Crazzzee ammount of flies this year!

[tadandrita]

We are being bombarded with flies in our run this year. Anybody else experiencing this?¿ We tried the water bait/attractor containors you find at feed stores with minimal results and now we are trying fly sticks w/ maple syrup. Yes we also practice a thorough weekly cleaning routine. ANY SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME

 

[Mac in Wisco]

We've been using fly predators, little parasitic wasps that attack the fly pupae. I copied this post of mine from another thread. I still can't believe how well these things are working, we barely have a fly anywhere...

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The fly predators have been working for us. We keep 2500 hens on deep litter / free ranging with the barn being 100 feet from the house. The past few years the flies have been pretty bad. The ceiling in the egg room would be covered with them, the garage would be full of them, sometimes they would get bad in the house. If I left my truck parked near the barn with the windows open I would be greeted by a swarm of 500 flies inside the truck.

This year I started spreading fly predators from Spalding Labs in May and have been spreading them monthly. We have about 30 tons of deep litter in the barn. I have a ton of raw manure sitting in a pile at the back of my vegetable garden. I have several compost piles where I compost broken eggs, some manure, and the occasional dead hen. Yet, we hardly have a fly anywhere this year. The flies in the egg room and garage are almost non-existent. The few flies around get picked up by fly tapes.

I was thinking that maybe the flies just weren't that bad yet... that we had a long cool spring and maybe the flies were only really bad in August of the past few years. Then I drove over to another egg producer's place about two miles from here to see how she was managing her birds in the heat. As soon as I got out of the truck, I realized that I'd better roll up my windows. Flies everywhere... I walked past her egg packing room and the siding was covered with thousands of flies. I opened up the door to her egg room and found it abuzz with flies.
After I returned home I told my wife that the fly predators were worth every penny we spent.

 

[sourland]

Here in NJ, flies are worse than in a long time. I use Golden Malrin fly bait-- works great, but you have to be real careful that the birds don't eat the crystals. It will kill them. Even eating large amounts of the dead flies can have toxic effects. Went to TSC and bought some yesterday, and asked the clerk if anyone else was having fly problems. Her response was, "50% of the people today have been buying sprays, baits, or fly strips. Never seen anything like this!"

 

[1livelychick]

Quote:
Totally agree! We use the Fly Predators here and they are amazing.....hardly a fly to be found, now! Well worth the investment.

 

[LeezyBeezy]

What kind of flies do they kill? We have small black BITING flies, then black and western horse flies, plus some green heads throw in. I would buy this if it would work. What do you think?

 

[1livelychick]

Quote:
I don't know if you can start this late in the season.

The whole fly population is now under control, here.

e Maybe someone will chime in that has more experience. We have about 100 chickens,

(I know chicken math got ahold of me!) a few goats, horses, dogs and cats.... The flies were so bad I would have to spray around the front door just to keep them at bay. can't say enough good about them!

 

[Mattemma]

Do you need to buy the fly predators yearly?

 

[Elite Silkies]

I had them bad last year, but I haven't seen many at all this year. But, shoot I think the Devil came Oklahoma and even he ran from the heat

 

[epeloquin]

You're not alone in this one. I am in western Massachusetts and we have the same problem. The feed store where I buy my feed was out of fly traps and they were backordered! When my girls make that glutinous poop the flies are on it in seconds like...well...flies on poop! NASTY!!! I put up fly traps in the run in places where the girls can't get to them but apparently their crap is more appetizing to the flies because I'm not getting many on the traps but there are still a lot in the run.

The only thing you can do to mitigate the problem is keep things as poop free as possible. I clean my run and coop every day and the run sometimes twice.

By the way, did I mention...I FREAKING HATE FLIES!!!

 

[Mac in Wisco]

To answer some of the questions about fly predators, I don't think they work on biting flies. They work on common house flies which are the most prevalent ones and perhaps a couple other types of flies. The company that sells the fly predators sells biting fly traps to compliment the fly predators, but we don't need them here.

Yes, you do have to buy them every year, even throughout the fly season. I paid a total of $140 for monthly shipments throughout the summer that were calculated to be what I needed for 2500 birds. The fly predators do not reproduce as fast as the flies so they need to be replenished throughout the year. I don't think they overwinter well, but they say that small residual populations will survive and that the protection can get better year after year.

I was doubtful. Truthfully I still am and I am crossing my fingers that it holds out for the rest of the summer (next month we clean out the hen house and will be moving 30-40 tons of manure around the farm), but so far the results have been quite dramatic. I've been counting flies that I see in the egg packing room each day as I finish off a few with a fly swatter. It is usually around a dozen flies. They used to cover the ceiling by the hundreds in there and dozens of fly tapes couldn't keep up. When we cleaned out the barn last summer I had to pressure wash the ceiling of the egg room to get all of the fly muck off. The ceiling is still clean this year...