There are sucking lice, which take blood directly, and biting lice which consume dead skin, scabs and blood around wounds. Lice are cool weather pests, occurring on cattle in damaging numbers from fall to spring. This is also the time when, for most cattle producers, the feed quality is lowest. This can be a critical combination of circumstances for brood cows carrying calves. The other major arthropod pests of beef cattle are ticks and mites.
Ticks suck blood from cattle and most require more than one host during their lifetime.
This habit of changing hosts makes ticks potential disease carriers. The mites cause scab and mange. Although not as common as they once were, mange and scab mites still occur and can be debilitating to cattle and uncontrolled, can lead to death. Another fly worthy of note is the heel fly. These flies are unusual as they are freeliving as adults and internal parasites as larvae.