Horn flies are costing the cattle industry billions of dollars every year. Controlling horn flies with chemical insecticides is not working because horn flies have been able to develop a resistance to all the chemical insecticides that have been used in the last 80 years. Consequently, the horn fly problem continues to get worse every year!
The only way to truly solve the horn fly problem is through genetics. Today, I am going to tell you how you can solve the horn fly problem on your farm or ranch. If you have not treated your cows with pesticides, you will notice some of your cows have a heavy fly load while others have very few flies. There are scientific reasons for this difference – but that doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that some cows are much more fly resistant than others.
When horn flies are bad, go through your cowherd and identify the cows with the heaviest fly loads. Keep in mind, as the day warms up the flies will relocate from the back to the belly to get in the shade. Identify the worst 25 to 30 percent of the cows in your herd. These cows will most likely be your lowest producing and least profitable cows.
Cull those cows sometime between weaning and calving. With cow prices as high as they are, there has never been a better time to get rid of your least-profitable, fly-infested cows. If you’re unwilling to sell those fly-infested cows at these record-high prices, you are essentially buying them at these record-high prices.
Replace your herd bulls with low-input PCC® bulls that have been bred and selected for fly resistance. In the last 20 years, we have evaluated and scored over 18,000 bulls for genetic fly resistance. While other bull producers continue to use toxic chemicals to cover up their inferior genetics, we are helping you solve your horn fly problem.
I suggest you go through your cows every summer for another three or four years to identify the cows with the worst fly resistance. There will always be a bottom 10 to 20 percent. Get rid of those cows and replace them with heifers that have some bred-in fly resistance.
You will never get to the point that you have fly-free cows. You just need to get to the point that the horn flies no longer have a negative impact on your profits. There is a BIG difference between a fly load of 50 to 100 flies and a fly load of 1000 to 2000 flies!
The heritability of fly resistance is very high! Therefore, you should be able to solve your horn fly problem in just a few years – if you follow the above suggestions. With these ridiculously high cow prices, NOW is the BEST TIME to get started!