FLIES!

[TCchickies13]

In short, Yes. You'll need a soil Ph test kit. It will take a while and repeated testing to raise the Ph to neutral (7.0) or slightly higher.

 

[seminolewind]

I think the best thing I do is maintain those stinky bag traps. I also spray walls with home defense inside or outside.

 

[bucky52]

I hang those sticky ribbons up in the corners of my outside runs.My runs are 6 feet tall.and i hang them up as high as i can.I have caught a boat load of flies.I buy them at tractor supply for a 1.99.I also hang the vanilla scent air fresheners up in the coops.I have seen very few flies in the coops.I live near a dairy farm and a Turkey farm.so we have always had a fly problem at our place.We gave our hens a lot of tomatoes from the garden this summer.and that has drawn a lot of flies.Hope this helps.

 

[kk5263]

We have a century home and live in an area that has a lot of flies in the spring (April) and fall (Sept / Oct) When we first moved here the flies were so bad they blocked the windows on the warm side of the house to the point you couldn't see out them the ground made a buzzing noise when you walked out side. We renovated the house and tightened it up a bit but still had lots of flies. The last few years we have been spraying the house with a spray called Premise 2000 made by Zodiac in a 454g can.. By accident we had a problem with fleas from our cats. We sprayed the house and left for work. When we got home we could not believe all the dead flies. One can does about 2000 SQ FT house. It coast $29.95 + tax at Pet Value in Canada. www.zodiacpet.com.
Not sure how it would work in a pen or coop but it works in a house.

I Googled Premise 2000 and in the USA it looks like its called Zoecon Precor 2000 Plus Premise Spray 16oz. Sell for around $17 a can

 

[CrispFire]

I have a fly bag up. I also removed any distracting fresh chicken poop from my chicken area so the flies would only be attracted to the bag. Flies are not interested in dry chicken poop. Some of the flies went into the bag to die and some just hovered around the bag and would land on or around the bag. They seemed undecided. I wanted to kill the undecided flies so I put this Rescue sticky trap ($5 from Orchard Supply Hardware) next to the fly bag and in 2 hours I had these flies stuck on it. The back side looks the same. I estimate 100 undecided flies. It seemed like a pretty good haul.

 

[CrispFire]

I also hung a stick trap above the bucket that I use to collect the chicken poop in to dry out. I have 3 full sticks now. There are so many flies on them that new flies are walking over the old flies. Time to get another stick.
I caught a bunch of flies there

 

[seminolewind]

How does the fly stick work? How do the dead ones find their way to the bucket. They don't stick to the stick? I use stinky bags and they work great, but really stink.

 

[CrispFire]

The flies happens to land on the stick and gets stuck. I have the bag too. It does not have a smell. After a few flies get stuck, more flies come over to see what the party is about and gets stuck too. I use the stick closer to the house and the stink bag really far from the house.

 

[seminolewind]

I usually throw a bit of chicken feed in the bag. Have you ever smelled that stuff when it's bad? I think the smell is worse than dead animal. Now I need a way to cut down on the mosquitos aside from emptying anything that holds rain water.

 

[BabyGallo]

Try small glass/containers of a sweet whiskey. Flies seem to like it as much as poop.