Warmer temperatures mean more time riding, grooming, and caring for your horse. It also means the beginning of fly season. You’ll have to be at the top of your game if you want to protect your animals from deer flies, face flies, and horse flies. They are not only an annoyance; they are also a danger. Flies can carry and spread potentially dangerous diseases. Daily protection equipment, such as fly masks and fly blankets, are effective deterrents, but to eliminate your fly problem at the source, you must target the larvae. Feed-through fly control helps achieve that.
Horses produce manure, and that’s where flies lay their eggs. Feed-through fly control helps to effectively sterilize manure, thus eliminating the flies’ favorite breeding ground. It passes through the horse’s system and mixes in with the horse's digestive waste. When the waste is evacuated as manure, it contains a fly control ingredient that helps prevent fly larvae generating a new exoskeleton during the molting process, causing the insect to die. Dead fly larvae mean fewer flies to bother you and your horses.
Feed-through fly control programs are also popular because they are safe for both you and your horse. The chemicals in the feed-through target insect growth hormones and act as an inhibitor. Humans, horses, and livestock obviously do not manufacture this insect growth hormone, so these products are safe to handle, use, and apply.
Work with your veterinarian to start a feed-through program early in fly season to get ahead of the swarm. It’s a lot easier, and more economical, to prevent a heavy build-up of flies than it is to fight them once their numbers become out of control. Remember to give each horse the correct dosage of feed-through fly control every day, and on a consistent schedule, to be as effective as possible.
- Published:
9/15/2017:
12:58:21 PM ET