Help me --I hate flies

Diamatacous Earth aka DE...............

 

I have 17 chickens and I go out once or twice a day and "pooper scoop" up after them with a beach pail and serving spoon (that is dedicated solely to this purpose!). I find that it keeps the flies down significantly. It doesn't take long and if you're hosing it down anyway, it might be worth a shot. Hosing the poop down, I imagine that only serves to make liquid poop that distributes over a larger surface area, thus exascerbating the problem. Just a guess.
Good luck!

 

I read an earlier post today about vanilla scented deoderizers...they swore by it...unfortunately I can't find it right now!

ETA - Found the post: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=368487

 

The best help I have found is those yellow fly glue strips. I have 5 hanging in my coop and change them when ever they seem full.

One day I came out and found a couple of my leghorn's tail feathers in one of the strips - - - -oops hung it too low. My birds don't have their weeks clipped and so they can fly within the coop. The only ones flighty enough to do it is my leghorns. . . . .

 

I haven;t had too much of a problem with the chickens but we are in deep woods so maybe I am just used to lots of bugs But today I peeked in the duck barn and they were buzzing all over. I threw some pelletized garden lyme in there on top of the shavings and it seemed to help. They have only been in there for 2 weeks so it really isn't that bad in there poo wise but we had a cool stretch and ot went back into the 90's today. I also picked up some fly strips to hang in there so we'll see how that goes.

 

I dont know. I use DE as a pp mentioned along with cleaning runs out completely, often and it hasnt helped my fly population.

 

I used a rather unconventional approach at times when I feel flies are multipling faster than I can keep up with....

I go let the girls out of coop to free range

I poop scoope the poop board and any other poop I can find into sand castle building play sand bucket and add just a bit of moisture (water) to wet it down a bit to make it irresistable to the flies but not dripping wet nor a toilet bowl!

I then unroll one of those flypaper traps that are long and sticky and carefully place it in the bucket above the wet poop. I then place bucket on coop roof or other locations near by that the girls won;t get into it. Several times throughout the day I will rearrange the fly paper to expose areas of it that does not have flies attached already. Also, rewet poop if it has dried out too much.

I usually catch no less than one hundred to 200 flys this way in just a single day on a single flytrap. It is litterally (sp sic ?) covered almost solidly on both sides with flys, and so much so that when handled, by the ends of course, it feels like it would "fly away" if you would let go of it and it is buzzing like crazy!

I also use sweet PDZ and DE as needed in and around the coop, which eliminates other attractive "spots" for flys! Which makes my trap even more attractive! I think it is the combination of these actions that makes it work so well.

Good Luck,

 

look a few posts up. they say vanilla scented car fresheners. I am gonna try it too. Maybe it works