Fly control, West Mountain Style!

Well today I am discussing a topic that is not really exciting, kind of disgusting, but oh so necessary....Fly control!! If you live in the city you may get one or two flies in your house and you swat and no problem. When you live on a farm, not so lucky! I love where I live, fewer people, less traffic, pretty, country, my style. However, one thing that is not so much fun is the amount of flies one can get out here on "patch a heaven." Probably the thing that prompted this discussion was I went to take lunch to handy husband and somehow the back porch door opened while we were out. How many flies do you think you would have if you left the door wide open for 2 hours??? Any guesses?? Well, I didn't count them but lets just say I was swatting flies for 2 hours straight!! What a nightmare! This year has been particularly bad so handy husband and I have been trying everything to cut down their numbers! When you have 11 lambs, 7 chickens, 3 horses, 2 dogs and live where dairy and mink farms are fairly close there are ample manure piles for fly rearing. (We have a lot!) Things we have tried include dairy spray to kill flies that we find congregated around the porch, entries etc. (but there always seem to be more not matter how much we spray), we have sprayers mounted outside the porch doors to keep them away so every time you open the door 300 don't fly in. We tried the famous Fly Predators we saw advertised in horse magazines. I wish I could say that they worked for us, if everyone on neighboring farms used them too, maybe they would have worked, but can't say I saw any difference. We use the strips that you hang from the ceiling in the garage, they work to capture them ,but in smaller numbers. I am happy to announce that we finally found something worthy of an entire blog post! Handy husband saw these caps that you use on top of a milk jug at the local IFA store so he thought we would give them a try. At first I was skeptical, but as I watched the one out in my garden fill up, I was convinced and bought a few more. The packaging says each trap can hold about 35,000 flies so about now I think my farm is less about 70,000 flies and it's a difference I can see. Fewer have been congregating around the porch and entries. They are really attracted to these traps and if you get close you know why...they reek! They smell really bad so not something you want on your porch, but keeping them in the garden, by the chicken coop, barn, pasture etc. works really well. They attract, trap and kill the flies in large numbers. I am happy!! And by the way this is not a paid advertisement, I just found something that makes my life better and thought I would share!

Here is a pic of the one I have in my garden, close to the chicken coop, as you can see it is doing it's job well! It has been there for about a week is all. Really kind of disgusting but effective!