Altosid Mineral Project with Doug Allison & Casey White

Doug Allison has been a Beef Sales consultant with Cargill Animal Nutrition for the last 23 years.  In this role, he works with livestock producers in the feedlot and cow/calf business, helping to balance their feeding programs looking at ration costs and identifying best cost scenarios.

Doug has worked with many operations in Manitoba and Eastern Saskatchewan. He develops nutritional solutions with products designed with Cargill’s- Beef Max Ration Balancing Program and markets brand name products like the Right Now Mineral Program which is registered with Altosid IGR.

Casey White was born and raised on a commercial cow-calf operation south of Marfa, Texas. After receiving a Bachelor of Science Degree in Animal Science from Angelo State University, he attended Texas A&M University where he was awarded a Master of Science Degree in Entomology, with a focus in Medical/Veterinary Entomology. 

Upon graduation, Casey managed the Veterinary Entomology Research Laboratory at New Mexico State University for two years. His work was focused around conducting industry sponsored efficacy evaluations of various insecticidal formulations against pest species of livestock. For the past 19 years, Casey has been employed with Central Life Sciences, and currently serves as the Sr. Director of Technical Services & Innovation. In this role, he manages a group of entomologists responsible for supporting customers, end users and sales and marketing groups, as well as conducting field trials, product evaluations, demonstrations, and education of the existing products in their portfolio.

In this episode, we are discussing the new product for horn fly control that has been registered in Canada, Altosid IGR.

We start off with some general information on what horn flies and other external parasites are, their negative impact on livestock and the time of the year when their impact is most significant.

We talk in detail about the trialing of the Altosid IGR mineral at MBFI, including how it works to prevent the completion of the horn fly life cycle, how the trial and evaluation were approached, how mineral consumption was measured through the trial, and what the outcome was for the group of cattle who consumed the treated mineral product.   

Over the trial period we did not observe an impact on cow weights or body condition scores, but did see an increase in the weaning weight as % of dam weight in the treated group.  Doug provides us some context on how this observation may be linked to lower horn fly pressure. 

We relate all of this back to an economic perspective, as well as that of herd health, and wrap up by discussing why this is an important topic for producers to be thinking about.

For more information on the Altosid mineral product, please visit www.altosidigr.com or contact:

Doug Allison by phone at: 204-724-2652 or via email at: Doug_Allison@cargill.com  

Casey White by phone at: 1-972-888-8591 or via email at: CWhite@central.com

MBFI would like to acknowledge and send a big thank you to both Cargill and Central LIfe Sciences for their support, which made this project possible. 

The research programs and daily operations at MBFI would not be possible without the funding from the Province of Manitoba, Government of Canada, and Canadian Agricultural Partnership, as well as the partnership with Manitoba Agriculture, Manitoba Beef Producers (MBP), Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) and the Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA). 

We encourage you to follow MBFI on social media, or check out the website for more information on project findings and results, upcoming events and more!

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Website: www.mbfi.ca 

Email address: information@mbfi.ca 

Mary-Jane’s Phone Number: 431-255-0011