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Ranch It Up Radio Show & Podcast
New World Screwworm: What The Cattle Industry Must Know To Protect Herd Health & Profitability
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New World Screwworm. What you need to know and what you need to watch for crew, let's ranch it up. Good day everyone and thanks for riding with us on this all new episode of the Ranch it up radio show. I'm Jeff Tigger Earhart.
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And I'm Rebecca Wanner, AKA Back.
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A big thank you goes out to our partners for today's episode. The American Galvie Association, CK Bar Ranch, LivestockMarket.com, ranchHannel.com, Reynolds Land and Cattle. The all new sales series found on ranch channel.com Sirebuyer, Transova Genetics, Westway Feed Products and this fine radio station cattle battle. We will get to the news here a little later on in the program, but first we need to tackle this one. Fly season has begun for some producers, believe it or not. And as we prepare for fly season, so comes the battle on New World Screwworm. The current status borders remain closed to livestock from Mexico. The US Department of Agriculture has shifted its 100 million per week sterile fly release efforts to northern Mexico and southern Texas to create a buffer zone along the border. There is a new sterile fly dispersal facility in Edinburgh, Texas which is ready to begin distributing sterile flies. Plans are also underway for a domestic production facility in South Texas with a projected capacity of 300 million flies per week. But what could potentially happen if New World Screwworm finds its way north of the Mexican border? What could happen economically? Dr. Wayne Ayres, DVM Senior Beef Cattle Technical Consultant with Elanco Animal Health, joins us to share just how devastating New World Screwworm could be.
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Yeah, it is scary from a lot of different aspects. One just the whole horrific visual of what's, what can happen. But from the dollars and cents, there's a lot of different things. We have treatment costs. When we do have an animal, we're going to have some death loss. So now with, you know, and which is exacerbated by our current economic pricing right now within the cattle industry, every calf is worth so much. If I lose one of those, there's a, there's a big potential right there. We know that young calves are very vulnerable. Any young livestock and the navel is a, is a prime infection or infestation site. So we have to be very diligent about young stock. So if we're calving way out, we can lose those animals if we're not there. So we now we have more labor because not only do we have to, I have to be out there more diligent. I need to look at my cattle much more frequently than Maybe we have, especially on some of these big, large operations in Texas, you know, thousands and thousands of acres that they've just normally ran out on. We gotta have eyes on cattle because if you don't catch them in time, then these wounds can become fatal. We've got treatment costs, we've got some potential death, loss of animals and it's not a lot, but it's really high in young stock. Okay, we have labor costs of doing treatments plus just handling cattle. And then now we have also on top of it, we're gonna have cost of logistics and loss of market. So if I'm say in an infested area or and it's under quarantine, how do I get my cattle to go to the slaughterhouse when they're ready to feed out when they're all ready to go? Right. Well, if I can't get them across because I'm in a quarantine zone and I have to do some treatment or protocol in order, which could happen.
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I mean, realistically, that could happen.
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You're exactly right. We're going to have restricted movement set up. So now maybe I'm delayed getting to market when it needs to be, or now I have another treatment cost in order to be able to move them. And if there's some sort of a withhold on that treatment in some way, now I have to house them in the free zone where the slaughterhouse is for X number of days, whatever that is, and feed them there some more before they can actually go to harvest. So all of those things start adding up. And now you put more people in the field looking for disease, you've got more border patrol. We've already increased the kick riders along the border because they're going to be part of the solution, looking for wildlife that maybe are infested. So when you start adding all of these things together, we get a tremendous amount of money involved.
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Now is where I play the ya, but and I am classic for doing this. And now I'm going to bring in social media into this because as we know, if you're on social media, you know everything, right? You can share your opinion and that's
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the way it is.
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So when we started talking about New world screwworm and every time there was an update, we were reporting on it and we would get so many people saying, yeah, but my dad dealt with that back in this, in the 60s, it's not that big a deal. We started seeing that immediately when there were reports initially of new world screwworm. Now as it started creeping closer in Those Mexican states, you started seeing the ya butters getting a little bit more quiet and realizing maybe this could have a little bit bigger economic impact than I originally anticipated. But let's go back in history to when it was dealt with back then.
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So that's a good point. And the difference is a new invasion versus being endemic. So when it was here before and it was endemic, normally in peak season in an endemic area, about 3% of the population of animals will come down with a lesion that we have to deal with. Death loss is much less of that, say less than 1%. If all of the things that we talked about earlier about, you know, diligent looking at cattle, doing some preventative treatments, those kind of things. So the difference is when it with a new invasion is we don't want it to get back to endemic levels where now if we look at come across the top of the Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska and you just keep going east to Kentucky, that was the previous historical line. You'd get excursions to the north up to the Canadian border. But that's no permanent infestations because of weather. Right. They're very sensitive to temperature. Larvae can't survive winter in the north, but. So they stayed in that line below. It took us 15 years to drive it from that line to the Mexican border. So we say, yeah, it wasn't that bad, but there was a lot of tax dollars and a lot of expense to drive that insect all the way back to the Mexican border for 15 years. It took another 15 years to go from the Mexican border to Panama to the Darien Gap. So if you add. And we were much involved in that because that was in our best interest as well. The copec, the facility that's down in Panama, that is a joint venture with Panama and the US and we man part of it down there, they have people down there producing these sterile flies, doing research, all that. So sometimes I think, well, it wasn't that bad. Yeah, it wasn't that bad. If you live across the northern tier, Montana, Dakota is wherever. If you were in Texas and the fly season was 11 months out of the year instead of four months out of the year in the north, it's a whole different picture down there for those folks. And. And we didn't think about it as much. We didn't. We moved cattle much more fresh in the 50s and 60s than we do now. And so that was some of that movement around. The cattle movement spread the, spread the infestation around the country. So the whole point is we've learned from those mistakes. We don't want it to get back to endemic areas, into the endemic line because it's going to be really, really expensive and a huge market disruption if it got that far north again.
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Now just hold tight. It is time for a quick break. When we come back, we dive more into new world Screwworm and what signs producers need to be watching livestock. You're listening to the Ranch It up radio show and we'll be right back.
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Welcome back to the Ranch it Up radio show. Now, in case you just tuned in, we're talking with Dr. Wayne Ayers, a senior beef cattle technical consultant with Elanco Anim tackling the topic of new world screwworm and what producers need to be paying attention to in their livestock individuals
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in those border states right now, even though everybody having the cold swath that just came through, which everybody said, well, maybe it could slow it down a little bit. Yeah, maybe it could slow it down a little bit. But of course we're going to be moving into that season. So what do producers need to really be watching for now versus so I'm saying being proactive instead of reactive.
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Yeah, that's, that's an excellent point. So that is probably the two, two of the biggest things that we can do as producers. Number one, educate yourself. That's not going to Facebook. That's not listening to that idiot that's posted three times. That person is wrong. Right? It's never been correct. So educate yourself. Go to screwworm.gov that's the official government's website. It is. The EPA, FDA and USDA have put all of their data together, all of the current information, there's training videos, there's all kinds of information there. Texas Animal Health Commission has a really good site. Florida has a really good site. Elanco is getting ready. We are going to be launching one very soon that'll have information plus links to some of the things that are maybe come down the pike on our side. So education, that is the key thing. Understand the fly cycle, understand how this thing works and then just some proactive preventative things. We have to remember. This thing is a fly, right? It's just a fly that happens to lay its egg on a wound and those, those larvae consume living flesh instead of dead tissue. So things like horn fly bites, they are a potential infection site, infestation site for that female to lay an egg. Not very, not real high, but it is a potential tick bites, those are definitely a potential for infestations. So if I do a good job of fly control, horse flies, deer flies, all those things. So if I do a good job of fly control, I decrease the number of potential wounds that are out there. Same thing with ticks. I decrease the number of bites, I decrease the risk of my individual animals having, you know, having, getting infested with the screwworm. So good fly control, good tick control. Thinking about the life cycle, understanding that any wound. An ear tag, I put an ear tag in. Now I need to spray that with a product that's approved for preventing screwworm. K tron4 we happen to have that product at Elanco. If we put that on the ear tag site, hopefully we can, it'll allow it to heal before the screwworm can come and find it. Or we kill the screw when she lands on there. Right. So brands, brands are an important site. Do I need to brand? Yes, if you do, then, then, then we better, we better proactively spray those when we're done. Open castration. Do I need to do open castration? No. If I can do day one banding and, and reduce my risk of having an open wound that's going to heal much faster, then that would be the thing to do. Umbilical sites. So do I spray navels, do I? Or is there another protocol that we use to try and prevent that?
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Can I just dip that navel in iodine?
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The quicker it dries up? Yes. That is good. The quicker it dries up, the shorter duration there is available for that screw room to lay her eggs there and start the infestation. But we also need something that maybe is going to kill that screw when she lands and prior to laying eggs. Maybe we get her killed with a pyrethrin or another product. There's going to be more that will come out. As the agencies are working together and working with industry to find products for solutions. We have a couple of things that are out there now that have had conditional approval at Elanco. I'm on the screw room task force, and our first conversation with the USDA took place in November of 2024. That's how much has been happening in the background. And sometimes people think, oh, nothing's going on. The government's not doing anything. No, there's been. There's been a lot of these conversations, a lot of information going back and forth. I'm. I'm really. I'm really pretty pleased with the response that we have and how far down the road we are when it comes, we're going to be ready for it.
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I'm not going to go down the road of all of the different fly control methods when we're dealing with the
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different flies, y', all.
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You can go to our website and in the archives, and we've done lots
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of this over the years so you
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can follow along those particular protocols. But what I will say is that, you know, I encourage you to establish that relationship with your veterinarian even deeper to put together a program for you. He and she, they want to know your outfit.
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They want to know did you clean
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your feed yards in the spring or the fall or all those types of things to go and really put together a program. And it can help you a lot to be able to get those questions answered, especially when we're dealing with something like this. Because now we're really talking about being proactive versus reactive and reactive. We're behind the eight ball, and that's
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never going to work, doc.
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No, that's 100% right, Tigger. And you've got a really good point. We need to have those relationships. The other thing you need to understand is there's some of the products, especially already approved FDA products, that a veterinarian with a proper client patient relationship. I can prescribe things off labeling, okay? If I have a good foundation, I understand that there's information in the literature that I can reference. And then if I have that relationship with you, I can prescribe something off labeling that may be able to help EPA products. There are no off label use of any EPA products. So it's very important to be able to access all of this kind of information or potential treatments, preventatives by having that relationship. The other thing that's going to happen is when it first comes in, USDA is going to drive the bus on this whole thing, right? So they're making the coordination between the agencies. They're also going to coordinate back to the states. So they'll go back to the states via the state veterinarian's office and state department of Livestock and mostly through the state vet's office. The state vet's office say a producer will report that they have it or their veterinarian will find it and then report it to the state's vet office. Then those initial treatments are going to come through that channel because a lot of the emergency use authorizations are not going to be available on the shelf. They're going to be as needed where needed and come from the USDA stockpile for these emergencies. And so then that makes it even more important that I have this. My local veterinarian involved knows my operation knows and is out there and I can call him and say hey, I think I got X or I think I got a screw infestation. They come out, collect samples and then get me the authorization to do a treatment or get me the authorization to do a preventative that is a truly emergency use preventative that we wouldn't have access to unless you have that veterinarian involved. So it's very, very important not only on what we have currently available. Like we were talking earlier, good fly and tick control, but when and if it comes, whether it's me or my neighbor, I have access to some of those emergency use products.
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Dr. M. Wayne Ayers, DVM Elanco Animal Health thank you so much for the time. That website that Dr. Wayne mentioned earlier is screwworm.gov we will have that and other links available in the show notes for this episode of ranchituphow.com Time for another break. When we come back we check on the markets and have a lot more of the cow stuff. So stick around. We'll be back right after this. It's the sale worth waiting for. CK Bar Ranch Simmental and Simangus bulls designed to add pounds and profit to your program where bulls offer the best of both worlds with proving calving ease and growth to maternal strength. Join the CK Bar Ranch Crew Friday, April 3rd at St. Onge Livestock in South St. On South Dakota. Bid and buy online at DV auction and videos, catalogs and sale information available at ranch channel.com and ckbarranch.com Join us April 3rd in St. On, South Dakota for a powerful set of bulls ready to go to work for you. Looking for the best way to raise healthy, productive beef? Try Westway Feed Products. Westway's liquid supplements boost forage utilization, efficiency and sustainability, ensuring faster weight gain and better health. Visit westwayfeed.com or call 800-87517. Westway Feed Products Raising the Bar in
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Beef Production if you're buying or selling cattle, make your first stop. Livestockmarket.com Bred cows, heifers, pears, bulls and frozen genetics. Even feeder calves. You'll find them all@livestock market.com Livestock market features private treaty sales, online auctions and live production sale bidding. You'll also find horses, sheep, goats and hay. Check out the free Livestock Market magazine wherever you pick up Tractor House and download the Livestock Market mobile app.
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Today
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calf prices are good, but want to add another hundred bucks per calf? Here's the solution. Galvie and Balancer females add an average maternal weaning weight advantage of 22.7 pounds per calf at a market price of four and a half dollars a pound on five weight steers with a 22.7 pound weaning weight advantage, that's an additional $102.15 per calf. Galvie and Balancer females, they make it work. Welcome back everyone to the Ranch it Up radio show. That time of the program we check in with Kirk Donsbach, Stonex Financial Incorporated recap in the markets from the previous week. So Kirk, what do you got for us for numbers buddy?
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Good morning Tigger and all your listeners out there. As a Friday, February 27th, we gotta start with the obvious. We launched strikes against Iran which is putting upward pressure on oil pretty extreme upward pressure, downward pressure on the equities and that's definitely spilling over into the cattle. On top of all of our other concerns, as of February 27th March feeder futures closed the week at 35522 and a half. That's down 1210 on the week the CME feeder index was down only 458 at 372.79. That left the basis that are very wide $17.56 and a half to the million dollar question is will cash break with futures or will cash ignore futures one more time? April Life Scout will close the week at 232.10. That's down 962 and a half on the week with cash trading 245 and then fall into 240 in the north and 244 in the south. Cash is down 48 bucks on the week. The 5 area, which is a little messed up because all the late trades last week weren't included in last week's, is actually up 228 at 243.24. That left the BAS versus February futures at a negative $0.71. Choice boxes were up 314 at 379.84. Weekly slaughter was 516,000 head. That's even with last week and 53,000 head below the same week last year. Dress weights were up 1 pound at 897 pounds, which is 20 pounds higher than the same week last year. The combination of lower slaughter and higher dress weights left yearly production up 3/10 of a percentage at 7.9% less than this week last year. Fresh beef imports are up 10% with US beef exports down 10%. Those numbers are starting to get pretty large and concerning. To wrap this up, March corn closed the week at 438 and a quarter. That's up ten and three quarter on the week. Wheat and beans are supporting corn as it continues to grind higher in the old trading range between 435 and 450.
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In the news Meat sales are sizzling. According to new data from Circana cited in the 21st annual Power of Meat Report released at the annual Meat Conference by the Meat Institute and fmi, the Food Industry association, total meat sales climbed to a record $112 billion. That's with pound sales up 2% year over year. Meat remains a staple in American homes. More than 98% of U.S. households purchased meat last year, and 45% of shoppers say they're actively trying to prepare more meals with meat or poultry. On average, consumers are cooking five dinners at home each week, and nine out of 10 of those meals include meat or poultry. That's according to 210 Analytics. Younger shoppers are fueling much of the growth. Millennials and Gen z accounted for 67% of unit increases, 57% of millennials and half of Gen Z. They say they're trying to prepare more meals with meat or poultry. In households with children, kids are playing a major role in what lands in the cart 81% of families say children influence meat and poultry pur and in homes with teens, 72% say their teens specifically request meat and poultry, far more than protein bars, shakes or powders. Younger consumers are also turning to technology for meal ideas, 24% of Gen Z and Millennial shoppers say they use artificial intelligence tools for inspiration, compared to 10% of Gen X and just 4% of Baby Boomers. Overall, 15% of shoppers now use AI tools, a 650% increase over the past two years. A major shift in cattle and beef trade between the US And Mexico could occur as Lubbock Feeders, a longtime fixture in the Texas Panhandle, is shutting its doors. The move comes as US Cattle numbers sit at historic lows and as feeder cattle imports from Mexico have been cut off for months due to that country's ongoing screwworm issue. Darrell Peel, a professor of agricultural economics and extension livestock specialist at Oklahoma State University, said that further adjustments in U.S. feeder and packing capacity are likely. Peel said he isn't suggesting that the two countries would no longer trade cattle, something they have done since the Civil War even earlier. But the current situation prompts Mexico to have a different perspective from its historical export centric mindset. The Ranch Channel Sales Calendar isa Beefmasters Private Treaty Bull and Heifer sale is open for bids. Get a hold of Lorenzo Lassiter to view the Beefmaster Bulls and heifers at the ranch San Angelo, Texas Tuesday, March 10 McDonald ranches 180 Solaires Optimizer and Angus bulls along with 15 Premier foundation open heifers and 120 bred Solaires and Solaires cross females. Kiss Livestock Mandan, North Dakota also on Tuesday, March 10 across the border to the north Wheatland Cattle Company 100 Simmental and Angus bulls along with a select group of purebred Simmental and Angus open heifers at the ranch bean Fates, Saskatchewan, Canada Wednesday, March 11 Hart River Ranch 70 yearling red Angus bulls, 40 registered open heifers, 27 commercial heifers and 10 bread heifers at the feedlot south of Belfield, North Dakota. Also on Wednesday, March 11 Marmac Farms red Angus, Angus and Simital bulls at the ranch Brandon, Manitoba, Canada Friday, March 13 Leland Red Angus Ranch and Keister Red Angus 125 yearling Red Angus bulls, 60 age advantaged Red Angus bulls and 65 commercial yearling Red Angus heifers at the ranch Sydney, Montana Saturday, March 14 Fast Dorman Strummin 90 yearling Angus bulls and 10 registered heifers Kiss Livestock Mandan, North Dakota the Alabama Select Horse Sale the hottest ranch, arena, performance and pleasure horse sale in The South Montgomery, Alabama Friday, the 13 the 14th all catalogs, videos, online bidding platforms and sale information is available right now@ranch channel.com and now
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that's going to wrap it up for today. A big thanks goes out to our crew. Dr. Wayne Ayers with Elanko Animal Health, Kirk Donsbach, Stonex Financial Incorporated. Shea Wanner with casual cattle conversations and the boss lady, Rebecca Wanner, AKA Beck.
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A big thank you to our partners for today's episode. The American Galva Association, CK Bar Ranch, livestockmarket.com, ranchannel.com, reynolds Land and Cattle, the all new sales series found on ranchchannel.com Sirebuyer, Trans OVA Genetics, Westway Feed Products and this fine radio station and crew.
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So glad you all came with us one more time as we ranch it up. Be sure to like and follow us on Facebook. Ranch it up show. Our email is ranchituphowmail.com and you can call and text 24. 7. That phone number is 707-Ranch 20. That's 707-726-2420. Spread the good word and join us again next week where it's always Tigger and Beck approved.
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Stay ranchy and ranch it up.
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Sam.