Flies pose a variety of threats to your cattle, your employees and your bottom line. They cause irritation, cattle weight loss as high as 50 pounds per yearling and spread diseases such as pink eye and mastitis. The stress horn flies cause for cattle comes at a significant cost. Infestations on cattle operations cause an estimated $1 billion loss each year because of the stress they inflict and diseases they spread. The more horn flies on your operation, the more time you and your employees spend controlling them.
Traditional horn fly control methods are labor intensive. Valuable time is often wasted rounding up cattle and running them through a chute to apply products. With products like ear tags, employees have to round up the cattle to individually apply tags. The hours spent applying these products are eating away costs and energy.
While you can never eliminate horn flies on cattle, keeping them under control will significantly decrease their presence on your operation. Implementing an effective fly control plan is a vital step in promoting healthy weight gains and healthy profits.
But what is the best option for controlling flies? Traditional methods such as ear tags and sprays put stress on your cattle and increase your employees' labor. Tags need to be replaced often and can lose effectiveness, making them costly measures of protection. Some traditional fly control methods also require withdrawal times before culling or milking. Using an effective and long-lasting horn fly control product is critical to the protection of your cattle and your employees.
The most convenient and effective fly control method for cattle is a feed-through method like Altosid® IGR. This product is an efficient way to control horn flies because it is incorporated in the supplement and passes through the cattle to their manure, where horn flies lay their eggs. It breaks the horn fly life cycle, preventing them from developing into biting adults. With Altosid® IGR, there's no need to round up or handle cattle because the animals spread the active ingredient as they graze. And you don't have to worry about withdrawal times before culling or milking, unlike some traditional fly control products.
Altosid® IGR is available in various forms to meet your unique needs such as loose mineral and liquid feed. Our product is priced at 2 to 3 cents per animal, per day, making Altosid® IGR cost efficient. Check out our product page and contact your feed dealer to find out which formulation is right for your operation.
