Fly control is a year round process. That’s correct, a year round process. When the weather starts to warm up in Denver, Colorado the flies start to come out. The goal is to prevent as many adult flies as possible and during the winter months you will need to be as diligent as the weather, snow, cold, and ice will allow you to be in picking up manure.
It starts at home
Fly control starts at home. Ideally if you can pick up manure every day you will be better off. Store the manure in compost piles. Even if space is an issue for you and you pay someone to haul your manure away in the summer months, you can start a compost pile during the winter, and it might even cost you less to have it hauled away since it will be in a central location instead of scraping out pens and runs. The cleaner you are, the less flies will be attracted to your barn.
Don’t forget about your neighbors
Fly control isn’t all about your facility. Your neighbors play a huge role in the amount of flies on your property, especially if you have close-in neighbors. How they manage their manure directly affects the fly population at your facility. Try working with your neighbors to create a neighborhood fly control system. If you cannot work with your neighbors, then try to create a boundary around your facility with traps or spreading fly predators along the fence lines. When ordering fly predators, include your neighbor’s horses in the count so you have enough predators to create your boundary lines.
Tools
Here are just a few ways to manage flies naturally. Fly predators are relatively inexpensive and do an effective job if you start early enough (March is a good time in Colorado) and can get ahead of the adult fly population. Using fly predators is a great option for a neighborhood fly control system. Fly traps also work as they help capture the adult flies. The best method is to break the life cycle of the fly. This means killing the adult flies, and/or a predator killing the fly larvae.
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