Fly control

Whether it's horn flies or face flies, these pests cost producers in treatment and in lost production thanks to the diseases they cause or transmit. Aim to control these flying fiends before they become a nuisance with two of the latest products.
Insectary from Kunafin
The Insectary by Kunafin is a natural product that controls flies in pasture and feedlot situations. You buy a bag of small wasps and other natural fly parasites (pictured above, right). When you scatter these parasites around a feed yard or pasture, they burrow into the fly pupae, or cocoon, in a manure pile and kill the fly inside. Then they lay eggs there, hatch out a second generation, live harmlessly to people and animals, then seek out more fly pupae to repeat the cycle. This reduces fly populations by up to 85%, says Clifton Castle, grandson of the founder of the Kunafin system. He says the system controls all common species of flies that prey on livestock.
The fly parasites come in a pouch of about a pound at a cost of $25 plus shipping. The pouch is enough to treat a feed yard of 250 head for about a week or a pasture-manuring area of about 100 head of cattle for a month.
Robert Tweeten operates a feedlot near Washburn, North Dakota, and has been using the Kunafin system for six years. Once a week, he gets a shipment of parasites by mail and scatters them along the sunny side of feedlot bunks and in alleyways. “We spread the bags from June to September,” says Tweeten, “and we have reduced our fly populations by at least 80%. It's not cheap, but it is no more expensive than fly tags, and it's healthier for the operator than spray. It works.”
Contact Kunafin at 800/832-1113 or visit kunafin.com.
Fybertek from Bayer Animal Health
Bayer Animal Health has a two-step fly-control ear tag system that is delivered in an advanced fiber-type tag. The company says the FyberTek tag allows for more insecticide to be put in the tag, giving longer and better fly control.
The two-step system uses a Corathon insecticide (an organophosphate method) and a CyLence Guard tag (a pyrethroid agent). If you rotate those tags within season or from season to season, you change the mode of action, which slows development of resistance in the fly population.
The FyberTek tag puts 25% more active ingredient in the tag than the previous-generation organophosphate product. And it puts 87% more pyrethroid insecticide in that tag. For both tags, Bayer recommends two tags for adult animals and one tag for nursing calves.
Visit www.flycontrolcenter.com to learn more.

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