Ants be gone

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Texas Innovator.

People and fire ants do not like each other, and apparently neither likes manure. Dean Holz’ Stet Corp., based near Salado, Texas, turns Stephenville dairy cow manure into True Stop®, an all-natural liquid fire ant killer.

“It's a mound-to-mound drench product,” Holz said. “Fire ants can detect the poison in everything that’s on the market now. Once they do that, they’re gone.”

Holz says True Stop® works in a way that mimics natural death in the ants, rather than signaling alarms that a poison is afoot.

True Stop® was ready for the world in the late 1990s, Holz says, but Mother Nature had other ideas. A severe drought starting in 2000 drove the ants, which have caused more than $236 million in damage in Texas, deep underground and temporarily put the stop to True Stop®.

“We just elected to close the doors and go back to the drawing board,” he says. “When the drought hit, the fire ant product was the only thing we had.”

Now that rains and ants have returned, Stet has resurrected True Stop® and also now has a product for whiteflies, insects similar to aphids, as well as a compost and root stimulator.

For more information, contact Dean Holz.