Controlling flies on a farm is vital to ensure proper farm health. To control flies, you’ll have to have the right tools in your collection for this particular farm job. Flies are especially bothersome to farms with produce or horses. They could result in disease spreading, infections, and overall ill health.
There are several ways to control the flies that you’ll commonly come across on farms:
- Fly predators. Completely non-toxic and are great for farms that have a large number of animals.
- These do a great job of catching Stable flies and House flies.
- Sticky traps and tapes. These can be hung inside your farm, but you may also end up catching small birds, bats and other insects.
- Which provide quick solution to knocking down flies and other insects within your farm spaces.
You should bear in mind that any insecticide you use that kills flies may also kill your fly predators. You may find that you need to use various products throughout the fly season (summer, especially). Try out a few combinations during each season and note down what works best for your farm. Keep an eye on the changes in weather, as these will affect the habits of the flies invading your farm.
As well as the products you can purchase to control flies in and around your farm, you can also take several other steps to create a fly-free environment. Because flies need warmth, and moist areas to breed and lay their eggs, by removing all decaying vegetation from your farm, flies are less likely to seek our your property as a home. Decaying vegetation includes rotting leaves, cut grass, and rotting fruit or vegetables.
Another step you can take is ensuring that the heat of your compost pile is kept as high as possible. You can do this by keeping it piled vertically, rather than spreading the compost horizontally. If you want to speed up the process of your decomposition, add lime, and make sure that your compost stays slightly damp. If the compost remains hot enough, it will be too hot for flies to lay eggs.
You can remove fly resting areas from your farm by keeping the grass cut and keeping weeds out of your grassy areas and barns. Drainage problems on your property can also cause issues – moisture attracts flies.
Ensure that you clean any areas where your animals are as frequently as possible. Areas where there is old feed (like in barns or feeding troughs) attract flies because the decaying food is used as nutrients and a potential breeding area for them. You should pay particular attention to areas where your horses are during the day and night, as these will be ripe with produce and manure that flies will flock towards. Particular kinds of flies are attracted to odour rather than warmth, so you should take this into account as well.
Flies can easily spread diseases around your farm, and they can cause ill health in your animals as well as contaminations throughout your land, be sure to take precautions to minimise their affect as far as possible.