Flies on the Farm

Fun Fact: We release 30,000 parasitic wasps around our facility every single month. Sounds terrifying, right?!

Cows poop...a lot. Livestock operations are perfect environments for those pesky flies to lay their eggs and they can be a real problem in the summer.

Honestly, I can't think of many things that annoy me more than having to swat away flies when I'm already hot and sweaty from working outside. Our cows don't enjoy flies either, so we use a variety of tactics to keep them at bay all summer long. Some of these methods might surprise you!

1) Biological Control: Those 30,000 parasitic wasps I mentioned attack fly pupa so flies don't ever hatch. We actually don't even notice these wasps flying around, and they don't sting. Check out how tiny they are when they are just beginning to hatch in the video below!

2) The red mineral tubs that you see out in our pastures contain an ingredient for additional fly control that works to protect the cattle that spend most of their time away from the barn. Our cows lick the mineral in these tubs and the fly control ingredient passes through the cow and ends up in manure, where it inhibits fly development.

3) We use insecticide ear tags. These tags don't really do much to decrease fly populations, but they do decrease actual biting on our animals. We rotate to a different kind of tag every year to help prevent fly resistance to the chemical in the tag. Don’t worry…we take the old tag out and put the new tag in the same hole so our cows don’t have multiple holes in their ear!

4) If needed, we supplement by applying insecticide sprays to our buildings and to our cattle.