#20 How to control horn flies with dung beetles in 5 steps

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching where our goal is to help you maximize your profitability while you improve your land the fastest.

Welcome back to another episode of Fat Cows, Fat Wallet Podcast. I hope you are having a great week. And today we are going to talk about something that is transcendental, improving your land at a low cost with management.

Today I am going to talk about how to control horn flies with dung beetles in 5 steps, and the importance of not using insecticides on our land or on our livestock. This is essential as there are always unintended consequences when we try to stop a problem (horn fly) with insecticides.

Research has proven that without dung beetles there is a 30% reduction in forage production due to the dung not being buried and its nutrients volatilizing to the air. This means you can increase your pasture productivity and stocking rate just by having a healthy dung beetle population. What does this mean to your bottom line? A huge deal! It is very profitable to stop using insecticide and find a way to increase your dung beetle population! My Total grazing students now know this, and what to do instead of using insecticides or de-wormers that will also kill the dung beetles.

 I will show you today the 5 steps you need to take to reduce or even eliminate the horn fly economic impact on your cattle without using insecticides!

When I go back in time to when I started regenerating land with cattle, I well remember trying to control horn flies on my cattle, each horn fly bites your cattle an average of 30 times per day! Of course, your cattle will suffer! It became a never-ending battle as the more I applied insecticide to control the horn fly, the more it appeared, (the more) horn flies I got on the cows.

Now I know what the problem was and how to control horn fly without insecticides.

I have learned much over the years, and I want to share this with you in this episode. This is of immense value. Please pay close attention and listen with an open mind. This may be different than what you have been told in the past, but I believe this will resonate and agree with what you observe in your daily work.

If you know of somebody that has struggled with horn flies affecting their cattle performance, maybe despairing at having to use more or different insecticides to control them and not having much success they may benefit from hearing this, introduce them to this podcast, please. I know this can help and I would love to help as many people as possible to regenerate their land so they can achieve bountiful production at a very low cost.

1. Stop using insecticides and deworming with products of the ivermectin family on your cattle.

We need to know that the dung beetle competes for fresh manure with the horn fly larva. The horn fly lays their eggs in fresh manure immediately after it has been deposited on the land. Insecticides may kill the dreaded horn fly, but they will also kill the dung beetles or their larvae. 

Because the time it takes for horn flies since their eggs were deposited in fresh manure to a mature horn fly that will bite your cows is so short, 10-20 days, there are many generations in a season, and therefore they can build resistance to different insecticides which makes them less effective plus, you need to re-apply sooner increasing your costs and reducing the effectiveness.

Dung beetles have a much longer life cycle and require time to build up populations. If you are one of my Total grazing students, you now know the importance of biodiversity in controlling insect pests.

2. Grow a large population of dung beetles in your property as fast as possible.

Each adult Gazelle dung beetle can bury around 10 grams of fresh manure per day, we need the fresh manure to be buried in a maximum of 3 days as the horn fly eggs hatch in 3 days in Summer.

This means we need around 1,000 dung beetles per cow or 100,000 dung beetles for a 100-cow herd.

Dung beetles' life cycle is around 6 to 8 weeks, so it takes double or triple the time than for the horn fly to be able to reproduce. They also produce much less eggs than the horn fly.

n my experience it will take around 1 to 2 years of not using insecticides or deworming for the dung beetle population to attain those numbers and the horn fly to cease to be a problem.

3. Adapted genetics to the rescue.

Some breeds of cattle and individuals in a breed will have greater resistance to horn flies reducing their performance, even without any insecticides.

It is important to consider this as the horn fly is here to stay, we need to select those animals that show a higher level of resistance to the horn fly. Observation in selecting Bulls with high horn fly resistance is key as I will explain.

Remember the horn fly is attracted to testosterone which is the reason they concentrate on Bulls as opposed to cows. Be careful not to select low testosterone Bulls as this will have a harmful effect in your herd genetics. There are some animals that possess a natural oil or substance that repels insects without reduced testosterone. I explained how to select for masculine Bulls in my Adapted Genetics/Selection Guidelines online course.

4. If necessary, introduce dung beetles to your grazing operation.

When I started regenerating a ranch in Florida, there were no dung beetles as the previous owners had applied excess chemicals for 23 years as it was a potted tree nursery. After a few months, it was clear there were no dung beetles around, so I bought 400 dung beetles and released them into freshly deposited dung with the cowherd late in the afternoon. From there, they started to reproduce and a few years later we had enough dung beetles so that the fresh manure disappeared in 2 to 4 days. 

5. What to do with the horn fly while your dung beetle population is not high enough?

I have used a portable sprayer that is mounted on a sled with a battery-powered pump to spray the cows with food-grade diatomaceous earth mixed with dawn soap and orange oil to kill the horn flies without doing harm to the dung beetles. It is labor-intensive, and it would be much better to have adapted genetics to not have to use anything for the horn flies while the dung beetle population grows to the numbers required.  You can find a video of my invention on YouTube under Portable cow wash.

Here is the formula I used: One 5-gallon bucket full of feed grade diatomaceous earth, one large bottle of liquid Dawn soap, one quart of orange oil then fill the bucket with water. I use a cordless drill with a paint mixer attached to it to mix this very well. Then I mix it before starting to spray. The diatomaceous earth kills the horn fly when it dries in the coat of the cattle and the horn fly lands there. The diatomaceous earth cuts the horn flies, so they dehydrate. The soap is used to maintain the powder suspended in the water and to stick the wings of the flies so they cannot fly, the orange oil is used as a repellent.

When the horn fly pressure is too high it may need to be done twice a day, so it is labor-intensive, and you need to train the cattle to go through the sprayer before you start. Another reason to consider parasites resistant genetics.

Now, that we have a larger population of dung beetles there is no need to spray with this dung beetle-friendly mixture. It should only be used while you wean your cattle from insecticides to allow your dung beetle population to grow so that they can take care of the horn fly larvae.

We may forget, in the daily hustle, that we are called to be stewards of the land and that we can profit from improving our land if done at a low cost using biological methods. In my mind, this is absolutely necessary as we will not only leave our land better than we got it but will profit from the abundance we have created through our management.

Conclusion and recap...

Dung Beetles are extremely important to your profitability and soil improvement. To increase their numbers and effect on horn flies and soil improvement, here are the 5 steps.

1. Stop using insecticides on your cattle and stop deworming with the ivermectin family products as much as possible.

They will kill your dung beetle population

2. Grow a large population of dung beetles in your property.

Remember you need around 1,000 dung beetles per cow.

3. Adapted genetics to the rescue.

Adapted genetics being part of your herd will take you faster to achieve harmony in your ranch or farm.

4. If necessary, introduce dung beetles to your grazing operation.

Sometimes this is needed to advance faster.

5. What to do to control horn flies while your dung beetle population is not high enough?

You can go to YouTube under Portable cow wash to see it.

If this is feasible for your operation, it does work but it is labor-intensive

That is it for today!

Goodbye, make sure you subscribe to the podcast in Spotify, iTunes, or Youtube, you can also join us on the weekly email at www.rwranching.com/join