Why Fight Flies?
Fighting flies (fly control) keeps your horse comfortable. But that’s not the only reason to try to minimize flies. Flies and other biting insects pose a major health risk to your horse and to you. Flying insects can carry a number of dangerous diseases that become more of a problem as the insect populations increase. Flies, in particular, live, feed, and breed in filth, where germs, bacteria, and communicable diseases thrive. Good hygiene is critical to keeping flies and other problems under control.
Start with a Strategy:
Start your fly control program early to keep fly populations down all season. It’s easier and more economical to prevent a heavy build-up than to fight it. Effective fly control means eliminating flies on all fronts, at all stages in the fly life cycle. Eliminating immature flies reduces the number of biting, breeding adult flies you have to deal with. No single fly product will solve your fly control problem. You need an overall plan to get rid of flies where they live, feed, and breed.
For maximum effectiveness, attack flies on all fronts!
- On your horse
- In the barn
- Around outdoor areas
Fighting Flies On Your Horse:
Create a protective barrier between your horse and flying pests. The Farnam lineup provides the widest selection of proven, effective sprays, spot-ons, lotions, roll-ons, ointments and masks.
Ointments, lotions and roll-ons are formulated for use around sensitive areas and hard-to-reach areas to repel flies.
Need to provide effective protection plus stretch your budget?
Concentrates are made just for you. Just add water to Repel-XP Concentrate or Flysect Super-C Repellent Concentrate to create quarts of ready-to-use spray.
Farnam offers a wide selection of hard-working, effective fly sprays to provide a variety of fly control solutions to meet your every fly control need.
- Endure Sweat-Resistant Fly Spray provides up to 14 days of fly control and keeps on working even in wet conditions.
Endure Sweat-Resistant Fly Spray - Tri-Tec 14 Fly Repellent is a water-based formula that delivers a quick knockdown and long-lasting fly control.
- Equisect Fly Repellent is a water-based formula that contains botanical and essential oils.
Pastured horses need longer-lasting fly protection when you can’t spray them every day. Consider using a fly spray or a topical product with residual control to keep them comfortable for days.
- Equi-Spot Spot-On Fly Control can be applied once every 2 weeks and provides protection from flies, gnats, mosquitoes and ticks.
- SWAT is an ointment that repels mosquitoes, flies, and gnats while protecting sensitive areas like eyes and ears, as well as wounds.
- Fly masks, such as the Supermask II, are another very effective way to keep flies off your horse’s face and eyes.
Fighting Flies Indoors & Outdoors:
Proper fly control in and around the barn begins with a little housekeeping. A little extra effort and time can help eliminate immature and adult flies. Because flies breed in manure and other moist, decaying organic matter, keep your barn as clean as possible. Eliminate fly breeding in outdoor areas by keeping areas clean and free of manure and trash. Some traps use attractants that smell pretty rough to our nose but seem a virtual ambrosia to insects. Be sure to hang your traps well away from the barn and high traffic areas.
Products to use to control flies in the barn include:
Products for outdoor fly control include:
This week has been about the lowly fly and his pesky friends. Every day a new blog post from someone giving advice on how to best combat flies. Mostly, each one has focused on a brand and this was really no different in some ways, but the basic outline, the bare bones skeletal framework could be applied to any brand, or multiple brands. We mentioned a lot of Farnam products because this information came from Farnam. Find what works for you and apply these principles and your horse will thank you.
For more on fighting flies, read Kim & Caitlin’s Top 7 Fly Masks here.