EAHAO #8 - "Horn flies!" with Dr Brian Huseman

Horn flies are more than an ugly, annoying pest.   They're one of the most significant impacts on cattle animal health today! 

In this podcast, Brian Huseman, DVM, shares background on how & why horn flies do their dirty work... and what can be done to address their BILLION$ impact on the cattle industry.

Recorded March 2025 — 05:20 minutes

Medgene - it's a new day for animal health care!
https://medgenelabs.com

The opinions expressed are those of the individual(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Medgene.  Potency and efficacy of prescription platform product biologics have not been established. This product is prepared for use only by a veterinarian prescription.

Medgene’s prescription platform system ensures that all the ingredients that go into our vaccines are animal origin free.

#animalhealth #vaccines #veterinarian #cattle #ectoparasites #medgene #hornflies

©VST Labs for Medgene
www.MedgeneLabs.com
Linkedin
Facebook

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Every Animal Has an Owner. A mostly large animal podcast for veterinarians and the people that depend on them.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

My name is Dr. Brian Husman. I'm a veterinarian by training, and I've spent most of my career, most of it, in the animal health industry. I've worked for seven animal health companies in the RD and regulatory and animal care groups. And uh today I'm going to be talking about hornflies, and they're of great importance to us in the cattle industry because they're one of the most significant uh production loss uh items that we can have. A study done back in the 90s estimated that uh the monetary damage to hornflies for the U.S. livestock industry was around 876 million at that point in time. And if you put that into today's terms, it's at least 1.75 billion dollars annually in production losses and the cost of uh insecticides and treatment plans and that type of thing. The uh hornfly itself is an interesting uh parasite, the life cycle is about nine to ten days, and the adult uh female will lay roughly 150 to 300 eggs uh in her lifespan, and they feed continuously. The males will feed up to 20 times a day, and the females will feed up to 40 times a day, and so they spend a lot of time irritating the cattle that they're feeding on. All the animal wants to do is um stand around, swish their tail, uh stand in water to try and get them off of them rather than spending time grazing. And um, the hornfly females will then lay eggs in the manure piles uh around the cattle, and some of the literature that you read about will say that they are actually uh laying eggs before all the droppings even hit the ground. The highest populations of hornflies for most of the U.S. occur between April and October, and since they can have uh 10-day life cycles, that's up to 19 to 20, 25 uh life cycles in a season. So what MedGene is doing now is using a product from the fly salivary gland that they need to produce anticoagulant and can to get their blood meals as uh as they feed, and that product is thrombostatin. So we are making a product, so the animals themselves will produce anti-thrombostatin, and with that, then when the fly goes to feed, they are not able to anticoagulate the site, and therefore they can't complete their blood meal. As an analogy to this, we've all probably had a fruit shake at some point in time, and as you're sucking through the straw, that's what the fly is doing with the anticoagulant. But if you get a piece of fruit at the end of that, it plugs the straw and they're no longer able to suck it through. And so when these flies have a blood meal that's coagulating in their mouth parts, they're no longer able to feed. Blood is an important portion for the fly's reproductive cycle, and it uh since they can't have a complete feed, the females are not able to complete their reproductive cycle and will lay less eggs, and uh as such, you're gonna decrease the load over the course of the season. In some studies, they found up to a 60 to 65-70 percent reduction. It's something that we haven't had to date. The more animals that have antibodies in them, uh the uh uh better the control will be as far as reducing the fly load in the environment.