(Radio Iowa) – A cattle disease carried by ticks is now confirmed in Iowa for the first time in a herd of cows in southeast Iowa. Iowa State University Extension veterinarian Grant Dewell says the Theileria parasite has slowly moved from the eastern U-S. “It’s a protozoa that infects the blood cells and causes the destruction of blood cells, so it can cause some pretty severe signs of anemia and things like that in susceptible cattle,” Dewell says. It is spread by the Asian Longhorned Tick.  “This tick doesn’t act like our other ticks we’re used to. You know, typically we may see four or five ticks on an animal and with this Asian Longhorn tick, we can see a thousand ticks and it’s obvious that they’re they’re infested with the ticks. You don’t have to look very hard, you just see all these ticks on them,” he says. “So it’s a tick that reproduces rapidly.”

He says the main prevention is tick control and getting rid of them. “We don’t have any antiprotozoal drugs that we can use in cattle, so we’re we’re pretty much, if the cattle get sick, we’re going to provide some supportive care,” he says. Dr. Dewell says the cattle are not going to want to move, so you have to keep food and water in front of them. He says for a valuable cow, like a prized bull, they might do some blood transfusions. Dewell says this tick doesn’t have a taste for human blood, and sticks to certain animals. “Like cattle, deer, sheep. And so our white tailed deer are going to be moving it around,” Dewell says. “But we don’t typically see white tailed deer go from southern Iowa to northern Iowa, so you know, they’ll spread it from farm to farm and county to county, but it’s going to be kind of a slow progression that it’s gonna occur.”

Dewell says the disease has been in Missouri for a couple of years and took that long to get to Iowa.