Jean K. Elder

A survey concerning cattle tick control in Queensland. 2. Managerial aspects which indirectly affect tick control.

This paper reports those findings concerning property management from the 1977-78 survey of tick control in Queensland, which could effect efficient tick control and also presents a profile of the cattle industry in the tick infested areas at the time of the survey. The average property size was 400 hectares and the average number of cattle on the properties was 726.4. Larger properties tended to have crossbred Zebu cattle. The average number of paddocks per property was 7.2. The most popular stabilised crossbred Zebu breed was Santa Gertrudis but the most common type of cattle was crossbred Zebu, which was on 30% of properties. There were negligible numbers of crossbreed Zebu cattle on dairy properties. Control of other external parasites may result in additional dippings in areas where they occur. Although fence maintenance appears to be carried out regularly it is clear that the effectivness of tick control measures, such as pasture spelling and dipping which depend on clean musters, could be affected by the occurrence of fire, floods and other natural disasters on half the properties in the tick infested areas. There is no evidence from results in the survey that attention to other farming activities (mainly cropping) prevents producers from paying sufficient attention to tick control. In fact cropping often provides the opportunity for producers to rotate cattle around pastures. Producers appear to consider the cost of tick control is a burden and they expect assistance from the Government to reduce these costs. They do not appear to have considered how they can reduce the costs themselves.