Fly Resisitence-A Highly Heritable Trait

The attached article just reinforces what we have seen over the last five-six years with no chemical fly control. 

We have only had one case where we did pour some yearling heifers a couple years ago.  They were sandwiched in between pastures that had the exact kind of cattle the article says are more prone to fly problems.  Flies were extremely bad that year for almost all cattle inour area, but our cow herd and yearlings here at home had few problems, just a handful of out of 250 head.  The yearling heifers, in the pasture away from home, had hundreds of flies, while the cows in the neighboring pastures would have thousands.  Neither cows on each side of the heifers ever received help from their owners. We brought the heifers in and poured them and put a fly tag in one ear.  If it had not been for the neighboring cattle, I don't think we would have had to do anything.

Our cows are the smaller framed, easy fleshing type, that get no shots, wormers, or fly control, and very little supplemental feed besides grazing.  just the kind that the article says are likely to be more resistant to flys.  The last time most of them went through the chute is when they get preg checked as a yearling breeding heifer.

Attached Files

•  Fly Control.pdf   102.51KB   5 downloads

Fly Resisitence-A Highly Heritable Trait