Trichomoniasis or “Trich” is a sexually transmitted disease of cattle. It is common in northern Australia, but increased trading of northern breeder cows over the last few years has led to an increase in NSW, including our area recently.
The protozoa causes infertility/early abortion, and infected bulls become long term carriers to spread infection.
Currently there is no treatment or vaccine prevention.
Key management factors to reduce risk:
Stock-proof boundary fencing
Only buy virgin bulls
Avoid buying cull cows and heifers as future breeders, stick to PTIC females or unjoined heifers as they are much safer options. If you do buy empty older females to join, keep those cows and bulls isolated from home breeders as their own management group.
Preg test early so any fertility problems can be identified and diagnosed.
Always cull empties after preg test as best practice control for all the main reproductive diseases: vibrio, lepto, pestivirus, neospora and trich.
The best way to definitely diagnosis trich is a prepuce sample from older herd bulls. This is easy to collect at annual bull testing as an add-on screen.
To read more, click here for the NSW DPI factsheet.
Don’t forget about vibrio when thinking about cattle STIs. It has the same risk factors and prevention points, plus the vaccine Vibrovax for bulls (and high risk females), and is more prevalent in NSW than trichomonas.
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