Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Markov Chain Model To Assess Resistance Of Cattle To Horn Flies, Edward Gbur, C. Dayton Steelman

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

The horn fly is an economically important external permanent parasite of cattle. As part of a research project focused on alternatives to chemical control of the horn fly, a study was conducted to determine the degree of innate resistance of individual cattle to the horn fly. A fly resistant cow was defined as one whose horn fly counts were in the lower quartile of the weekly fly count distributions for a herd more often than would be expected by chance. A Markov chain model was formulated and a small sample test for fly resistance was developed. The model and procedure …