Great fly stuff!!

We use a brand called The Big Stinky, and yes, it works!  Oh yeah, it does indeed stink!

I think I will try that in the barn.  We have a horse with flay allergies, and keeping her comfortable this summer will be a challenge.  Part of my scheme is to turn her out at night and keep her in the barn in the daytime with a fan over her stall.

We have the small traps you can get, probably just need to get more.  There are 70+ horses, goats and cattle next door though so don't know if we stand a chance!

I've used fly traps and tapes, and net sheets all to good results.  We used to use a product by Amway that worked very well too.  I think it had the imaginative name of Repel or something like that.  The stuff was expensive, but very, very effective.  I especially used it at shows.  The drawback to it was the spray can.  Some horses don't like them.  Also, the product was for people, not horses.  Didn't keep it from working on the four-legged children though...
 
By the by; can't do much of anything if the neighbors are slothenly, however, I've found letting a few chickens run around the barn does wonders.  They also interrupt the parasite cycle.  Wonderful little creatures, chickens.

I can't eradicate ALL the flying pests - especially the midges when they hatch (which are the worst problem with the allergies), so my first line of defense is Equi-Spot spot-on repellant applied faithfully - it has a cumulative effect and seems to work better after a couple applications - and then fly sheets or at least masks for the most sensitive horses. 

I have been interested in trying the fly predators, but our horses are pastured during the summer and have several potty areas around the farm.  I am not ready to invest the $$$$ in trying that strategy, yet, and the neighbors have a grossly overcrowded dry lot full of alpacas on the other side of our fence (like 50 animals sharing two turnouts that are about 3/4 acre apiece).

But our barn is up on a hill away from the neighbors, so I think I could reduce the amount of flies up there..... and we do have a few yard birds who roost in the rafters.

I used the small plastic traps with the fly bait but I think they are gross. But what is worse, Roscoe found an old one and got some of the bait. OMG!!! He had the worst breath for months. [:'(]
I have since switched to the small plastic yellow sticky traps.

I've been using fly predators for a couple years in the yard because we have dogs as well.  They are little gnat like bugs that eat fly larva to break the cycle.  My horse gets Equitrol II feed-through fly control and I love it.  I'd use them together but the feed-through will kill the predators. But If you don't like feed-through, these little bugs work great.  Together with the Starbar Quikstrike fly killers that they sell here (and horse.com is the only place I've been able to find them) I have VERY few flies even with having other horses in the neighborhood. 

If you're interested in the fly predators you can go to:

www.arbico-organics.com

Juls