Traditional horn fly control methods are labor-intensive and valuable time is often wasted rounding up cattle. David Bennett highlights the challenges associated with these methods: "Fly tags, sprays, back rubbers, pour-ons... they're very labor intensive. Back rubbers are messy. You're basically taking a sponge to soak up an insecticide and hanging it in an area where cows will travel through to hopefully wipe it on themselves and use that for their fly control." Additionally, applying fly tags can be cumbersome and time-consuming, as "it has to be put in the ears, and a lot of times that's very labor intensive." Sprays and pour-ons also present dosing challenges, potentially leading to under dosing or overdosing cattle.
While you can never eliminate flies on cattle, keeping them under control will significantly decrease their effect on your operation. Bennett explains that traditional methods often only target adult flies, which limits their effectiveness: "Most of the other methods we use, they're adulticides. We're only going to kill those adult flies that are out there in the population."
Implementing an effective fly control plan is a vital step in promoting healthy weight gains and healthy profits. Altosid® IGR offers a no-labor way of maintaining fly control under the threshold. As Bennett describes, "With it being a non-labor form of fly control, it does free you up a lot of time to focus on more important things in your operation." Altosid® IGR works by being ingested by the cattle, who then inoculate the manure with the insect growth regulator. This disrupts the lifecycle of the horn flies at the larval stage, preventing them from maturing into adults: "It's a feed-through, it goes in the manure, and it's going to stop the lifecycle at that point, and you never have the emergence of adult flies."
Altosid® IGR not only saves labor but also helps remove a pest that drains energy from your cattle and impacts their growth. Bennett emphasizes the benefits: "You have the opportunity to remove a pest that is taking blood meals, which is removing energy and removing the opportunity for the growth you'd like to see in your herd."
To make the most of Altosid® IGR, Bennett advises producers to "get with your feed company, find Altosid® IGR in a mineral tub or a feed, get it in early and leave it in late." This approach ensures continuous protection throughout the fly season, maximizing the health and productivity of your herd.
By integrating Altosid® IGR into your fly control strategy, you can effectively reduce horn fly populations with minimal labor, ultimately enhancing the profitability and efficiency of your operation.
Learn more about our labor-free horn fly control solution in our YouTube video!
