Reducing Horn Flies with Feed-Through Control

Haylie Shipp

Input costs are going up, right? Well, wrong…on one front. Altosid IGR – it is a horn fly feed-through control – has actually seen a drop in price as of late. Mark Upton is with Central Life Sciences…

“We dropped the price about 14, 15-percent. And the whole theory was, of course with economies of scale every year we get a little better at making the product and so that helps, but we also wanted to be competitive. A lot of other methods of controlling flies had come down a little bit – tags, sprays, things like that – so we just felt like we needed to be competitive and we wanted as many producers as possible to try the product. It’s a really great product. It works well and we wanted as many people to try it as possibly could.”

They recently held a 90-day Altosid IGR product trial with non-users…

“About 95, 96-percent of the people that used it had very positive results. That was last year. They actually started back on product in 2022. We’re doing the same thing this year but with a lot more cows. We’re aiming to put about 100,000 head of cattle on the same program. And again, the whole theory is that some people just aren’t familiar with how a feed-through works and we want to take the hesitation out of them trying it.”

Alstosid IGR, “IGR” standing for “insect growth regulator.” It’s a feed-through. It passes through the animal and into the manure, breaking up the horn fly life cycle. Again Mark Upton, Central Life Sciences.