Dr. Murai Éva szerk.: Parasitologia Hungarica 22. (Budapest, 1989)

Prevalence of helminths increased in the community pasture cattle as the summer progressed, with an overall prevalence of 39% (162 of 420 samples positive). The greatest change was seen on the Aquaforte pasture where the prevalence rose from 20% (4 July) to 80% (25 July) and then declined to 50% (3 September). The number of epg also changed during this time i.e.< 1-5 to > 5 epg. The pasture at Gaskiers showed a similar pattern while that at Brigus showed a slight decrease in both prevalence and epg. This latter result may be due to the proportions of adult/heifer feces collected on the different sampling dates. The majority of cattle on these pastures were "family" cows to be used as a source of milk or beef. The Shoe Cove pasture Is used and operated by dairy farmers with the majority of the cattle pastured there being either replacement heifers or dry cows. Prevalence was low (mean: 30%) on this pasture. (il) Egg counts The majority of fecal samples contained less than 5 epg (mean 1.2 epg; 545 samples, 0 epg: 634, 0.1-5.0 epg), with 21 having more than this (13, 5.1-10.0 epg;6, 10.1-15.0 epg; 2, 15.120.0 epg). Our data are in agreement with the suggestion that a count of 10 epg or less can be considered normal for adult cattle (9). Fig. 3 details the monthly intensity of infection. It should be noted that one heavily infected animal in a given herd may result in a false impression of herd infection if a mean is used e.g. in one herd the February-March raw mean was 5.6 epg. However, if the egg count of one animal (>10 epg) was omitted from the data set the mean epg dropped to 1.2 which is the same as that for all ten herds. Significantly lower egg counts were recorded during this study than In Maine (May-June, 14.2 epg (22) or Quebec (July, 230 epg, (8) ). North Dakota cattle were also found to have much higher egg counts (1), while dairy cattle In North Carolina (1.6 epg), Pennsylvania (2.6 epg), and Ver2.5-, 2.05 < Fig. 3. Mean number of eggs per gram of feces/month. Striped bar represents raw data; solid bar is modified data where counts that Inflated the monthly mean were removed (10 samples, 1.5% of positives)