People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. And it has a real cost to it. Lower milk production on the cows, weaning weights, conception rates for fraud, pink eye. There's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. There's no silver bullet to fly control. No perfect method, but you definitely can help it. Welcome back to this week's episode of That Ranching podcast, where we sit around the kitchen table and talk about topics that actually matter for folks in ranching. So we wanna talk about the fly issues in summertime. People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. You know, they've got all this grass, all this pasture, and the cows are bunched up in the corner. Dwayne? Yeah. And and it has a real cost to it. I mean, yes, there's the emotional factor that nobody likes seeing their cows bunched up, but it means higher stress on the cattle. So typically lower milk production on the cows, hurts weaning weights, can hurt conception rates for sure. And the cows get stomping and they'll step on each other's hooves. You can get hoof rot, pink eye from them, their tails flick any, the eyes are they'll irritate their eyes. So there's there's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. They're really not grazing a lot while they're in a corner, are they? Like and probably not getting bred either standing in a corner and probably not the easiest for that calf to actually nurse all hunt you know, bunched up. They're a bad thing every which way. They don't They don't help anybody. They don't help anybody do anything. Mean, fly pressure varies on the year. Right? You get some years, dry years aren't too bad. A wet year gets real bad. And and honestly, even as a company, I mean, we're gonna talk about our our fly control products here. There's no cure all. Like, there's no silver bullet to fly control. Right? Guys try oilers, tags, they feed different items. There's no perfect method, but you definitely can help it. When you, control the flies, then you enable those cows to be cows and do what they need to do. And that is get out and graze, produce milk, nurse their calves outside, get bread, all of those things, and utilize the resources on your ranch versus being bunched up in the corner. But, Daryl, maybe you can speak a little bit to the technology or the ingredients we use for fly control and how that may differ from others on the market. It's an important thing how we go about what we do. As we said earlier, there's no perfect way, there's no perfect cure, there's no silver bullet, there's no thought even of trying to get rid of one hundred percent of all the flies. What we want to do is take the load off the flies to the point where they're comfortable. They're spread out grazing, they're doing what they're supposed to do. That's what we aim to get to. A couple of the products we've got, one of them is Repel. You hear the Repel term a lot being used often year round by a lot of producers, but through the summertime the benefit is it's got a powerful garlic extract product in there. A big proponent of pushing the maximum amount of repelling that you can do on a cow to repel the flies from spending time on the back of the animal or biting them. We can also do a formula that has the UltraCit IGR, so that's going after the fly population to reduce the number of flies that are around kill them in the larva stage before they become mature flies. The challenge with the IGR larvicide approach, while it works, there's two things. One is that if the neighbor's not using something, you're killing the flies on your pasture, they're coming over from the neighbors, that's a negative. The other thing is that it's not an all natural product. Although, like you say, we have it in one of our formulas, but I'm more from the results we see, I really love the way the Repel works, and that is, the name says it, those flies are repelled from the cow. They don't want to land on the cow. And in doing that too, we've got the heat stress benefit and all the digestive benefits and antioxidant benefits of those natural ingredients. So you're cutting a much wider swath and just, you know, going after a certain The other thing when you're working through the manure is there's a lot of your horn flies lay their eggs in the manure, but there's a lot of flies that don't. So your face flies in different things that can travel a lot further distances that you really, no matter how much you put in the manure, you can't control that population. So rappelling is really the best method. Rappelling is the best tool we have. The one thing I will add there is we hear from customers like, oh, I still have flies on my cows. You know, I'm still seeing some flies. A big question I would ask is, are they fighting them or are they just there? Because on a especially on a wet year when you got a lot of flies around, you're still going to have flies on your cows. There's, there's no two ways about that. But what we do see with the repel is you might have flies there, but they're not biting them. You know, the cows aren't bunching, they're not fighting them. And if your cows out grazing, I don't care how many flies she has on her, that is a clear indication that she is not being bothered by those flies. She's out there doing her job. If she's not fighting them, they're not bugging her. Let cows be cows and do their thing. One other ingredient that we have, and it's one of a bunch that we use, but is diatomaceous earth, and that helps with internal parasites, but it also is passed through into the manure, and that is an all natural product that works as like a mechanical kill for the fly larva in the larva stage. It's not an IGR, it's not a chemical or a drug, it's a natural mechanical kill. So that's in all the formulas, rest assured. And we have it at a higher level in all the Repel formulas we put a higher dose of it in. Bottom line is flies themselves obviously are a pain, but it's the cost of not dealing with them that ultimately hits the bottom line. Costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the North American beef market. And what it costs you is unrealized gains on your calves, unrealized milk production on your cows, unrealized conception rates, you know? So the cost is huge. What we're trying to end up with is cow comfort. There's no silver bullet. We're not trying to eliminate one hundred percent of all flies. You want the cows comfortable and you want them content. You want them laying down early in the day, they're content, chewing their cud, and they're very efficient animals. That doesn't happen when they're getting flies driving them crazy and they're stamping their feet in the corner of the field where it's nothing but bare dirt and a giant dust cloud, and they're all getting pneumonia and watery eyes. Yeah. The other thing, I was in South Dakota once and this guy's like, how come some calves have tons of flies around them, others don't? So we went out and looked, and he said, like, see that one there? And it was a droopy eared kind of a a little bit sick looking calf, you know, more of a suppressed immune system. And all the good doing calves had almost no flies. So he says, why is that? Well, it's because flies are you know, they go after the weak or immune suppressed animals. So if you got a healthy functioning cow herd, that's probably your best defense. And then repel is a a great way to keep them out and let cows be cows, be comfortable, graze, get bread, pack on the pounds, all those good things. That wraps us up for today's That Ranching podcast episode, and the better one is coming next week.
AUDIO VERSION
People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. And it has a real cost to it. Lower milk production on the cows, weaning weights, conception rates with froth, pink eye. There's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. There's no silver bullet to fly control. No perfect method, but you definitely can help it. Welcome back to this week's episode of That ranching podcast where we sit around the kitchen table and talk about topics that actually matter for folks in ranching. So we wanna talk about the fly issues in summertime. People hate seeing their cows all bunched up. You know, they got all this grass, all this pasture, and the cows are bunched up in the corner. Dwayne? Yeah. And and it has a real cost to it. I mean, yes, there's the emotional factor that nobody likes seeing the cows bunched up, but it means higher stress on the cattle. So typically, lower milk production on the cows, hurts weaning weights, yeah, can hurt conception rates for sure. And the cows get stomping and they'll step on each other's hooves. You can get hoof rot, you know, pink eye from them, the their tails flick any, the eyes are they'll irritate their eyes. So there's there's just a lot of things that just come along with fly pressure that sucks. They're really not grazing a lot while they're in a corner, are they? Like and probably not getting bred either standing in a corner and probably not the easiest for that calf to actually nurse all hunched, you know, bunched up. They're a bad thing every which way. They don't They don't help anybody. They they don't help anybody do anything. I mean, blood pressure varies on the year. Right? You get some years, dry years aren't too bad. A wet year gets real bad. And and honestly, even as a company, I mean, we're gonna talk about our our fly control products here. There's no cure all. Like, there's no silver bullet to fly control. Right? Guys try oilers, tags. They feed different items. There's no perfect method, but you definitely can help it. When you, control the flies, then you enable those cows to be cows and do what they need to do, and that is get out and graze, produce milk, nurse their calves outside, get bread, all of those things, and and utilize the resources on your ranch versus being bunched up in the corner. But, Daryl, maybe you can speak a little to the technology or the ingredients we use for fly control and how that may differ from others on the market. It's an important thing how we go about what we do. As we said earlier, there's no perfect way, there's no perfect cure, there's no silver bullet, there's no thought even of trying to get rid of a hundred percent of all the flies. What we want to do is take the load off the flies to the point where they're comfortable. They're spread out grazing, they're doing what they're supposed to do. That's what we aim to get to, And a couple of the products we've got, one of them is Repel. You hear the Repel term a lot being used often year round by a lot of producers, but through the summertime the benefit is it's got a powerful garlic extract product in there. A big proponent of pushing the maximum amount of repelling that you can do on a cow to repel the flies from spending time on the back of the animal or biting them. We can also do a formula that has the Ultracid IGR. So that's going after the fly population to reduce the number of flies that are around. Kill them in the larva stage before they become mature flies. The challenge with the IGR larvaciate approach, while it works, there's two things. One is that if the neighbor's not using something, you're killing the flies on your pasture, they're coming over from the neighbors. That's a negative. The other thing is that it's not an all natural product. Although, like you say, we have it in in one of our formulas, but I'm I'm more from the results we see, I really love the way the repel works, and that is, the name says it, those flies are repelled from the cow. They don't wanna land on the cow. And in doing that too, we've got the the heat stress benefit and all the digestive benefits and antioxidant benefits of those natural ingredients. So you're cutting a much wider swath and just, you know, going after a certain The other thing when you're working through the manure is there's a lot of your like your horn flies lay their eggs in the manure, but there's a lot of flies that don't. So your face flies in different things that can travel a lot further distances that you really, no matter how much you put in the manure, you can't control that population. So rappelling is really the best method. Rappelling is the best tool we have. The one thing I will add there is we hear from customers like, oh, I still have flies on my cows. You know, I'm still seeing some flies. A big question I would ask is, are they fighting them or are they just there? Because on a especially on a wet year when you got a lot of flies around, you're still gonna have flies on your cows. There's there's no two ways about that. But what we do see with the repel is you might have flies there, but they're not biting them. You know, the cows aren't bunching. They're not fighting them. And if your cow's out grazing, I don't care how many flies she has on her, that is a clear indication that she is not being bothered by those flies. She's she's out there doing her job. If she's not fighting them, they're they're not bugging her. That's let cows be cows and do their thing. One other ingredient that we have, and it's one of a bunch that we use, but is diatomaceous earth, and that helps with internal parasites. But it also is passed through into the manure, and that is an all natural product that works as, like, a mechanical kill for the fly larva in the larva stage. It's not an IGR. It's not a chemical or a drug. It's a natural mechanical kill. So that's in all the formulas. Rest assured. And we have it in at a higher level in all the Repel formulas. We put a higher dose of it in. Bottom line is flies themselves obviously are a pain, but it's the cost of not dealing with them that ultimately hits the bottom line. Costs hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the North American beef market. And what it costs you is unrealized gains on your calves, unrealized milk production on your cows, unrealized conception rates. You know? So the cost is huge. What we're trying to end up with is cow comfort. There's no silver bullet. We're not trying to eliminate a hundred percent of all flies. You want the cows comfortable and you want them content. You want them laying down early in the day, they're content, chewing their cud, and they're very efficient animals. And that doesn't happen when they're getting flies driving them crazy and they're stamping their feet in the corner of the field where it's nothing but bare dirt and a giant dust cloud, and they're all getting pneumonia and watery eyes. Yeah. The other thing, I was in South Dakota once and this guy's like, how come some calves have tons of flies around them, others don't? So we went out and looked, and he said, like, see that one there? And it was a droopy eared kind of a a little bit sick looking calf, you know, more of a suppressed immune system. And all the good doing calves had almost no flies. So he says, why is that? Well, it's because flies are you know, they go after the weak or immune suppressed animals. So if you got a healthy functioning cow herd, that's probably your best defense. And then repel is a a a great way to keep them out And let cows be cows, be comfortable, graze, get bread, pack on the pounds, all those good things. That wraps us up for today's That Ranching podcast episode, and the better one is coming next week.
Nothing frustrates ranchers more than seeing cows bunched up in the corner—and flies are usually to blame. In this episode of That Ranching Podcast, we break down the real cost of fly pressure, from lost weaning weights and lower milk production to reduced conception rates and overall herd stress. The truth? There’s no silver bullet for fly control—but there are smarter ways to manage it.
We dive into practical strategies, including why repelling flies can be more effective than trying to eliminate them, and how improving cow comfort lets your herd get back to grazing, breeding, and performing. Plus, we explore how nutrition, immune health, and even natural ingredients play a role in keeping flies from becoming a full-blown problem.
Bottom line: fewer stressed cows means better performance—and that starts with keeping flies in check.