SAN ANTONIO – A flesh-eating parasite is back in Texas, threatening warm-blooded animals, from wild animals to livestock to pets.
A half dozen cases of New World screwworm have been confirmed in the United States since last week after being largely gone from the country for decades. The nearest case reported is in Gillespie County.
So what do you need to know to protect your pets or livestock?
Signs of infestation
Screwworm flies lay their eggs in wounds or orifices of warm-blooded animals. When they hatch within 12 to 24 hours, the resulting larvae eat further into the host, which can cause severe, often deadly damage if not treated.
“They say that, you know, if an infestation lasts — it’s not treated or caught within seven to 10 days, seven to 14 days — at that point, it could get pretty serious. Ultimately could be death,” said Karl Harborth, an extension livestock specialist out of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research & Extension Center in Corpus Christi.
Treated early enough, though, Harborth said an animal should be fine.
He recommends checking your animals every two to three days and treating any wounds you find, though he warned against jumping to conclusions on what you find.
“I think treating that wound right away and watching that wound is probably a better approach than overreacting and then thinking that you might have screwworm. There’s no reason to have suspicion of screwworm unless you start seeing some of those signs,” he said.
Those signs could include:
- Foul-smelling wounds, possibly with visible maggots or eggs
- Animal biting or licking at wounds
- Unusual restlessness or lethargy
- Lesions in navels, ears, dehorning or branding sites
You can see a U.S. Department of Agriculture photo gallery of wounds here.
Alerting help
If you suspect a case of screwworm infestation, you should contact the Texas Animal Health Commission and your veterinarian.
Just don’t bring your pet or livestock to them.
“The last thing we want to do is load up an infested animal, haul it into town and possibly spread this and make it worse than what it already is,” Harborth said.
The options for treating the animals have grown recently.
“You go back 12 months ago, there wasn’t a very long list. Now we have a pretty good toolkit or arsenal of things to treat them with,” Harborth said.
Precautions
Indoor pets that go outside sometimes likely don’t face “that big of a risk,” Harborth said. And while it’s a “possibility” for animals that are always outside, he said the probability is “probably not that high.”
However, he doesn’t recommend locking all your pets indoors.
“I don’t think we need to change things too much. I think it’s more just inspection, watching those animals and seeing it,” he said. “There’s not a plague of flies coming from the South that are going to eat us or eat all our animals. It’s a little more isolated than that.”
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