- May 8, 2012
- 13
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Hi everyone.
I am the Gentleman farmer. I am a chicken enthusiast and also happen to own a pest control company. I will start by prefacing the article with a little back story. I live in a little mini acreage community in the middle of the city where everyone has 5-10 acre lots. Most people also do a little urban farming so almost everyone here has chickens or cows or horses or ponies or goats or whatever. When i first moved in i discovered that the horse pasture behind my property which is flood irrigated caused thousands of flies to be all over the outside of my house and yes of course eventually all over the inside of my house. This starts my battle with the buzzing beasties.
I am going to outline a few traditional and non-traditional treatment methods for people with a wide range of severity to their bug debacle. The best way to do that is to walk you through my personal woes and how i arrived at a completely fly free environment.
I know what your thinking ..."with chickens? That is impossible". It is not and i will tell you how. I have heard of people having to get rid of their birds because of the fly problem it created with the neighbors. I was in this same boat only with my wife and i was able to handle things on my own.
So as i said before i even had my chickens the fly problem was an issue.The first method i used was an old wives trick i learned from a sweat old lady on a porch swing in the back country of southern Texas.
I call it the water bag for obvious reasons. As odd as this is it is just a simple zip lock bag filled with water hung on a threat ( i use dental floss) in the effected area. The science behind this is that the fly has a multi-ocular lens to each of it's eyes. The bags spin generally and create a reflective disturbance that the flies can't identify and there fore generally avoid. I literally had thousands of flies on the side of the house by my patio door and so i hung these up around the the patio ( i used 4) and within 2-3 days i saw not a fly to be found. My wife was elated. That is method one. Unconventional i know. It sounds silly but it works and you can't argue with results.
Like i said at this point i didn't have any chicken. only dogs. A few months later after my daughter found 8 eggs in a bush in the yard i got bored one day and built a chicken coop to house a few of the random roaming hens that frequented my yard and ended up with chickens.
Not bad considering i used scrap from home depot with no plans to go off of huh. 
Unfortunately the chicken poo and the food they insisted on spilling every where brought in the flies by the droves. .At first it was just a few but it got progressively worse week by week until my wife wouldn't even go outside to water her plants. I came here first of course to find suggestions to solve my solution. Unfortunately i didn't find much by way of safe solutions. One person mentioned D.E ( an organic food grade powder) in there food to stop flies from nesting in the poo. It worked really good to flush out parasites as i found a sizeable worm in the stool of one of my chicks but it did not do anything to help with the flies.The fly bags worked really well to keep them off the house and patio but wern't enough to keep them out of the trees and grass and rest of the back yard
So i went down to my local feed store and to my dismay they said it is just an inevitability. They did sell me a fly bait bag and said it would help. The fly bait bag is a plastic bag with a funnel at the top. Inside is a bait package that disolves when you fill it with water and is supposed to attract the flies into it instead of the surrounding area.
From a pest control stand point it is never a good idea to bait for anything your not sure you can completely eliminate.Baiting often leads to even more problems then it solves. Wellllllllll had i thought about that prior to placing the bag i would have been prepared for what was to follow. The bag captured thousands of flies but unfortunatly it also attracted 10's of thousands that did not enter the bag. Believe me when i say i am not exaggerating. There was a literal humming as you approached my house. The issue was like a biblical plague. Again not exaggerating when i would lift the roof to my henhouse a black cloud of flies would stir. Not leave... not fly...away just stir. My birds were extremely uncomfortable and constantly shaking like they had water in there ears. The stress levels they were enduring made me very worried and not to mention my wifes frusteration.
The ultimatum came down and i was given a week to get rid of the flies or the chickens had to go. I dug deep and re-searched a lot of products from Ag journals and pest control providers. I searched the product lables and safety data sheets of a long list of pestacides and finally found what i needed. Oddly enough it was an synthetic (man made copy of an organic) pyrethroid that i already used in my pest service for all sorts of issues. This product comes in a few names and there are a few generics of it.
I went with a more expensive version because the acttive ingredient is micro-capsuled and time released so each treatment lasts roughly 3 months
The product name i went with is Cyzmic Cs. Other labels that are the same thing are Border Cs and Demand Cs. I mixed 1 oz in a gallon tank and just sprayed the crap out of everything. Obviously it is important to remove the chickens to a secure area while spraying. Not because it will harm them but because it has a slight herby type odor that makes them sneeze and can cause distress. I sprayed the entire interior and exterior of the hen house including bedding, the entire cinder block wall lining there designated area, the trees, grass and paver stones.
Let the product dry (roughly 10 minute) before re-introducing the birds to there area. The treatement made an immidiate differance. It was pretty gross because of all the dead flies and the swarming they did while i sprayed but the population was cut in half immidiately just from the flies flying away from the spray. By that evening there were very few flys remaining at all and 2 days after the treatment you would be hard pressed to see a fly in my yard at all.
You can buy the product super cheap here:
http://www.google.com/products/cata...a=X&ei=dfWrT7COGYPu2gWNvKyoAg&ved=0CF0Q8wIwAQ#
Remember 1 oz in a 1 gallon spray tank. I am not affiliated with Cyzmic in any way at all and make no money for telling you this. I would say get the little 8 oz bottle because it should treat a size able area 8 times and each treatment last 3 months so you have 2 years of bug free living for $25. Not bad at all.
Other products may work but the safety data sheet for Cyzmic is second to none and is certainly the safest for you and your birds.
I hope this was helpful for my fellow chicken enthusiasts. If you have any questions comments or suggestions please feel free to post below or respond to me directly.
The Gentleman Farmer
I am the Gentleman farmer. I am a chicken enthusiast and also happen to own a pest control company. I will start by prefacing the article with a little back story. I live in a little mini acreage community in the middle of the city where everyone has 5-10 acre lots. Most people also do a little urban farming so almost everyone here has chickens or cows or horses or ponies or goats or whatever. When i first moved in i discovered that the horse pasture behind my property which is flood irrigated caused thousands of flies to be all over the outside of my house and yes of course eventually all over the inside of my house. This starts my battle with the buzzing beasties.
I am going to outline a few traditional and non-traditional treatment methods for people with a wide range of severity to their bug debacle. The best way to do that is to walk you through my personal woes and how i arrived at a completely fly free environment.
I know what your thinking ..."with chickens? That is impossible". It is not and i will tell you how. I have heard of people having to get rid of their birds because of the fly problem it created with the neighbors. I was in this same boat only with my wife and i was able to handle things on my own.
So as i said before i even had my chickens the fly problem was an issue.The first method i used was an old wives trick i learned from a sweat old lady on a porch swing in the back country of southern Texas.
I call it the water bag for obvious reasons. As odd as this is it is just a simple zip lock bag filled with water hung on a threat ( i use dental floss) in the effected area. The science behind this is that the fly has a multi-ocular lens to each of it's eyes. The bags spin generally and create a reflective disturbance that the flies can't identify and there fore generally avoid. I literally had thousands of flies on the side of the house by my patio door and so i hung these up around the the patio ( i used 4) and within 2-3 days i saw not a fly to be found. My wife was elated. That is method one. Unconventional i know. It sounds silly but it works and you can't argue with results.
Like i said at this point i didn't have any chicken. only dogs. A few months later after my daughter found 8 eggs in a bush in the yard i got bored one day and built a chicken coop to house a few of the random roaming hens that frequented my yard and ended up with chickens.
Not bad considering i used scrap from home depot with no plans to go off of huh. Unfortunately the chicken poo and the food they insisted on spilling every where brought in the flies by the droves. .At first it was just a few but it got progressively worse week by week until my wife wouldn't even go outside to water her plants. I came here first of course to find suggestions to solve my solution. Unfortunately i didn't find much by way of safe solutions. One person mentioned D.E ( an organic food grade powder) in there food to stop flies from nesting in the poo. It worked really good to flush out parasites as i found a sizeable worm in the stool of one of my chicks but it did not do anything to help with the flies.The fly bags worked really well to keep them off the house and patio but wern't enough to keep them out of the trees and grass and rest of the back yard
So i went down to my local feed store and to my dismay they said it is just an inevitability. They did sell me a fly bait bag and said it would help. The fly bait bag is a plastic bag with a funnel at the top. Inside is a bait package that disolves when you fill it with water and is supposed to attract the flies into it instead of the surrounding area.
From a pest control stand point it is never a good idea to bait for anything your not sure you can completely eliminate.Baiting often leads to even more problems then it solves. Wellllllllll had i thought about that prior to placing the bag i would have been prepared for what was to follow. The bag captured thousands of flies but unfortunatly it also attracted 10's of thousands that did not enter the bag. Believe me when i say i am not exaggerating. There was a literal humming as you approached my house. The issue was like a biblical plague. Again not exaggerating when i would lift the roof to my henhouse a black cloud of flies would stir. Not leave... not fly...away just stir. My birds were extremely uncomfortable and constantly shaking like they had water in there ears. The stress levels they were enduring made me very worried and not to mention my wifes frusteration.
The ultimatum came down and i was given a week to get rid of the flies or the chickens had to go. I dug deep and re-searched a lot of products from Ag journals and pest control providers. I searched the product lables and safety data sheets of a long list of pestacides and finally found what i needed. Oddly enough it was an synthetic (man made copy of an organic) pyrethroid that i already used in my pest service for all sorts of issues. This product comes in a few names and there are a few generics of it.
I went with a more expensive version because the acttive ingredient is micro-capsuled and time released so each treatment lasts roughly 3 months
The product name i went with is Cyzmic Cs. Other labels that are the same thing are Border Cs and Demand Cs. I mixed 1 oz in a gallon tank and just sprayed the crap out of everything. Obviously it is important to remove the chickens to a secure area while spraying. Not because it will harm them but because it has a slight herby type odor that makes them sneeze and can cause distress. I sprayed the entire interior and exterior of the hen house including bedding, the entire cinder block wall lining there designated area, the trees, grass and paver stones.
Let the product dry (roughly 10 minute) before re-introducing the birds to there area. The treatement made an immidiate differance. It was pretty gross because of all the dead flies and the swarming they did while i sprayed but the population was cut in half immidiately just from the flies flying away from the spray. By that evening there were very few flys remaining at all and 2 days after the treatment you would be hard pressed to see a fly in my yard at all.
You can buy the product super cheap here:
http://www.google.com/products/cata...a=X&ei=dfWrT7COGYPu2gWNvKyoAg&ved=0CF0Q8wIwAQ#
Remember 1 oz in a 1 gallon spray tank. I am not affiliated with Cyzmic in any way at all and make no money for telling you this. I would say get the little 8 oz bottle because it should treat a size able area 8 times and each treatment last 3 months so you have 2 years of bug free living for $25. Not bad at all.
Other products may work but the safety data sheet for Cyzmic is second to none and is certainly the safest for you and your birds.
I hope this was helpful for my fellow chicken enthusiasts. If you have any questions comments or suggestions please feel free to post below or respond to me directly.
The Gentleman Farmer
