In South Africa red water is the major reason for cattle fatalities. It is a regional disease and is found more often in the hot subtropics. Red water is a tick born disease and is most prevalent just after the first summer rain...ticks need moisture to hatch... You get two strains here the one being african red water and the other asian red water. The symptoms are basically the same, ie high fever, the animal is listless, aenemic(sp), quite often the rumen will be paralized and in in advanced cases the urine will be red because the dead red blood cells will be passed in the urine. When an animal reached this stage you have very little hope of saving it.
Both strains are carried by the blue tick, but the catch is that not all blue ticks are carriers.
As far as vaccinating goes...we get a live vaccine that was developed here and you vaccinate usually at weaning, however the animal needs to be continually exposed to the infected ticks to keep the immunity especially against the Asian strain.
As far as treatment goes, we have good results with Berenil and also Imisol. Not sure what the active ingredients are,but if someone is interested I will look it up on the bottle.
sorry for the arther lengthy lecture, hope it was at least informative
