Tack Box Talk
Tack Box Talk
Beating Bugs: The story of using all parts of the pyramid
Dr. Jonathan Cammack, livestock entomologist with Oklahoma State University, covers the big mistakes horse owners make in their battle with flying pests. There is more to winning this war than picking up the fly spray bottle.
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Kris Hiney: Welcome to Extension Horse's Tack Box Talk Series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney with Oklahoma State University.
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Kris Hiney: And today, we're going to be talking a little bit about insects, and external parasites, and the common mistakes that horse owners make. So, I'm thrilled to have a first-time guest to our podcast, but a fellow OSUer, Dr. Jonathan Cammack. So, welcome, Jonathan.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Thanks, Kris.
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Kris Hiney: So, I will say you are our livestock entomologist, but I've sometimes begged you to do some horse programming for me as well. But is it that different between cattle and horses.
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, not that much, and oftentimes, you know, we think about, you know, most of our, you know, cattle producers in the state also likely have horses, and, you know, I think a lot of our horse owners in the state, you know, often have some cattle as well, whether they're raising them as show animals, or, you know, maybe a yard ornament, or, you know, really, you know, like, actually, you know, doing some, you know, beef production or something, but I think they kind of go hand in hand for a lot of
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Jonathan A Cammack: A lot of the state.
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Kris Hiney: You know, I will have to give you a particular shoutout for that. You are the very first person who has ever referred to cattle as lawn ornaments, and I
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Kris Hiney: As the recipient, so much the other way, I'm glad to have.
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Jonathan A Cammack: I think it's…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Somebody's got a belted Galloway or something, you know, in their yard, you know, that, you know, just, you know, walking around mowing the lawn for them, right? They're probably not doing too much beef production, but, you know, still fun animals nonetheless.
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Kris Hiney: Exactly, exactly. So, I wanted to, rather than do, like, go through a list of all the bugs that bug us, kind of focus a little bit on the common mistakes that horse owners make. So, I know I've worked with you, we're working on an online course that hopefully will be out soon for horse owners to take, here at OSU.
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Kris Hiney: But a lot of it, when we talk, you know, Horse Owners center on, like.
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Kris Hiney: what fly spray to buy, and that's pretty much the extent of what they do. So, what do you see people making, like, huge mistakes when it comes to
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Kris Hiney: parasite management.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, I think that, you know, you hit the nail on the head right there. That is the mistake, right? You know, what fly spray to buy? And unfortunately, if we were to go down to, you know, Tractor Supply, the local co-op, or, you know, Amazon, or, you know, whatever online supplier you might want to look at, all of the products that are available for
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Jonathan A Cammack: mainly for fly control and horses are all synthetic pyrethroids. So, you know, although you might be buying a different brand of a product, the concentration of that compound that you're using might be a little different.
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Jonathan A Cammack: But we're still spraying, you know, essentially the same product across all of those different spray bottles, and so it's not really doing anything for, you know, helping manage the development of resistance to those insecticides for whatever pest we're trying to deal with.
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Kris Hiney: So the fly sprays are probably not that different, so grabbing a different bottle may not be that important.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Right.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, so I know when we've chatted, you used the term integrated pest management, and I guess it's not just you, other people use it too.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Right, yeah, I can't lay claim to it, you know.
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Kris Hiney: But essentially, that means, what, moving past the spray bottle and looking at some other things that maybe you're doing wrong?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Certainly, you know, the… I like to think about IPM as kind of a pyramid, where there are multiple tactics that we can combine into kind of our pest management program, and the bottom of that pyramid is going to be our cultural control methods, or, you know, things that we can do, such as sanitation, or getting rid of pest problems in the first place.
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Jonathan A Cammack: That next tier up is going to be, our mechanical control. So, you know, if we think about if we're trying to keep mosquitoes out of our house, we put window… we put window screens up on the windows, or keep the door closed. That way, you know, those pests can't get in. We can do the same thing for a lot of animal systems, you know, by putting up some sort of a barrier to prevent that pest from interacting with the animal, whether that's the, you know, the sheets that we can put over horses, or the fly masks that we can put over their eyes.
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Jonathan A Cammack: things like that. Next level up would be biological control, or some of these natural or native
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Jonathan A Cammack: Mechanisms that are present in the environment that can kill these different pests, whether they're little tiny parasitic wasps, or,
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Jonathan A Cammack: fungi that will kill some of these other pests, and then the top of the pyramid is certainly going to be our chemical control options, but it's the smallest part of the, you know, the pyramid, you know, the very tip of that triangle, if you will. So we do want to use pesticides, but we want to think about, you know, the impact that we're having with those pesticides on
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Jonathan A Cammack: The… that system as a whole, so whether or not we're going to have any sort of, you know, off-target impacts with
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, any other beneficial organisms in that environment, such as those little parasitic wasps or those parasitoids.
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Jonathan A Cammack: And really think about using those pesticides only when the pest populations dictate so.
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Jonathan A Cammack: And that's kind of the most… sorry, that's kind of the most important part, right? Using a pesticide when we need to, not just going out and spraying because it's 2 p.m. or, you know, or whatever.
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Kris Hiney: But that's typically what people do.
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Kris Hiney: Right, so…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: So imagine, and I know, you know, you visit a lot of the cattle places, I know you've got kind of some dairy background, but imagine, if you will, so you walk to a horse farm, what would you expect is, like, what am I going to see that's probably the biggest problem going on at your typical average horse farm?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, it's gonna be probably manure management, or, kind of that straw hay bedding, that…
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Jonathan A Cammack: the wasted material that's, you know, removed from stalls, the management of that, or even management of spilled feed materials, or, you know, water leaks. Like, all of those things kind of combined together create the perfect breeding ground for most of the pest flies that impact really any livestock animal. So, you know, the
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Jonathan A Cammack: Thing we want to avoid is Wet.
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Jonathan A Cammack: organic matter, and whether that organic matter is feed, hay, or manure, that's all basically the same thing to flies, you know, it's a lunch buffet for them and their offspring.
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Kris Hiney: So, and I guess I've seen quite a bit that we've… we tried to do some education on this, but what a really common one are, like, the round bale feeders or the hay feeders.
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Kris Hiney: Because, trust me, if you've ever owned a horse, they will pull hay out of the feeder, it will be on the ground, and they will stomp on it, and then it's not edible.
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Kris Hiney: And that, right, is what…
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Kris Hiney: like, it rains, or they urinate on it because they don't want things to splash on them, right? Beyond that, I mean, how often do you have to clean all that up?
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, if, if we were doing everything, you know, right or by the books, that material would need to be picked up twice a week, essentially, you know, gotten rid of, right? Which…
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Jonathan A Cammack: is, you know, we can't do, you know, so, you know, we've got to think about, you know, potentially other things that we might be able to do. So, you know, in a pasture situation, it's a little bit more manageable, particularly if we're feeding animals some round bales. You know, we could set a round bale. Once they eat it, we could not place our next round bale directly next to it, but maybe
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Jonathan A Cammack: 20, 30 feet away, that way there's no overlap of that wasted hay that kind of occurs around that bale, and that material will have a chance to dry out. If it has the chance to dry out because they're not, you know, standing on it, or
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Jonathan A Cammack: dropping more hay on it, or urinating on it, then, you know, it's going to reduce the likelihood that that's going to kind of serve as our source for some of these pests, particularly houseflies and stableflies, you know, which are… one's a nuisance, and then the other one, you know, is a biting pest, so…
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, we want to do everything we can to kind of prevent those from
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Jonathan A Cammack: From being present in the environment.
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Kris Hiney: So, you know, just being honest, when you said, you know, once or twice a week, I was like, oh, I don't think I'm gonna do that, like…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Right? That's perfect.
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Kris Hiney: Like.
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Kris Hiney: You know, because we often, talk about we gotta manage for what works for people, and be realistic, because.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Certainly.
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Kris Hiney: come in here with, like, us Extension people tell you to do these things, and, like, there's no way, you're crazy. Is there, like, a… a reasonable… right? So there's, like, the best, and then there's… what's… what's reasonable for… I could convince people to do that will at least maybe cut down on that?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Sure, you know, I think, you know, twice a week would be ideal, right? Because we're looking at, you know, with houseflies, under ideal conditions, particularly in the summer, you know, we can have a generation in
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Jonathan A Cammack: a little less than a week, and so that's why that kind of, you know, one-week time frame comes from. Stableflies are going to develop a little bit slower, so, you know.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Once every two weeks would be… would be…
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Jonathan A Cammack: good, and once a month would be kind of the bare minimum, but I don't even know if once a month is going to be, you know, much different from not at all. Yeah. But, because it's going to be a very…
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Kris Hiney: project.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, yeah.
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Jonathan A Cammack: I'll do that in my spare time.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, sorry about that. So, okay, so ideally, maybe if I could get them to be, like, every two weeks, or, I mean, kind of your strategy, at least if you're feeding round bales, maybe we move that feeder, but if you have more permanent feeders.
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Kris Hiney: you know, if I could get people to do every two weeks, like, let's clean out from under there. Now, I'm just, you know, throwing some ideas out here.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Sure.
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Kris Hiney: what if I took…
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Kris Hiney: the black mats, like, that you see in stalls or sheds, and put those under my hay feeder. Theoretically, that makes it easier for me to clean up that debris. Would that…
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Kris Hiney: help if I did a little proactive kind of measures?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, it might make it easier to, you know, kind of remove that material, but the other challenge that we'll encounter is, you know, the soil beneath that, regardless of how compacted it might be, is still going to allow for the drainage of some of that liquid. You know, where if we put that rubber mat down, then, you know, that hay is basically going to sit
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, and has the potential to stay, you know, a little, you know, more wet for a little while longer. So, you know, I don't know if that'd be the best way to go or not, but, you know, again, I think we can add that to our list of things to test out.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, you're killing me. I'm trying to come up with good ideas, and you're just shooting me down.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, well, you know, so in the absence of, you know, being able to get rid of that material,
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, once, you know, once a week. There are… there are certainly insecticides that we could use that, would be our… our insect growth regulators, or the ones that will kind of disrupt the development process.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Of these insects, such as these flies. So there are a number of them that you could buy as a feed-through that you mix in with the, you know, minerals or the, you know.
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Jonathan A Cammack: pellets or, you know, sweet feed, or whatever you might be giving the horses. It'll basically pass through their digestive system, come out in the manure and the urine, and when the insects feed on that material, kind of in that, that, kind of,
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Jonathan A Cammack: Decomposing organic material setting where that hay is at, they'll consume those products, and it will disrupt their development.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Okay. So, fantastic products. And there's also some other insect growth regulators that are not feed-throughs that we can use.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Either as a spray or kind of a granular product that we could apply to that accumulation of organic material, you know, beneath a hay feeder, for example, if you've got a bunch of hay on the ground, you could spray or sprinkle some of this
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Jonathan A Cammack: Some of these products on there, and that material will dissolve, in those insects, those…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Fly larvae, houseflies, stableflies, whatever will consume that, and it will disrupt their development, ultimately leading to their death.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Okay, now I might be coming up with a strategy I can get people on board with.
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Kris Hiney: So, how often would you need, like, those… those sprinkle-on-the-ground products? Like, again, if I'm thinking I can realistically get horse owners to clean things out, maybe every two weeks or a month, how often would you need to apply those products, like, in between to, like, okay, we're… we're making some progress here?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Let me pull a label here, that way I can tell you, because I know I don't want to… don't want to go off-label and… and say, so,
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Jonathan A Cammack: Alright, we're looking, like, about once a month for, You know, what's been… Tested, for…
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Jonathan A Cammack: some livestock. So yeah, so here we go. Horses, not less than 30 days, so once a month, essentially, will be a…
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Kris Hiney: So we could maybe clean up the hay, then sprinkle?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yep.
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Kris Hiney: Good for a month, clean up the hay at Sprinkle.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yep.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, see, we are doing some real extension work here. I'm being the realistic horse person, gonna put you to the spot on this. Yep. So you… obviously, you also mentioned manure, and we're talking about filth flies, and so hopefully, you know, my feeding area horses
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Kris Hiney: Theoretically, but we all know they do. Well, you know, defecate in a different area.
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Kris Hiney: So, the manure… When horses are stalled, we do a pretty good job.
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Kris Hiney: To be honest, I would hope, right? Most people clean the stall once or twice a day when the horse is stalled. However, we get a little less, on top of things when they're in, you know, runs, dry lots, pastures, etc. I'm just being realistic here.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Right?
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Kris Hiney: But are those other manure deposits still a pretty significant source?
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Kris Hiney: Larva development?
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Jonathan A Cammack: So, you know, luckily, you know, if we think about, kind of, the, you know, wetness scale of manures, if you will, horse manure is… is pretty dry. A lot of fiber in there, you know, it's pretty large, compact.
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Jonathan A Cammack: pellets, you know, basically. You know, manure from a horse is a lot different than manure from a dairy cow, for example, right? There's a very big difference in water content. And so, you know, just…
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Jonathan A Cammack: material, manure being deposited out into a pasture-type setting, I wouldn't be too concerned with a lot of the, you know, really bad pest flies developing in, just because the moisture content's not…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Not really there. The structure of that manure is a little bit different. Where we would start seeing issues, you know, might be in,
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Jonathan A Cammack: a pen or a run-type situation where that manure might be accumulating over a much smaller area than, say, something like a pasture. As long as the horses are, you know, able to, you know, kind of trample it, stomp it, break it up, so it has the opportunity to dry out, that's fantastic. We should have
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, very minimal fly attraction to that material. But if we have a water leak at a water trough or something, and you've got, you know, that one corner that's always wet, and that just happens to be where the manure ends up, then, you know, we've kind of, again, created that, you know, kind of artificial
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Jonathan A Cammack: perfect breeding ground for a lot of these flies. So, that kind of goes back to, that bottom component of our IPM pyramid, or that cultural control. Water management or moisture management is one of the best things we can do.
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Jonathan A Cammack: To help, with a lot of these problems, because, again, that wet, decomposing organic matter is what these flies need, so if we can keep that material as dry as possible.
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Jonathan A Cammack: We'll have great impacts on, the flies that can be produced from that material.
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Kris Hiney: So, just because you had mentioned you were going to be heading out to the panhandle of Oklahoma soon, and that is definitely drier in Oklahoma than eastern Oklahoma.
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Kris Hiney: I mean, and you said dairy cattle manure, cattle, like, a whole different story than horse manure, but do you see that, or maybe you don't spend a lot of time with the horse people in western Oklahoma, do they have less of the fly issues just because of how arid it is and things drying out faster?
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Jonathan A Cammack: So, you know, I can't answer that question because I haven't seen it firsthand. So, I mean, I would expect, you know, that we would probably have
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Jonathan A Cammack: less problems, just because there… there's less moisture. But, you know, if we have big rainfall events or, you know, a wet summer like we had this year, right, that's, you know, kind of…
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, again, the times of year that we would want to be kind of watching out for when we would expect to see, you know, some, you know, big booms in fly populations. You know, and certainly in some of the feedlot settings around
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Jonathan A Cammack: Around the country, in areas that we might think of,
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Jonathan A Cammack: Traditionally being a little more dry, there are certainly stable fly problems around those feedlots that cattle are being kept in, so…
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, certainly, it is still a concern.
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Kris Hiney: Okay. So, so I think these are good tips, so we're definitely, you know, kind of maybe focusing around that feeding area where a lot of moisture, you know, collects just from the hay trampling. I want to talk a little bit about the biologic control, mostly because I always think it's really cool. So…
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Kris Hiney: The biologic control, you'd mentioned, kind of, some of the parasitoid wasps, so those are ones, like, you mail order, and then you buy wasps, but they're little, they're not the bad ones, right?
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Kris Hiney: And then some of the fungus. So talk to me a little bit about when an owner might choose to use those, or you mentioned you can't fly spray them, because that's bad, right? So how do we use those effectively?
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Jonathan A Cammack: You're right, it's, you know, it's again that balancing act, so,
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Jonathan A Cammack: you wouldn't want to, place an order, for example, for, either these… the, they're… technically, their name are parasitoids, they're often called parasitic wasps or fly predators by some companies. But, you know, we wouldn't want to place an order for these, let's say, you know.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Place the parasitized pupae that we receive in the mail out in a barn, and then a week later decide that, oh, we're gonna go out and, you know.
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Jonathan A Cammack: douse the barn with a pyrethroid to, you know, get rid of the housefly adults, because that's probably about the same timeline that those little wasps have emerged, and now they're going to be flying around in the environment, and because they're so small and so susceptible to these products, they're…
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Jonathan A Cammack: we're just gonna toast them with that, you know, with that pesticide product. So, we want to think about it from a timing standpoint. You know, maybe… maybe you, use your chemical control, and then…
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Jonathan A Cammack: And then your parasitoids, you know, a week or two later after that residue from that material is really no longer effective.
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Jonathan A Cammack: But we can also think about where we might be applying
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Jonathan A Cammack: these products. So if you've got a, you know, maybe a…
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Jonathan A Cammack: half of your barn or a couple of stalls or something that might be empty. You could certainly put the parasitized pupae in there, and, you know, kind of try to separate them from where you're going to apply that pesticide if you have to, kind of within that, you know, couple of week window, to
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Jonathan A Cammack: Try to keep them from, from being exposed to it.
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Jonathan A Cammack: But, those little wasps are going to emerge in the environment.
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Jonathan A Cammack: They're gonna fly around, and they're going to be looking for either the fly larvae or the fly pupae that are present in the environment. So they're going to be going to
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Jonathan A Cammack: those stalls where the horses are being kept, because, you know, if the fly larvae are developing in that manure, wet hay, bedding, or whatever, pupae are certainly going to be present, you know, kind of down in the soil layer, or even around the edges of those stalls where we're not able to get to effectively or efficiently to be able to clean and remove all that material, or potentially those pupae, so…
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Jonathan A Cammack: They're going to find them, so we still need to take that into account with,
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Jonathan A Cammack: when we time pesticide applications. And the other question is the fungal pathogens. So there are certainly a number of naturally occurring fungi that will kill houseflies and other flies.
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Jonathan A Cammack: We've got, only one species that I'm aware of that's been, commercially produced and made available, so it's a liquid product that you can buy, and you could spray around, you know, your stalls or,
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Jonathan A Cammack: If you've got a pile where you, take all that wasted bedding or hay material or whatever and stack it up with compost, you could spray that with, with that fungus product, and then the flies that are going to interact with it, they'll get the fungal spores on their body.
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Jonathan A Cammack: they'll fly around in the environment with it. And, for the most part, the most common
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Jonathan A Cammack: species of fungus that we see impacting things like houseflies, particularly during the fall, is basically an STD of houseflies, because it,
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Jonathan A Cammack: When a fly dies, the fungus manipulates the musculature in the fly's body and makes its wings stick up so that it looks like a female fly that's receptive to mating. It also produces some compounds that make male flies think that it's, you know, it also smells like a female housefly that's receptive to mating, so the male flies will come over, land on this fly that's been killed by the fungus, whether or not it's a male or
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Jonathan A Cammack: or a female fly that's dead. They'll get those fungal spores on their body, and then they'll
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Jonathan A Cammack: eventually die from that fungus, but they'll transfer those spores to other live flies in the environment. So it's a really, really cool, you know, system that's evolved.
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Kris Hiney: Does it ever make you wonder, are you really in control of your life?
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, the more I learn about, like, you know, inter-kingdom communication and, you know, all of that cool stuff, I mean, bacteria are running the world.
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Kris Hiney: Exactly, right? So your guts tell you what to do, so why not control fly behavior? I mean, I should just give up.
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Kris Hiney: So you mentioned something about, kind of the manure pile, so I think this is another great, thing to think about, because as horse owners, we do collect horse manure, and a lot of times we compost it so that it kind of turns into dirt.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yep.
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Kris Hiney: well, someday, right? So, enhancing the dirt. I know all the soil scientists out there, like, don't say dirt. But,
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Kris Hiney: But obviously, if we're putting it all in one place, right, and then the water, you know, it gets rained on, etc, that's, like, the perfect breeding ground for flies. So are there things, like, are we supposed to apply things to our horseman root pile?
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, the… I think it's a good question that you brought up, because, really we can address a couple of things right here, right? You know, yeah, the soil people will get bent out of shape if we talk about dirt, you know. The soil scientist that was on my master's committee said, you know, dirt is what you get under your fingernails, and I would always say, well, I got a lot of the dirt under my fingernails when I was doing that study, so it's dirt.
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Jonathan A Cammack: But I, you know, really what we need to think about is actually composting. Just taking the manure, the bedding, and putting it in a pile out behind the barn is not composting, right? Composting is an active process that requires the continual introduction of, like, that carbon, you know, the hay, for example.
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Jonathan A Cammack: But it also requires oxygen and turning, so we can't just make a big pile and expect it to compost, because it's only going to compost in the very middle, and it's only going to compost part of the way. So true composting would be rotating everything in that pile
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, on, you know, again, some sort of basis, whether it's every week, every two weeks, you know, some sort of rotation that way. We're allowed… we're allowing to mix that organic material or that carbon back into that, so it will really actually break down. And that's where a lot of times we see problems.
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, with this. So, as that pile of manure and hay is… is…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Air quotes, composting, and it's going to… there's going to be a lot of bacterial activity right there in the center.
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Jonathan A Cammack: It's gonna get super hot, that material will compost, but the amount of composting that actually occurs decreases as we move out from the center of that pile, and so that area between that really hot center and the outside edge, particularly if it gets rained on, right, that's going to be perfect breeding ground for any of our flies, because it's… it's not composted, and
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Jonathan A Cammack: It's wet.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, so work with me here.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: I'm always gonna be like, okay, but, right? So I'm realistic about how many people turn that pile.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: go, like.
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Jonathan A Cammack: And I'm sure it's zero.
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Kris Hiney: Right? Right, so I'm just trying to be like, okay, I know there's… I give people the perfect advice scenario, and then I'm like, okay, talk to me about what you're willing to do. Because then we can try to, you know, wiggle our way into what might help a bit within our constraints of what are you willing to do.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: So…
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Kris Hiney: let's just say it's not a perfect world, they're not gonna turn it every week. Is there anything you can do that may still help a bit?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, you know, I think if, you know, we could think about, just like with that, you know, removal of hay or whatever from, you know, our pens, you know, if we could get once every two weeks, once a month, right, that's going to be…
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Jonathan A Cammack: better than nothing, but, you know, in the absence of any sort of turning, you know, we've basically just created kind of our source pile for, you know, for our fly problem. So, again, we've got to come up with something that's going to work with whatever our, you know, management practices are, and
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Jonathan A Cammack: you can certainly turn it too often, right? You know, once a day.
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Jonathan A Cammack: nobody's got time for that, right? And that material's also not going to have the opportunity to break down, but, you know, once every two, three weeks, once a month, you know, at most, then at least that's going to give that opportunity for that older material to kind of come to the surface, the new material to kind of go to the middle.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Put some more oxygen into the mix, and some more carbon, and actually allow that composting process to turn that material from
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, rotting hay and manure into
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Jonathan A Cammack: Some sort of compost or soil amendment that we can actually, you know, put on some plants.
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Kris Hiney: So, would it be off-label, or, like, I'm just trying to be creative here, then, to use those IGRs around your compost pile? Like, that same, like, kind of…
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Kris Hiney: if I'm gonna, like, okay, guys, can we do something once a month? I mean, would that be kind of a stopgap, like…
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Kris Hiney: Or is because you keep putting manure on top of it, then it doesn't work because…
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Kris Hiney: They don't see it, or something.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, you know, I would say,
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Jonathan A Cammack: If you wanted to, you know, maybe kind of around the perimeter of it, you know, because usually the…
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Jonathan A Cammack: those kind of edges where it's kind of that, you know, kind of, you know, volcano, if you will, has allowed to kind of taper out and get a little thin, you know, that's going to be the area that's going to stay a little wetter if it rains, and, you know, always kind of, you know, have new material kind of falling down on top of it. So, if somebody wanted to apply one of those products around the perimeter of that, I think that's better, but…
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Jonathan A Cammack: To… it would be a waste of time and a waste of product to just spray the whole mountain, if you will, because there aren't going to be fly larvae all over it.
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Kris Hiney: Right, okay, so I think that's… that's practical, and I'm trying to just come up with some practical guidelines for people so they don't think they have to spend their entire day and all work week just…
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Kris Hiney: Turning piles and doing stuff.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Sorry, if we're in a wetter time of the year, like the spring, where it's raining pretty frequently, right, if that material is getting wet and staying wet, then we might want to up our frequency of, you know, either trying to turn it or, you know, applying one of those products.
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Kris Hiney: No, I've seen some people kind of go with the black tarp. Does that do anything at all to reduce flies?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Probably not. I mean, I'm sure it helps create a nice hot environment to help kind of speed up that composting process.
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Kris Hiney: If you get flies faster, too, then.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, you'd get flies faster, and they're… I think probably in the heat of the summer, it probably does a pretty good job, you know, killing some of them off, just because it's gonna get so hot in there, but, you know, outside of the, you know, the middle of the day in August or September, when it's blazing hot everywhere, you know, they're still probably…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Still probably developing in it.
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Kris Hiney: Okay.
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Kris Hiney: All right, so we've provided, hopefully, a little bit of guidance, not made people's lives too onerous about, kind of, what we're… what we're doing. Are there any other biggies? I mean, there's so many different parasites for horses that… and I… I kind of wanted to go with the generic ones,
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Kris Hiney: that a lot of it, when you're talking about cultural control, is the filth flies. Of course, with horses, we have things that are not…
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Kris Hiney: filth flies, you know, the tabanids, and the horribleness flies. Is there honestly anything you can do about those, or just move away?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, for… to manage, right, you know, it's… they're interesting, you know, from a… you know, from the perspective of an entomologist, you know, who's not currently being bit by one, right? They're, you know, they're really cool flies, but as soon as, you know, as soon as I go outside and I've got, you know, a big to manage or something chasing me across the yard, right, then they're not that cool, but they're…
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, they're a really, really diverse, interesting group of insects, but they're problems for a lot of livestock. And, you know, in addition to the fact that they bite, they're vectors of
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Jonathan A Cammack: of a lot of pathogens, typically mechanical vectors, because their mouthparts are kind of like a pair of scissors, and so when they bite something, whether that's a, you know, horse, a cow, or a person, drink that blood, then they fly off with essentially a pair of contaminated scissors stuck to the front of their head. So they can transmit a number of pathogens, you know, anaplasma in cattle, equine infectious anemia in horses, because they've got those infected scissors stuck to the front of their head.
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Jonathan A Cammack: we do want to try to do something about them.
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Jonathan A Cammack: they're hard to control. They spend very little time on whatever animal that is they're biting, so it's not like a fly spray or something is going to work. So we really have to think about,
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Jonathan A Cammack: Again, the environmental aspect of it,
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Jonathan A Cammack: Most, tabanid or horsefly larvae
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Jonathan A Cammack: Live in, kind of, semi-aquatic habitats, so along the edges of,
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Jonathan A Cammack: ponds, kind of marshy areas, you know, along the edges of slow-moving streams, kind of areas where, we're gonna have that wet, decomposing organic matter, usually grass and leaves and things.
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Jonathan A Cammack: that's where we're gonna find them, right? We probably can't get rid of a pond, particularly if we've got a pond out in the middle of a pasture to provide water for our animals, so we're not going to be able to do much about that. But,
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Jonathan A Cammack: we do know that Tabandids like to spend time in Eastern Red Cedars. It provides them a good place to kind of sit and wait for a host animal to… to appear, and so they spend their time flying back and forth between those resting sites and where they're going to be biting animals. So if you've got Eastern Red Cedar encroachment on your property.
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Jonathan A Cammack: just one more reason to get rid of… rid of that, right? You know, they're using up all the water, they're serving as kind of…
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, hiding locations for ticks, if you will, you know, because of the wildlife that are moving and, you know, kind of spending time under them. And they're also serving as, kind of these areas where Tbanids can hide out, so…
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Jonathan A Cammack: If you needed another reason to get rid of an Eastern Red Cedar, right, there we go.
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Kris Hiney: I know, we're war on the… so just because I'm also, like, yes, get rid of them, but there's a ton of them everywhere. But we also have a lot of, you know, woody encroachment, I guess, in general. Maybe I'm going way off topic here, right? Because the minute in Oklahoma, if you don't mow it or graze it, like, here comes the trees.
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Kris Hiney: Is that… will they seek refuge in any woody vegetation, or what is it about the cedar that…
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Kris Hiney: Do they just like how it smells?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, I don't know if they like how it smells, or you know, for the issues that we see with ticks in eastern red cedar encroachment, it's all about the humidity. So, those cedar trees, you know, the canopy is really dense, they're usually low to the ground, they're sucking up a lot of moisture out of the ground, and as they're,
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Jonathan A Cammack: respiring, transpiring, I don't know, I don't study plants, right? As they're… as they're converting CO2 into oxygen.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Doing what plans
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Jonathan A Cammack: do, right? They're giving off a lot of moisture, and so they kind of create this bubble underneath that canopy where the humidity is a little bit higher than the surrounding environment. So, you know, maybe the Tabanids are hanging out there because it provides them the ability to not be as moisture-stressed as they might be if they were just out in the open environment in the middle of the hot summer.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Just a hypothesis, but, you know, it's what we see with other arthropods that frequent those areas.
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Kris Hiney: It's a podcast, we can make stuff up a little
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Kris Hiney: So, okay, so we're gonna try to decrease the woody area around the ponds, right? So that'll help, because they won't have as many hidey places, but I mean.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Even along our pastures, too, right?
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Kris Hiney: Yeah.
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Jonathan A Cammack: They… particularly, you know, we often see Eastern Red Cedars kind of grow in, you know, lines, you know, or maybe they were intentionally planted in a line, you know, that original source population, and now you've got a big, you know, row of cedars or something that, you know, might be providing a windbreak, but they're also providing that source for all the other cedars, you know.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Depending on where the wind's blowing, you know, as the seeds get carried, or the birds carry those seeds, for example,
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Jonathan A Cammack: But those also provide kind of corridors where, you know, the livestock are going to be moving along them, because they follow them, they want the shade, but that also provides kind of a fly zone, if you will, for these Tibetans, right? They're going to navigate along those, so it…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Getting rid of that, you know, kind of those big stands of cedars, is going to do nothing but help
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Jonathan A Cammack: Everybody and everything.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, well, hopefully I've encouraged a lot more fires than this. Controlled, right? Controlled fires.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Burns, yes.
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Kris Hiney: None of that March nonsense.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Right.
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Kris Hiney: And those of you that don't live in Oklahoma, sorry that you may be out of the joke here, but we, tend to have a lot of wildfires here in Oklahoma, and cedar trees are a glorious thing when they, alight on fire.
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Kris Hiney: Very sparky. Yeah. Okay, now I want to be mindful of your time,
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Kris Hiney: So I don't know whether I should ask you about ticks.
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Kris Hiney: Or, if I should have you give us the latest brief or reassurance about…
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Kris Hiney: our fun little new worm friend that everybody is talking about. So, which would you prefer to talk about, Dr. Kamek? Would you rather.
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, those are both so open-ended questions.
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Kris Hiney: It surprised me. Oh, okay,
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Kris Hiney: I mean, I always think ticks are a lost cause, so let's talk about…
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Jonathan A Cammack: everywhere.
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Kris Hiney: They are, you're never gonna win, just give up. Let's… just so that we're hearing it from an expert, and I probably will have some other folks visiting about this. So, horse owners may not be as, you know, up-to-date on this, as the cattle people, because it affects them probably a little bit more directly, if it happens.
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Kris Hiney: So, the NWS, the New World Screwworm…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Let's just, you know, give us a 5-minute breakdown on…
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Kris Hiney: Where are we at? Should we panic?
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Kris Hiney: Should we light the trees on fire? Because that all…
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Jonathan A Cammack: You know, I don't think we're quite at the point of burning everything to the ground, so that's the good news, right? But for those that are unaware, New World Screwworm is a pest that we had in the United States.
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, up until, depending on where we are in the country, you know, maybe late 60s, early 70s, all the way through the early 1980s, then that pest was pushed out of the United States by a big eradication program that has been moving that pest south to, to kind of a permanent quarantine zone in Panama.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Now, unfortunately, in 2023,
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Jonathan A Cammack: we saw, kind of that permanent barrier zone, get breached by these flies, and now they have been slowly making their way back north, with our most recent case about 70 miles south of the Texas border in Mexico.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Now, the good news is, we know that that animal was, an animal that was moved from an infested area to a feedlot, so it's not a natural movement of the pests. So, you know, really, our kind of main area of concern in Mexico, is kind of around where the Yucatan Peninsula meets with Mexico. So, you know, kind of about that southern…
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Jonathan A Cammack: maybe one-third of Mexico. The cases that we've seen north of that have been from human-mediated transport of infested animals. So we are seeing, you know, still some northward movement, but…
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, this is a pest that we can really stop by preventing the movement of animals, and also really, you know, being in tune with our animals. So if you see an animal that's got a wound.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Get it treated. Make sure that that wound doesn't have the chance to get infected with bacteria, because if it gets infected with bacteria and there are screwworms present in the environment, flies are going to lay their eggs on that infected wound, and then we're going to have a case of myiasis, which is the big issue with this fly.
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Jonathan A Cammack: And so, you know, as it continues to be, you know, more of a threat to the U.S, people, whether or not they've got
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Jonathan A Cammack: you know, horses that they're, you know, raising, or cattle, or whatever livestock animal, you're really going to have to be paying attention to the health of that animal, make sure there aren't any open wounds, and treat them as soon as possible, that way they don't become infected, and then don't become infested by screwworms.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, so that was a big 50-cent word, so I'm gonna make you tell us what my ass… myiasis.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Right. Yeah, so myiasis is the infestation of living tissue by fly larvae.
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Jonathan A Cammack: So what would happen in something like with a screwworm case is, you know, maybe a cow…
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Jonathan A Cammack: scratches itself on a barbed wire fence, gets a cut on a, you know, rusty piece of equipment or a feeder or something, or, you know, a horse, too, gets snagged on the barbed wire fence, cuts itself on something in a pen, right, then we have this open wound.
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Jonathan A Cammack: If we're not there to inspect that wound, clean it, you know, maybe dress it,
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Jonathan A Cammack: properly, it's probably going to get infected, right? They're out in the environment. If we had a cut on our arm or something and, you know, didn't pour some, you know, some hydrogen peroxide on it, or, you know, put Neosporin and a Band-Aid on it, it would probably get infected with bacteria from the environment. So, same sort of thing.
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Jonathan A Cammack: As those bacteria infect that wound, they start to produce some smells that flies are attracted to. The flies will find that animal with the wound, they'll lay eggs around that open wound, and those eggs will hatch into larvae, and the larvae will
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Jonathan A Cammack: start to consume that tissue, which is myiasis and is the problem that New World… New World Screwworm causes.
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Kris Hiney: But there's other ones that do the same thing, right?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Certainly, there are a, there are a number of flies that can do this. Most of those flies that are, kind of implicated in this are feeding more on the dead tissue. So if you've got an infected wound that's full of bacteria, there's a lot of necrotic tissue there. A lot of the flies that kind of infect wounds will only eat that necrotic tissue.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Some of them even produce, kind of, antimicrobial compounds, Don't they sometimes use, Meg?
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Kris Hiney: for wound care.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, it's called maggot therapy, so there are, you know, there's one species that's been identified thus far, you know, that they could utilize for that, so as they're feeding on a necrotic wound, they're producing antibacterial compounds, because they're kind of living in a nasty environment, and it kind of helps speed up the healing of those wounds, if you will, because they're only eating the necrotic tissue.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Now, with screwworms.
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Jonathan A Cammack: They start eating the necrotic tissue, but then they just keep eating, and so they'll eat that living, healthy tissue as well, which then just kind of creates this big, open, kind of festering wound that's, you know, full of maggots, full of bacteria, smells really bad, and they just keep eating until they…
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Jonathan A Cammack: Either complete their development, or that animal dies.
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Kris Hiney: Just not cool.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Not good at all.
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Kris Hiney: So if they were smart, they would just play around like the good guys, and be like, okay, we're full, because then nobody would try to kill them, right?
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, or they would only eat the necrotic tissue, right? They, they, you know…
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Kris Hiney: Wow, we'll have to have a talk, too. I don't think that's part of the strategy, though, have a good talking to them.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Yeah, the stern talking to, I don't think,
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Jonathan A Cammack: Fire? No. We try to bring a little levity to it. No problems here, so…
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Kris Hiney: Well, I really appreciate, your time. I know you're super busy with, you know, helping people out with all kinds of parasites, because you're not just, you know, external, you're not just cattle, you're having to cover the bases for everybody and everything, which is a huge job, so really, really appreciate your time.
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Kris Hiney: And certainly want to give a shout out. You guys have tons of fact sheets and information, available through us, through Oklahoma State University. And then again, hopefully soon, we'll have our, online course about, external parasite control for horses as well, with all kinds of fun pictures and things like that.
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Jonathan A Cammack: Alright, thanks for the invite, I had a great time, and hope everybody listening learned something.
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Kris Hiney: Alright, well, thank you again, and this has been another episode of our Tack Box Talk, Horse Stories with a Purpose.