The secret to farming organically is being pro-active. Rather than waiting till a problem appears that then needs to be solved, the key is to manage for what you want – healthy animals and/or plants that are naturally resilient and equipped when a burden presents itself.
Let’s look at buffalo fly as an example. With current high rainfall and increasing temperatures buffalo fly will shortly become a burden for livestock, as they do every year when these conditions present. But preparing for buffalo fly season is an easy one to get right.
1 Ensure your animals have access to a sulphur and garlic source (most simply achieved with specialty salt lick blocks).
2 Hang a BOS BAG in the paddock to ensure animals begin self-treating early. 
Dung Beetle photo courtesy ABC
3 Manage your landscape to encourage prolific dung beetle activity (any pour-on, even ones with dung beetle friendly claims, will negatively impact beetles at some stage of their lifecycle). Dung beetles process dung where fly lay larvae. Active dung beetles ensure less opportunity for flies to lay.
4 Manage your landscape for plant diversity. Just like we would fail to thrive eating only kale so to animals need a variety of grasses, legumes, forbs and yes even weeds in their diets. Managing for a monoculture will not result in naturally healthy animals.
These simple measures will put you and your animals on the front foot. Relying on a pour-on to fix the buffalo fly issue will never get to the root cause of the problem and so you will be forever spending money and time applying the same ‘solution’ over and over again with less and less impact as parasites become more resistant to chemical.
