Summer heat brings challenges to horse stables and dairy barns – perhaps the most prevalent being pest control.
Flies love warm, moist environments … manure is their meal of choice. Therefore, a successful fly control program combines a timely elimination of breeding sites, controlling the moisture in a barn and ongoing elimination of adult insects.
To help eliminate the breeding site, barns and corrals should be cleaned at least once a week. During the summer, female flies lay several batches of up to 80 eggs each with development taking just 21 days. That can add up very quickly!
After removing the manure, thinly spread it out in an appropriate area (perhaps the arena) or compost it. This not only helps to eliminate their food source, but also helps to control the moisture for breeding.
Additional measures to control the moisture include keeping stalls dry and eliminating areas where standing water collects such as in grazing areas, old tires, or other receptacles. It also helps to make sure there is good drainage around buildings and cover rain barrels.
In an effort to eliminate adult insects, sticky fly paper is basically useful in documenting numbers over time, but not particulary helpful in elimination. And who wants to keep manually spraying an insecticide throughout the day? Most is a “set it and forget it” metered insecticide which delivers ongoing relief.
A metered insecticide, such as ON TIME Metered Insecticide, automatically dispenses an insecticide spray consistently over a period of time, depending on its pre-determined dispensing timing. It treats up to 6,000 cubic feet of air space for 30 days, 24 hours a day. Just slip it in to a universal metered dispenser and set the desired timing. It is USDA authorized (F-1) and is effective on flies as well as gnats and mosquitoes.