal Health Ireland’s ruminant and equine veterinary manager Sarah Higgins gave an overview of bovine coccidiosis in calves.
While Coccidiosis has not yet been an issue in the calves on the ABP Demo Farm, it is an issue that farms in the business of rearing calves should always be vigilant of.
“The parasite Coccidia is a spore and what happens is it can actually survive for up to two years on land and in sheds,” the vet said at the event.
“It’s very persistent and difficult to get rid of. It’s a hardy spore like the ones that cause crypto scours.”
Exposure
However, Higgins contends that some level of exposure is good.
“If you put a batch of calves out on pasture, you want them to be exposed to some level of Coccidia and the reason is you want a bit of natural exposure and natural immunity developing,” she said.
“Most calves will graze around where there could be Coccidia and be perfectly fine, but in cases where the infectious pressure is too high for their immunity to deal with, that’s when they present with coccidiosis,” she added.
She explained that calves with Coccidiosis “will present with the classical scour, generally a bloody scour, if they’re bad enough, you’d see them doing a lot of forcing.”
“The little spore goes into the lining of the gut in the small and large intestine and replicates in there and bursts open and that’s where you get the blood coming through in the scour,” she said.
“It’s not just the clinical signs, if you have a batch of 50 calves you might have five with the scour but there’s more sub-clinical cases and they will have reduced feed conversion efficiency (FCE) and reduced average daily gain (ADG) as well.”
Farmers that suspect an outbreak of Coccidiosis or notice ill-thrift in their calves should contact their local veterinary practitioner to discuss the symptoms and identify a possible solution.
It is important calves suffer no setbacks in their first season at grass if the are to reach their target weight in time for winter housing.