fly predators - Pasture Management - Pasture Management - Horse Community, Horse Pictures, Horse Forum and Information

Posted : 4/24/2010 6:18:50 AM

ever hear of these? i am new to the horse stuff and have read different reviews and articles on fly predators. from what i gather they are some tiny insects that come in packages that are a natural fly predator. you sprinkle these around the pasture,stable or barn-what have you on the horses poop. then in a short while the number of flies in the area are supposed to be greatly reduced or pretty well eliminated. so is any one here familar with these fly predators? there may be some by different names. also i wonder if there could be some danger either to the horse or the envioroment from such a product?
if the reviews i read are true it seems like they would work wonders. i dont know how many different fly sprays,lotions and concoctions that i tried just last summer alone. i hate flys bothering my horse.they aggrivate the horses awful and i absolutely hate them on my horse.seems she is constantly swishing her tail and stomping her feet dispite whatever i use on her.
so i was wondering if any one here knows about this product or has tried them or something else that could help.
my sister works in a store and says she has a customer who buys alot of pine sol cleaner every summer. said he uses that on his horse/s for a fly repellant. never given that a try yet. thanks annie.

face

Posted : 4/24/2010 10:01:12 AM

We use them and get them sent to us automatically once a month. However, this is our first year taking care of our own horses so cannot make a judgement. We have a neighbor who gets them every year, so I am encouraged.

So far, we have not seen many flies. It is still early though. The gnats have been the big problem but they usually don't stay but for 2-3 weeks.

We attempt to keep the barn clean as that was a HUGE problem where we use to board, nasty nasty nasty stalls and a huge fly problem.

We are also doing other things to try to fight the bugs naturally. We have a purple martin house, we are trying to attract other birds. We have hummingbird feeders as they eat mosquitos and other tiny bugs. We will be hanging a bat house as a single bat eats 1000s of mosquitos a night. We also encourage barn swallows in the barn. My brother-in-law swears by a product his family used as a kid called the Big Stinky. It uses raw meat and you can stand next to it and it doesn't smell and there are tons of flies in it! He gets to be the one who cleans it out though!

danastark

Posted : 4/24/2010 2:49:28 PM

I did the fly predator thing for a year, had them shipped out in regular deliveries according to our zip code. I really think they do work although they didn't in our situation because we lived in an HOA and had to clean up all our manure weekly so I think we were tossing the predators too....... We didn't see any difference, but probably because you have to have some manure piles for them to live in.

Tried garlic, was giving my horses up to 4 TBS a day, didn't work! Haven't been in our current place during summer so we'll see what happens w/ flies as we're next to a huge ranch w/ over 70 horses now. They do keep it very clean so hopefully that will keep things under control.

Cow Pie Girls

Posted : 4/24/2010 6:15:37 PM

We tried them for a couple of years. We're not sure they were helping in our situation though. We're in the dessert and it seems that it was too dry to keep them alive long enough to do their job. Others I've talked with have had wonderful results. We've resorted to Simplify, a feed through product, which seems to help.

TanyaC97

Posted : 4/26/2010 2:28:13 PM

This is my second year using them, just got my first shipment and they work great.

AppyLady

Posted : 4/27/2010 2:20:07 AM

This is my second year using them too. I was real happy with them last year, even though I got a late start. Hopefully this year we'll have even better results.

face

Posted : 4/27/2010 12:18:26 PM

I would also think that using them as directed makes a big difference. Where we use to board they tried them one year, but all they would do is cut open the bag after they became active and hang it somewhere in the barn. This isn't the way it should be done and they were not real successful.