Prevalence of Calves’ Cryptosporidiosis in Northern Kazakhstan

Ussenbayev, Altay; Kurenkeyeva, Dariyash; Bauer, Christian; Kadyrov, Ablaikhan

This work examines the prevalence of Cryptosporidium spp. infection of cattle in the Akmola region of Northern Kazakhstan. The research was carried out at 75 agricultural enterprises in 10 administrative districts where 894 calves aged from one month to 12 months were tested for cryptosporidiosis. The Bayesian inference method was used to predict the prevalence of cryptosporidiosis. The maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of infestation of young animals in the region was 0.0391. To get a conjugate beta-posterior in Bayesian statistics, binomial and beta distributions were chosen for likelihood and prior respectively. A 95% credible interval for posterior prevalence was [0.0418, 0.0685]. Cryptosporidiosis was common in 22.7% of cattle farms in the Akmola region, mainly in large industrial enterprises, where there are more favourable conditions for maintaining the biotic potential of the disease pathogens. At the same time, calves up to one month of age are infested with cryptosporidia to a higher degree than animals of older age groups. The sex of animals had no correlation with the level of Cryptosporidium spp. invasion.