Summers are the best time for horses. You can train almost every day in the summer and do work around the barn without wearing fifteen layers of clothing. Another thing that comes along with warm weather: flies in your horse barn. These pesky, annoying pests are very common around stables, barns, and outdoor arenas.
You can probably find a few different species of flies in your horse barn, including the house fly and the stable fly. The main difference between the two is that stable flies are blood suckers, and will often attack the flanks of your horses, which causes them to stomp or kick at themselves. They’re very aggravating to your horses, and can also carry harmful diseases that can be transferred to your horse when they bite.
Horse barns are the perfect habitat for these insects. They provide food, moisture, and the perfect breeding grounds for flies, so you could end up with a lot of them. You will probably be constantly scratching your head on how to get rid of them or at least decrease the population. I’ve made a small list of a few tips on how to help reduce the population.
- Reduce their breeding grounds, get the manure out of their stall as soon as possible and store your manure pile as far away from your barn as you can.
- Store your feed in tightly sealed containers so that flies cannot get into your feed.
- Use fans to blow down and out of your barn, this can prevent flies from entering the barn in the first place.
- Looking into purchasing Fly Predators, these are relatively inexpensive and can get shipped right to your door. An example of a fly predator is a small non-stinging wasp. You would dump the container that they come in on your manure pile around dusk, both the wasps and wasp larva feed on the flies and fly larva.
- A more expensive approach is to install a horse fly spraying system in your barn. These can be custom configured to your barn and sprays a light insecticide mist in your barn 24/7 and are relatively maintenance free.
- Install fly traps or sticky glue around your barn, (Where horses can’t reach them) to collect some flies. The numbers of flies on these traps can also help to determine if you need to boost up your pest management or if you are doing well in maintaining low fly numbers.
IGK Equestrian’s SmartStall™ is very helpful with aiding the fight to decline the flies in your horse barn. Deep warm bedding in stalls along with manure in stalls are a fly’s favorite spot to lay eggs. When
SmartStall™ is installed in stalls, you’re only using enough bedding on the surface to soak up urine and manure, therefore stopping the possibility of breeding in deep bedding. By eliminating the deep warm bedding for the flies to breed, you tremendously decrease the fly population in your barn.
Let IGK Equestrian know how you combat fly problems?
