Epidemiology of Ostertagia ostertagi in weaner-yearling cattle

Epidemiologic events in the life cycle of Ostertagia ostertagi are best known in the weaner-yearling phase of cattle development throughout the concentrated cattle-rising areas of the world. Animal and pasture management demands placed on this age class are greater than for suckling calves and adult stock in either beef or dairy breeds. This fact alone would likely account for a higher prevalence of clinical and subclinical disease in weaner-yearlings. Additionally, the developing immune response provides relatively early protection against intestinal genera such as Cooperia and Oesophagostomum, but is delayed against Ostertagia ostertagi and Trichostrongylus axei. Both Type I and Type II disease may occur within the weaner-yearling stage. Factors affecting population changes of Ostertagia ostertagi have been described as extrinsic, i.e. weather-climate and grazing management, and intrinsic or host factors, i.e. age, sex, immune status, heredity and reproductive state. Immune status, particularly in weaner-yearlings, may be of primary importance, as affected by host and extrinsic factors. With slow development of protective immunity against Ostertagia ostertagi in calves, the possible role of immunity in both induction of inhibition and larval maturation, the potential immunopathologic involvement in pathogenesis of Type II disease, hypersensitivity to larval intake in resistant adult cows, and the reported delay of a protective response following anthelmintic prophylaxis in younger cattle, the immune response may have profound influence on epidemiologic variation through age classes. Although continual epidemiological observations from birth to early adulthood in the same cattle have not been undertaken, some notable studies in the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark have closely examined epidemiological events through first and second grazing seasons.