Do’s & Don’ts of Fly Control
Shaye Koester 00:02
Hey, hey, it’s Shaye Koester and I’m your host for the Casual Cattle Conversations podcast where we connect you to ranchers and beef industry enthusiasts who can help you build a more profitable operation and improve your lifestyle. Are you looking for a community of ranchers who support and challenge you to be more profitable and proactive? Then sign-up for our monthly RancherMind events. RancherMinds are mastermind events for ranchers to come together once a month and find solutions for their own and the industry's challenges. Stay connected by following @cattleconvos on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and never miss an episode or event update by signing up for our newsletter on casualcattleconversations.com/newsletter. If you get value out of this episode or any episode drop a comment or tip me by using the link in the show notes. With that let’s see who our guest is today and connect you to a new resource to improve your own operation and lifestyle. Alrighty, folks, welcome back to the show. I'm excited to have you back on here today as we start entering the summer months. I know it's April. But I do have a very broad audience geographically. So we're going to talk about fly control. So today I brought on Dr. Jake Geis and Jill Johnson from Sioux Nation Ag and they're going to talk about how they help producers with fly control some of the things they see and different fly control methods that they view as being effective, and some new ones that are excited about. So let's see how our guests can help you today. All right. Well, thank you both for joining the show today. I'm excited to have you on here. So just to start off, I would like each of you to really introduce yourself and say, you know, what is your role in the beef industry today?
Jake Geis 02:02
I guess we can start off. I'm Jake Geis. I'm a veterinarian at Sioux Nation Ag Center. We are a company that has kind of a bunch of different facets together, we own a series of vet clinics in southeast South Dakota as well as have retail locations farther flung from there where we sell animal livestock supplies and feed and on the feed end we actually have our own feed mill. So my role with the company is kind of twofold. I'm a practicing veterinarian at one of our locations and then in addition, I'm also a consultant veterinarian working with some of our customers that are in a little more far flung locations.
Shaye Koester 02:39
Awesome. How about you, Jill?
Jill Johnson 02:40
So I am the Sales Director at Sioux Nation and I manage a group of field marketers that work in the field and are the feet on the ground in industry. And like Dr. Geis said, we work alongside our veterinarians and nutritionists that are on staff to support our beef clientele. So our job as field marketers is to keep our customers up to base on or up to date on what's going on in the market, industry, news and happenings. Maybe that's just different products that are coming to come into the industry, or maybe an opportunity where we can help them increase their margins to improve their bottom line. And that's across the board, whether it's working with a cow-calf operation or a seedstock guy or somebody that's backgrounding their cattle. That's kind of our job as field marketers.
Shaye Koester 03:32
Well, awesome. I'm excited to have you both on here. And thanks for sharing what you do with my audience. So with that, what we're really going to talk about today is fly control. So, you know, it's April now, this episode's gonna go out in April. But you know, producers, this is something that producers need to be thinking about as they're going into the summer months, especially with, you know, some going into those drought areas or some what areas people are facing a wide array of environmental or I mean, a wide array of different climates, I should say, or weather. So, you know, what are the main impacts of good fly control when you look at the performance of beef animals in the summer when they're out on pasture.
Jill Johnson 04:15
So I guess some of the performance issues that you would see with cattle that don't have proper fly control, you're going see cattle that are stressed. They're crowding. They're fighting those flies all day long. They're not comfortable. So when you have cattle that are constantly fighting, uncomfortableness or the fly population, you're taking up that energy that could be used elsewhere, whether that's putting pounds on a calf, or the overall herd health for that group of cattle and Dr. Geis can maybe add some more to this. It's not in the best interest to not get on top of fly control early on in the season. It ends up costing you herd health and in pounds a gain.
Jake Geis 04:58
Yeah, definitely. In addition to that Jill, you know, we do think about the flies being one of the primary vectors for pinkeye, though, not necessarily always having pinkeye, as we might see pinkeye outside of fly season, the fly definitely adds to the woes of the pinkeye situation. So while it doesn't cure pinkeye to control flies, it sure helps to control flies to help slow the spread of pinkeye.
Shaye Koester 05:27
Well, awesome. So, you know, Jill, you brought up a good point that producers need to get on this early in the season. So when does that process start? When does that fly control process really start?
Jill Johnson 05:39
I like to see it start as early as now, April, no later than May for sure. I like to see some of our fly products, depending on which way you're going to approach your flight control, whether it be on your farm, a feedlot, a pasture situation, the earlier the better. So it depends on what you use, whether that's a topical ingredient, a feed ingredient, a feed additive, a mineral that has fly control on it, there's many different avenues of how you get that product in your animal or on your animal. If you were going to look at a feed additive, or mineral tub or mineral with like a loose mineral with fly control in it, now's the time to be thinking about that. We'd like to see it in their system for 30 days before you really see the effects of it. Dr. Geis, do you have input on that as far as how long it takes for that product to hit their system and be effective?
Jake Geis 06:38
Absolutely, when you think about all the different products that are available for fly control all of them other than something like a pour on that you actually directly applied to the animal will require some time for the animal to take in enough product or to coat itself up enough product if you're looking at something like a dust bag or a back rubber, in order for there to be adequate amount of product there to control flies. And when I look at controlling any external parasites, but in particular flies, I think about using a system called Integrated Pest Management, which basically is a nice $10 word, that means we're going to try to attack this in more than one way. Now, if we choose one method of fly control flies are notorious for becoming resistant. So for example, if you use your favorite type of fly tags, use them year after year, you'll see flies become resistant to that chemistry of fly tags, if you always use fly tags, you'll see the fly tags may not be working even if you're rotating them. But you're gonna see flies on different parts of the animal. I mean, they're just tenacious little buggers. So with the combination of the tenacity of the insect, and the ability for the insect to become resistant, what works best is if you can go after the fly problem in more than one way. So whether that's a feed through combined with a dust bag, or pour-on, or something of that nature, when it comes to products in fly control, really, we should be looking at more than one thing in order to get ahead of it and in addition, you also need to think about the lifecycle of the fly. That fly has the opportunity to be more of a nuisance if there's more opportunities for that fly to reproduce. So look around the area where you're trying to control flies, you have places that are fly breeding pits, you know, we have crummy old hay bales, we just kind of left out in the pasture next to the cows, because we didn't have anywhere else to put them. That's a place for flies like to breed, we have manure piles, especially if we're just trying to find a place to store it. Are we storing that in a pasture next to cows, therefore, the flies are having a wonderful little buffet, right where you have the animals that you're trying to keep the flies off of. And even in that situation, there's other things that we can consider parasitic wasps, things like that to treat the manure. But with integrated pest management, you would look at all of the different factors that are allowing for that parasite to be problematic, and then attack that in more than one avenues that we can try to decrease the burden on our animals.
Shaye Koester 09:17
Well, awesome. So you brought up you know, when you look at the lifecycle of the fly, so would you just kind of go through the basic lifecycle of the fly, so that my listeners can kind of hear that and better think through, you know, maybe where are those places where they're breeding on their operations?
Jake Geis 09:33
Sure, I mean, there's four main different types of flies that we think of when we're looking at our beef cattle in particular. And they all kind of affect different parts of the animal, you know, where they like to land where they'd like to make their blood meals where they like to make disasters. So in general, though, they're going to go from an egg to a larva to a dock. So the adult is going to lay the eggs somewhere that's conducive For the egg to hatch, that larva then is going to mature within that area where it is where the egg was laid, and then it will hatch into adult and the adult will attack the cow. And then rinse and repeat with the next generation. So different products are going to impact that lifecycle in different ways. So for example, you might think about using a feed through insect growth regulator product, and there's a different number of those on the market. How those products work, is by not allowing the eggs to mature the larva even to mature and in that case, what you're doing is is keeping that parasite that fly at an infant stage, so that it's not causing problems to the cow. So if you think about it, and how that works, is because it's getting passed out in them anywhere. Well, if it's in the manure, that works great. For some people, if the manure that the flies are using to lay their eggs in is the manure is the manure of these cows are producing, it's not going to work very well, if you're grazing cattle right next to a feed yard where they're not doing that. So maybe that's not the product for you. It's the product for some people, but not for everybody. So because of that lifecycle, you'd have to look at, what is this product's mode of action? Where does it impact the lifecycle of the fly? And then how is that going to work in my system? Or is that not going to work in my system?
Shaye Koester 11:31
Awesome. Well, thank you very much for that. And you really kind of answered the next questionI was looking at. So with that, are there any, like new products or technologies you're excited about, they're kind of coming onto the market?
Jake Geis 11:55
Well, for me, the biggest thing that is newish, a bit untested, but anecdotally and a little research-wise have been seeing positive results with this, would be using garlic products for flight control. This is I'm going to say newer, not new on the fly control market, because it it's something that's been evolving as we've learned more and more about how to make it work well, right. Basically, these are typically fed through products. And by feeding the garlic to the cow in a range situation. Just like a vampire that doesn't want to take a blood meal off of a garlic on a human being, you know, we're gonna go to Halloween type stuff right now, then the same premise exists for flies. Flies don't cotton very well to cows that have a very pungent Garlic aroma. You really know in the mineral when it's a garlic mineral, because it smells like garlic. It's not something that you just you leave in the in your SUV when you take it home. Unless you really like garlic. But you know, it's something that we've had some producers use that are huge fans of it. But once again, like any feed through product, I want to see that in the cows now, when they're in South Dakota. Now if you're listening to this in Kansas, you're already behind the eight ball. In Kansas, I want to see that March. Basically, when you're hitting the point when the gardening member of your marriage is starting to thumb through the burpee catalog and get excited, that's about the point you should be thinking about getting the garlic, or even the IGR if you're using that into the cow, because that green up time you want to be ahead of that. So that to me is probably the more exciting fly control product out there. I mean, the nice thing about something like a garlic and like I said, we're still learning a lot. There's still more research coming through, because there's been failures with it. But I think we're finding out why on that. You know, how did we provide it? What was the the amount we provided and whatnot, like anything that's newer, I would say. But yeah, with that being more of a natural product, anything that's more of a natural product typically has multiple modes of action, because, you know, well, the combination of natural selection and divine intervention, in my opinion has allowed a lot of our plant life and animal life to become very adept at fending off predators. And so with a natural product, typically there's multiple modes of action contained within that product as opposed to a synthetic product or usually we've got one mode of action. Hence, it's a lot harder for something to develop resistance, if there's multiple modes of action present in that product.
Shaye Koester 15:09
Well, awesome. So kind of looking at things, you know, you've talked about, you know, the garlic one is interesting. That's something that's been brought up on other calls as well. So you've talked about different options, and how producers can kind of evaluate what may be best, but what about, you know, on the cost effective side of things? Because at one point you brought up, you know, you know, if you're using fly tags, maybe you need to have another source of fly control as well, maybe it needs to be fully integrated. So what are some ways to kind of evaluate the cost effectiveness of it and kind of the cost breakdown if you are using different modes of fly control?
Jake Geis 15:46
That is a great question for Jill because the way our we're structured at Sioux Nation, typically, the veterinarians and the nutritionist give us the great advice on how the products work, and the science and our field marketers actually know what it costs. If I don't buy it, if it doesn't go into my cows, I don't have any idea how much it is. So I'll let her take over from here.
Jill Johnson 16:09
So from a cost standpoint, there's not one end all be all, it's just right along the same lines as fly control, I can't give anyone a hard cost on what it's going to take to manage your flies for the season and that season looks different for everyone. What I can say is like from a garlic standpoint, that maybe is costing four cents per head per day to add that into your loose mineral. If you're putting that into a ton of mineral that's adding an extra $80 per ton of mineral. These numbers vary because just like everything that's fluctuating right now with supply issues and shortages, these numbers change on a daily basis when you're talking commodities. And to support what Jake said with a garlic, that's a commodity. That's a product that's going into a feed source. The pour-ons are the one that's maybe a little bit easier to nail down depending on the size of animals that you're treating. But that's a one time cost that you hope works for the season. But because flies are so hard to manage, we're constantly reevaluating that, and how often that should be put in front of them. So I wish I could give you a solid number on what it costs for fly control, I can tell you you are money ahead. At the end of the day, if you pay for a good solid fly control program versus that animal fighting those insects and flies all season long. Whether you choose to put an IGR into your feed products, or whether you choose to do a Pour-on or whether you do garlic or Pour-on and an IGR, I have producers that do all of the above because flies are not an option, because they realize how it affects the overall health of the animal. I mean, I often relate it because it's one of those things where you never get a check back at the end of the year, right? It's not like I invested in fly control, and here's my rebate check. It is one of those things that you put money into and you can't put a value on that. But you should see the value in your herd or your cattle operation. I think those producers that that value that and doing things right are willing to pay that price. Not to jump back to the garlic thing, but I wanted to add to that. There are producers that do multiple ways of fly control like Dr. Geiss mentioned. The important part is, like he said there's new data and research and garlics not new to the industry but it's kind of new and evolving. It is the most exciting one that's the exact one I was going to mention as well because there's also producers that I visited with that think they have seen a direct impact on garlic and it decreasing their major lice issues which is exciting to me because that's something as a beef industry we fight a lot especially like your February to April timeframe. So if they can feed garlic year round and see a value to that and it decreases on their cattle rubbing and their cattle crowding and just being uncomfortable. That's a huge, that's a huge advantage. So I wanted to add to that too, because it's important and once producers cross that bridge and try it I don't think that they turned back. I often put it out there for consumers or producers that aren't quite ready to pay that extra premium to have a fly control product and in a feed grade ingredient or VTM pack or their loose mineral or maybe it's a tub that they're going to pay an extra premium for to add garlic to whatever way that is. I mean it's no different than if you and I decided to go sit around the campfire or out at a Sunday afternoon picnic with our family. We're friends. And we're constantly fighting flies or constantly fighting, biting insects like it's irritating. It's annoying. And you can't focus on the conversation, you can't even enjoy your time. And it's the same with these cattle that are out on whether they're in a monoslope building or at a feedlot or just out dry lotting or on pasture. If your cattle are always uncomfortable, and almost always fighting flies, they're not spending their energy on what they should be. So yeah, fly control is now's the time, like Jake said, if you're in Kansas, it was last month. And if you're in South Dakota, it's now so very timely.
Shaye Koester 20:39
Thank you for that explanation. So kind of looking at, you know, the weather side of things. How should management for fly control differ between dry and wet years?
Jill Johnson 21:01
My input on that was, it's definitely harder to manage in a wet year, but we can't dismiss it in a dry year, I was just out today on a farm and I'm already starting to see flies pop up and become an issue. If we don't deal with that now, and we all know we're in a drought, a severe drought, a state of emergency drought. So although it's hard to see money, go out the door and invest in that right now, it's still super important to have your fly control options in place. It's definitely harder in a wet year and Dr. Geis would add to this too, I would guess even when you have cattle out on pasture, you have a wet swampy ground or you have the grounds always soggy and it creates a prime breeding environment for those flies to just keep reproducing. Then that creates a bigger problem and leads to pinkeye and bigger health issues. So whether you're in a drought or a wet condition that needs to be addressed, I think at a higher level of management when you're in a wet year, because then you got to deal with your environmental situations. The wet pond sitting around or the stock dams that are full, which I guess we are all praying for right now. We'd like that to happen. So I like to spend more on fly control and have to manage that than be sitting in a drought like we are right now. But that would be my thoughts on that.
Shaye Koester 22:28
Well, thank you very much. So are there any, like common mistakes you see producers make when it comes to fly control? Or my favorite question to ask every guest is, if you could change something about the way producers manage for fly control, what would that be?
Jill Johnson 22:45
Most definitely not starting it early enough. So many producers when we're out in the field or on our producers yard, we'll talk about that next time, or we'll think about that with our next mineral order. Or we seem to be doing okay now. But if we're not thinking about 30 days ahead, we're already behind the eight ball. So the biggest thing I think is getting it in front of these cattle in a timely manner and being consistent about it. So that's the most important part and if you're feeding your fly control and the IGR through loose mineral, our cows out on pasture and those mineral feeders are going empty, and then they sit for 7 to 10 days you're getting behind the eight ball there too. It needs to be constantly fed through them in a consistent manner.
Shaye Koester 23:41
Well, thank you so you've both really hit on the major points I wanted to ask and then gone even gone into even more detail for me and the audience. So do you have any parting thoughts or last bits of information you'd like to add about slight control or soon nation egg?
Jake Geis 23:56
I think when you're looking at fly control or any external parasite control, I see a lot of value in asking those questions to people who aren't on the farm every day. Because what I've noticed from being the outside set of eyes, compared to when I'm working with my own animals, and seeing them every day, there's many things that I don't recognize, because I'm kind of getting used to this being in front of me all the time. So when you have the opportunity for your feed rep, your pharmaceutical supply rep, your veterinarian, your nutritionist, or your banker, if he's actually knows cows and he's out there or whatnot, ask him what do you think about the flies out here? You know, there's a rules of thumb, you know, 200 flies on an animal is the breakpoint when you're supposed to pour them or whatnot. But the reality is the people that travel from one location to another on a consistent basis and look at a lot of cattle, they're going to be able to tell you where you're sitting at in relation to where everybody else is. And if everybody's struggling with flies, and you feel like you're struggling with flies, and they say, Yeah, you got a lot of flies, but you know, you're not, you're not alone in that, well, at least it tells you that you might not have to change what you're doing. Because it might be one of those years where nothing's going to be the secret weapon to solve all our problems, no silver bullets are there. Or it may be one of those deals or like, yeah, we, we could probably do something a little different here. There's quite a few, then yeah, it might be time to look at what we're doing and change it. So that would be my two cents worth is take the time, when you have an outside set of eyes around, ask their opinion, and then use it.
Shaye Koester 26:04
Awesome. Well, thank you very much for being on the show today. Like I said, that really wraps up any questions I had.
Jill Johnson 26:10
Thank you very much for having us on. Just one more little tidbit on Sioux Nation. I guess if you have any listeners that have questions or concerns about this, our job as a company is to provide the tools and protocols necessary to help our producers be successful. And we want to do whatever it takes to help make that happen. So whether that's a nutritionist, a veterinarian, a field marketer, our main goal is to help set these producers up for success. Because if they're successful, then then we're all happy. So a little tidbit there. If there's somebody out there that needs advice, or has questions or concerns or this is all new to them, and they don't know how to tackle it. We're out for that challenge. So thanks for having us on today.
Shaye Koester 26:54
Absolutely.
Jake Geis 26:56
Thank you kindly really appreciate it.
Shaye Koester 26:58
And that's a wrap on that one, folks. Be sure to drop your comments and thoughts in the comment section. And just let me know what you're thinking. I was glad to have you on here and we'll catch you on the next one.
