Melanie Reber
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'Battling an old enemy'
Fever tick measures threaten small ranches in Starr County February 6, 2009 - 11:46 PM Sara Perkins The Monitor
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's first customer on a Friday afternoon is a golden-brown Beefmaster bull.
As he stands for inspection in the pen behind R.Y. Livestock Sales in Rio Grande City, two USDA specialists run practiced hands over his sides, looking for a disease-bearing tick that can grow to the size of a ripe blueberry.
Satisfied, they urge the reluctant animal into a stinking, mud-brown bath; he steps uneasily down the stairs of the concrete basin and enters with a pungent splash.
The unpleasant swim is a precautionary investment for the animal's new owner, Manuel Izaguirre Jr. A tick infestation on his Circle I Ranch could spell disaster for the small business.
With the price of beef low and some big buyers wary of taking on cattle from areas under quarantine for disease-carrying pests, some South Texas cattle ranchers say their business is suffering and under-supported. And on the small, family-owned ranches that dot the region, more part-time cowboys are choosing to hang up their spurs rather than fight an old, costly enemy.
Not eradicating
For the few dozen ranchers Hidalgo, Starr, Brooks and Zapata counties whose pastures are designated "infected," the dip is a ritual repeated once every two weeks for nine months to rid their animals -- and their land -- of the Boophilus annulatus, or fever tick, a Central American pest that can carry a vicious bovine disease.
Fever ticks don't target humans. The Babesia parasites the arachnids carry cause a disease called babesiosis, or "cattle fever," attacking red blood cells in cattle and quickly killing 90 percent of the infected animals.
The same de-ticking process has been used for more than a hundred years, first to push an infestation covering the southern United States back to the Mexican border, then to contain the fever tick's occasional spread beyond the Rio Grande "buffer zone."
Small quarantines occur every few years in counties across the southern half of Texas, usually in response to mild outbreaks. But the Starr County quarantine area appears to be expanding.
Large ranching operations like Kenedy County's King Ranch have taken on fever tick infestations and won, said Horatio Ozuna Jr., one of the USDA's full-time tick control workers. But the smaller ranches that dot the northern reaches of Hidalgo, Starr and Zapata counties are generally shoestring operations -- weekend projects to supplement day jobs and make use of inherited lands, he said.
Although the USDA provides its services for free -- with the state pitching in for the pesticide -- the process of dipping incurs other costs. The most aggravating may be cattle shrinkage: Stressed out by repeatedly being rounded up and pushed through a narrow chute, cows and bulls lose muscle mass and weight.
In addition, rounding up a herd takes time and labor. If every single animal isn't dipped, its parasitic passengers can continue to spread -- but rounding up every cow is sometimes nearly impossible.
"The biggest problem right now is the ranchers don't have any workers," said Reymundo Morales, the USDA's division chief for Starr County. "We're treating cattle, but not 100 percent. We're killing ticks, but we're not eradicating them."
Stripes
At R.Y.'s weekly sale, men in jeans and hunter's camouflage gather in the shed while skittish steers, bulls, heifers and calves are paraded through a semicircular ring, prodded in through one door and shooed out through another.
From the catwalk above the pens, one can make out the greasepaint lines on shoulders and haunches, marking those animals that have been recently dipped. Sale attendees from infected premises are required to dip before moving any animal; others do so out of an abundance of caution.
Only about a third of the creatures in the pens on a recent Friday have the telltale marks.
But some of the biggest buyers aren't looking for the stripes -- and the fever tick and its hassles are spurring them consider shopping elsewhere.
Fedo Garcia, a Raymondville livestock dealer who said he purchases the majority of the animals at the sale each week, doesn't dip the animals he buys at R.Y.
"They'll do them tomorrow morning, they said, and I've got to pick them up tonight," he said.
But a Jan. 9 purchase came back to bite him. The USDA ordered him to quarantine 18 of the animals because they had discovered ticks on the seller's ranch after the sale.
He had to track the cattle down in his full pens by their markings and ear tags and isolate them. They will be on his property, eating feed and taking up space, for a month longer than he expected, while agents check them and make sure they have not dropped ticks in Garcia's pens.
"That's an expense I've got to pay out of my pocket," he said. "I'm here to help some of the local people, but my business is first, you know."
Furthermore, some buyers, especially larger ranches, are losing their tolerance for risk altogether.
"I've lost some business," Garcia said. "There's some people won't buy any cattle from here."
USDA agent Eli Bazan shakes his head at Garcia's attitude. To him, not taking the time to dip is a big gamble, one that makes Bazan's job harder in the long run. Leaning on a bar worn smooth by passing cattle at the entrance to the tick bath, he points to the ground below him.
"You want to wait here a few hours, or later for nine months?"
Old school
USDA's Starr County offices are housed in a pair of unmarked, prefabricated buildings behind R.Y.'s pens.
Inside, the record-keeping system is as dated as the d�cor. Dented filing cabinets contain years of records, reports and premise cards on which dippings, inspections and other actions are logged and dated.
A diligent assistant keeps the papers and agents in line, but in the age of computers, the binders and cards seem inefficient at best.
"You know, cows can't put their names into a computer," joked USDA agent Bazan, miming hooves hitting a keyboard.
While the record-keeping methods are a little old-school, the methods used to kill the ticks themselves were developed at the turn of the century.
Industry leaders argue the dipping and scratching method is sound but that enforcers lack the funding to push the tick back into Mexico the way they did in the early part of the century.
"We know that the method is valid," said Eldon White, chief executive officer of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. "I think the challenge is that we really don't have enough money to be able to put the people into the area to be able to contain it."
A $4.9 million grant for new personnel awarded at the beginning of the year only put a dent in the need, White said. "We needed $12 (million) to $13 million."
But at the sale yard, ranchers and buyers wonder how, in 100 years, no one has found an easier way to kill Boophilus annulatus.
"There's got to be a simpler deal," cattle broker Garcia said. "There's got to be a vaccine, something, I don't know. It's got to be settled somehow."
Garcia buys expensive deworming products for his animals, but while the products all other pests internal and external, they can't touch the fever tick.
The USDA's Morales shrugs. If the process for treating cattle were simplified, he said, it would likely become less effective.
Sam Rodriguez Jr., the president of R.Y. Livestock Sales, worries the current quarantine could represent a turning point for the local cattle industry if a modern method doesn't surface. Some ranchers may not weather the recession, with the price of cattle low and the price of caring for them headed in the other direction.
"Maybe if the government approves a long-lasting injection, that would be a solution," Rodriguez said. "There's nothing like that in the works. ... That's the only way that ranchers are going to continue to have cattle in their pastures."
A big stick
Most ranchers and inspectors say few landowners would knowingly flout the quarantine and risk spreading the tick. But a few said they suspect some cattle are moving under agents' noses.
Records for the last year show the few citations issued by USDA for illegal movement of animals concerned the two international bridges in Starr County. Violations of international import-export rules often result in animal confiscations.
No rancher in the quarantine zone has faced sanctions for violating the rules in the last year.
Morales quirks a small smile, however, remembering one rancher who angrily discontinued treatment of his infected cattle and barred inspectors from the premises.
"In no time, all his premises in the state of Texas were seized," Morales said. "He couldn't move anything. ... He let us back in."
Sara Perkins covers Mission, western Hidalgo County, Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.
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