# Fly Control



## SandyWI (Jun 22, 2007)

I was reading another post about fly control and wanted to give my opinions on it. First off, I really hate using any chemicals at all on the miniatures.

With my big horses, I would purchase a $10 bottle of Permethrin concentrate, and dilute it with water and sometimes I added a little vinegar. However, in looking closely at my horses, I would see flies to continue landing on the areas I had sprayed.

Permethrin is a powerful chemical, and has been known to produce tumors in laboratory rats. It's also not safe for foals. Because of this, I wouldn't spray it on my other minis as foals are always nipping the other horses.

One year I bought parasitic wasps. I spread them out in the big horses' pasture, as that's where I felt they were needed most. However, I had to move my horses out of that pasture only two weeks after the wasps arrived, and I think that sort of threw the thing off.

I think the thing we need to understand is that not all flies are created equal. The first flies to arrive are typically the regular house fly. These flies do not bite, but have sponging mouthparts. Because they typically love manure and rotting organic wastes, they can carry many diseases to horses. One of the easiest ways to get rid of these flies, which are very numerous during the hottest days of early summer, is by fly traps.

I use a flytrap which is put out by Farnum. It is called the Captivator. It comes with an attractant that stinks to high heaven! You put the attractant in the trap and half-fill the jar with water. I have six of these traps and I don't put them right next to the pasture or dry lots. Instead, I put them on the other side of the barn, but they must be hung only a few feet off the ground and they must be in sunlight. These traps go out in early-to-mid May. As soon as it warms up enough and when I see the first house fly, the traps are put out. By the beginning of June, we are catching approximately 100,000 flies per day. (According to trap capacity). Any flies around my barn are busy getting into the traps and I rarely seen any on the horses.

We wait till night fall, when the flies become inactive, to empty the traps. Most flies will be dead from drowning, but there are always live ones in the upper half of the jar. I take a can of Raid and squirt it into the jar opening to kill the live ones, and then we dig a small hole and dump the dead flies into it, stomping the dirt down.

This year, I stopped buying the attractant and used meat instead. I just took some raw chicken or burger, whatever I was cooking for supper, saving a bit, and put the raw meat into the jar with water and set it in the sun and within a half day the flies were at it. Because house flies will lay their eggs in rotting organic wastes, we clean up all manure out of the dry lots at least twice a day, and from the pasture once a week. I've found that miniature horse manure isn't a great source of fly maggots anyway, as it dries out too quickly.

The face flies arrive around the beginning of July. These flies don't bite, but they feed on the mucous of the eyes, mouth, or nose. These flies are particularly troublesome because they cause great distress to horses through sheer annoyance, and also because they can be the source of pinkeye. Additionally, they also harbor eyeworm parasites and Habronema. Face flies are supposed to lay their eggs ONLY in cattle manure, not horse manure, but we get face flies and the closest cattle are a half mile away, so I guess they travel well! Using the stinky fly baits will also catch these flies.

The stable fly is active in late spring and early summer, and then dwindles in numbers in mid-to-late summer. These flies will bite! They can cause the horse a lot of pain! These flies usually don't breed in manure, but instead breed in piles of wet or moist vegetation. Keep your grass cut around your pastures and barn! Don't allow any piles of mown grass to lay around. Don't throw out uneaten hay and leave it laying around in piles. These flies probably won't be attracted to fly bait, so if they are bad the only control is spray. However, the flies usually aren't around all summer, so fly masks are often very effective in giving relief and protection to your horses.

If you are diligent, and use the fly traps, you really can control and eliminate a great number of fly pests! I honestly don't have many of them here at this point. I'm in SW Wisconsin, and I'm sure they should all be out in great numbers this time of year, but i believe my fly traps are doing an excellent job! Also, clean up that manure!

Another thing you can use is fly bait, such as Golden Malrin. However, don't use it anywhere kids or pets can get into it. Since I don't have barn cats and my dog doesn't go to the barn, I sprinkle it around the base of the barn, but not in the dry lots or pastures. Flies love this stuff! They eat it and die in a few minutes. When we clean the stalls every morning and have the manure heaped up in the cart to be dumped, we sprinkle the Golden Malrin right on top of the manure. By the time we've hauled the stuff way out to a gully to be dumped, another large group of flies has met its death.

So, just start attacking those flies with fly traps BEFORE they become numerous, and I think you'll find a big difference!


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## Tony (Jun 22, 2007)

What an excellent post. Thank you for taking the time to write.


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## Cathy_H (Jun 22, 2007)

Great information. I also have about two dozen fly tapes hanging inside my barn. Walmart - 97 cents for four.



> I put them on the other side of the barn, but they must be hung only a few feet off the ground and they must be in sunlight.


I have two half gallon size. I hang mine up high underneath the run in. They still work even though they do not get any sun. I took one down yesterday that was 2/3rds full of dead flies ( been up about a month). I swirl my jars around every day to sugmerge the flies & reactivate the scent........The attractant does stink but NOT near as bad as a jar half full of dead flies thus the reason I change mine when about half full..... I also hang three fly tapes near the jars which I change out about twice a week. If they don't go in the jar they most likely are going to land on the tapes!


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## qtrrae (Jun 23, 2007)

Sandy, thanks for all the fly information - every little bit of info helps, I am always out there with the fly swatter along with other various means of fly control - my family laughs at me but I figure every fly that I kill  will mean hundreds less.

I have also tried the parasitic wasps and I really think they help but my biggest concern is that they also seemed to be attracted to all the other fly attractants and therefore they have a very short life span.

I also feel having chickens around scratching in the manure helps somewhat to eliminate the fly eggs. :aktion033:


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## Lauralee (Jun 23, 2007)

I'm not comfortable with Golden Malrin simply because I have cats and dogs that enter my horses stalls and the manure dumping sites. My dogs especially love to sample manure.

We are having great success with the Fly Stik tubes from Farnam. Its a fluorescent orange tube that is coated in REALLY sticky stuff that hangs from the stall. Up and away from animals. Flies land and they stick, and die.

Also we are using the Quik Strike fly killing traps. They are coated wtih fly killing poison. You can suspend them over the area of the stall where the flies go the most......it has a smelly attractant...the flies land for a second, keel over and die.

Lastly we have the automatic sprayers that hold a 6 oz can of fly spray and squirt every minute or so.

We have virtually eliminated 99% of the flies we had in years past.


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## PaintedMeadows (Jun 23, 2007)

What a great post!! Thank you so much. We have the predator flies and they are working well on everything except those little biting flies that hit the under bellies and chests. They are tiny little beggars. I wonder if flytraps would attract them? Got the mosquito trap going and we hardly have any mosquitos close now. I will have to look into the fly traps too. We are also going to try making some bat houses.


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## zoey829 (Jun 23, 2007)

Lauralee-

I was looking into getting those sprays. Do they mention anything about if it get on hay or horse feed? I dont want it to be toxic to the horses.


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## SandyWI (Jun 23, 2007)

Lauralee said:


> I'm not comfortable with Golden Malrin simply because I have cats and dogs that enter my horses stalls and the manure dumping sites. My dogs especially love to sample manure.
> 
> We are having great success with the Fly Stik tubes from Farnam. Its a fluorescent orange tube that is coated in REALLY sticky stuff that hangs from the stall. Up and away from animals. Flies land and they stick, and die.


I do use the sticky fly tapes in the barn, but our barn is not a big source of flies. They seem to be outside a lot more than inside. We let our horses into the barn just about at sunset, so most of the flies are going to sleep and not following them into the barn, and we turn them out around 6 AM and immediately thoroughly clean the stalls. We sprinkle a bit of lime down to eliminate the urine odor, and then in late afternoon we'll put in fresh bedding. I don't know if getting the manure out of the barn as early as possible makes a difference, or if we just have enough fly traps located outside the barn to keep the flies busy is the reason.


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## Cathy_H (Jun 24, 2007)

This is carried over from the homemade fly spray from the other thread. Several posters have said to mix Dawn (blue) and vinegar. Some say mix half & half & some say at least 1/4 Dawn & 3/4 vinegar. Some say just a few drops in a quart of vinegar............... Anyway I mixed about half & half. I used white vinegar the first time ( only had about a cup full ) then I used natural vinegar. Some say it doesn't matter what kind. I put it on the backs of my broodmares............. I also sprayed the sides of the stalls while the horses were out of the barn & sprayed our clipping/grooming area. Not the mats as the soap will make it slippery. I also sprayed the back patio & trash cans............... For those that feel more than a few drops of Dawn is too much, I say experiment & see what mixture works for you. I just did this the last two days so have not had a chance to see if it works or not. I will use the rest of my bottle before I conclude if it does work or not..... If it doesn't work then I will already have the soap on the walls when I do my annual wash down! :bgrin


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## MeadowRidge Farm (Jun 24, 2007)

Sandy, What a great post, so well written and very informative. I use the fly traps and the tapes, both from Fleet Farm, plus I clean my dry lots daily, and stalls. Every little thing we can do helps to keep our minis nice and comfy. Corinne


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## Lost Spoke Ranch (Jun 24, 2007)

Thank you for sharing such informative information.

We've tried the traps for the first time this year and are tickled with the “Rescue” brand. I put them out in March (which is normally pretty early for flies for us) when I noticed a few in hopes of getting a jump on them this year. As our numbers of horses have increased over the years so has the fly population. I started with 14 regular size traps and there was a huge surge of flies at the beginning (I’m assuming they were last years survivors) and you would have thought I rang the dinner bell! I have changed out the original 14 traps with the jumbo size ones since and there are hardly any flies out there currently. The important thing is there aren’t many on the horses!

Dawn :saludando:


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## ANDROMEDA FARM (Jun 24, 2007)

We have had great success with the Bugstomper system. With our recent move, the system was not up for the first month. The flies were everywhere. We finally were able to get the system hooked up & by the next day, you didn't see any more flies in the barn. It is a 55 gallon drum & it is set to go off how many times you want it to in a 24 hour period. It is a little expensive to start with, but is well worth it in my opinion.


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## sedeh (Jun 25, 2007)

Great post!! Thanks for all the info Sandy! Now......if I could only get my neighbor to read it! :bgrin She's got about 10 big horses and as many cows on her 5 acre lot.....that's a lot of manure!


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## SandyWI (Jun 26, 2007)

sedeh said:


> Now......if I could only get my neighbor to read it! :bgrin She's got about 10 big horses and as many cows on her 5 acre lot.....that's a lot of manure!


Oh my gosh! That certainly IS a lot of livestock for 5 acres!


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## Millstone Farm (Jun 26, 2007)

Has anyone tried Pfizer's new product, Solitude? It's a feed-thru' fly control product. It looks and smells just like Strongid. You feed it daily and it prevents flies from attracting/forming/laying eggs on manure.

We're testing it on our annex farm with great success. Nary a fly in sight!

it gets very pricey, but it has erradicated all flies from the farm!!


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## Southern_Heart (Jun 27, 2007)

Thank you for the info.

We use Quick Byte. We put it in a big old pot away from the horses, the fly lands on the byte and then looks like its having a heart attack and dies right there on the spot. Very fast and effective. Its working great as we have hardly any flys now!




: Soon they will be gonners too!! :aktion033: This is the best stuff I have found so far!!


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## SandyWI (Jun 28, 2007)

Southern_Heart said:


> We use Quick Byte.


I haven't heard of this product. Is it safe for cats and dogs?


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## Southern_Heart (Jun 28, 2007)

Sorry I spelled it wrong its Quickbayt

No Thats why I put it in a pot and put it in a safe spot so no animal can get to it. I have also put it in milk jugs and slit holes in it 1/4 ways down from the top and hung in the barn isle from the rafters out of reach of all the animals. Once the flies are in they are not coming out. I find I like the jugs better and only put about 1 table spoon in the bottom of the jug. Read the directions as you have to be careful.

Here... read all about it. When you get to the page, go down till you see quickbayt and then you can just keep going down the page reading all about it.

quickbayt

Joyce



SandyWI said:


> Southern_Heart said:
> 
> 
> > We use Quick Byte.
> ...


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## debjs (Jul 5, 2007)

Great post. Very informative.....How about a remedy for horse fly's, they are brutal!


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