Horses and Bugs Question

[patandchickens]

Quote:
A few goldfish per tub will fix that. You do have to remember not to dump them out if you do whole-tub emptying/cleaning of water tubs, but it sounds like she probably doesn't.

the little V winged nippers, which I have never seen in this area before

Deerflies, perhaps?

Pat​

 

[revolution rooster]

Not a quick remody but put up bat house's. Bat's are the best bug control and you dont have to worry about chemicals.

 

[Peaches Lee]

Fly masks for their faces, those will need to be monitored to ensure they do not create sores on the horses' faces. I believe their is a feed-through garlic fly/bug repellent you could check into. Then there is fly spray. My favorite was called "Deo-Lotion" and it was a cream applied with a sponge, wonderful citronella scent but I have only ever found it once at a horse show

Good idea about the bat house! Barn Swallows also eat a lot of mosquitoes, so it's good to leave their nests on the side of your house/barn/garage even though the little buggers dive bomb you...

 

[QH Girl]

A few goldfish per tub will fix that. You do have to remember not to dump them out if you do whole-tub emptying/cleaning of water tubs, but it sounds like she probably doesn't.

Pat

My kids won a couple of goldfish at the fair last year. I put them in the horses' water trough half expecting to see them floating after a few days. Those fish are huge now, at least 4" long.​

 

[jettgirl24]

We don't have too horrible of a fly problem here but the mosquitos have started to get horrible this year at my place... We've NEVER had a mosquito issue before so I am almost positive it's thanks to the stupid property owner behind us who decided to clear cut his 40 acres without plans to do anything else with it. I walked back there the other day to find that they have created literally hundreds of pools that catch rainwater and the mosquitos are breeding like crazy. I can't begin to tell you how angry I am

Needless to say we're having the vet out for a second time this spring to go ahead and do West Nile... I would love to send the bill for the farm call to my neighbor - wish I could.

I'm still working on a mosquito plan. I'm thinking about doing dunks but worry a bit about their safety even though they say they are safe for livestock. Right now I'm emptying my big troughs every other day or so to prevent them breeding in there. I'm also thinking about making some bat houses and tacking them up to the fr trees around the edge of my arena and pasture where the forest starts. Are fly predators worth it to help with mosquitos or is there something better? I'm really concerned about the problem so I want to be as proactive as possible.

 

[QH Girl]

We did the fly predators faithfully for 3 years. It cuts the horsefly population in half, but didn't do anything for the mosquitos. We're working on building a bat house now, since we do have a lot of bats in the area. Someone at our ag center told me that each bat can easily eat 1000 mosquitos a day. At that rate, I'll feed and house bats in time.

We have a bad west nile problem here. The ag center used to collect and test dead birds, but they stopped since all the birds had west nile. I buy the vaccine for my horses at tractor supply, it's a little cheaper than having the vet come out. I lost a filly to west nile a couple of years ago, even though she was vaccinated, so I try to stay diligent it.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
No, fly predators do absolutely nothing whatsoever for mosquitoes, their lifestyles never intersect with each other. They attack the (terrestrial) pupal stage of things such as stable flies (the ones that look like houseflies but bite, hard) and face flies and horn flies (the bitty little ones that cloud around the animals' faces). Fly predators can't get to mosquito pupae which are underwater (the stage that looks kind of like a sprouting bean seed), or deerfly or horsefly or greenhead pupae which are in mud or damp earth.

I know the whole "build a bat house for mosquito control" thing sounds good, but IME a) a lot more people build bat houses than get their bat houses *inhabited* (plus which, if you have an older barn as opposed to a pole-barn, you probably ALREADY have as many bats as you're gonna get, especially now with that white-nose disease going round), and b) I gotta tell you, we have both oodles of mosquitoes AND, until two years ago, oodles of bats BOTH on our property, and the two least-mosquitoey years have been the two past years which have been essentially batless (I think b/c of the disease coming thru). So while it can't HURT, I would not count on bat houses as a reliable mosquito control measure.

Pat

 

[2DogsFarm]

I use Mosquito Dunks in my trough.
Not exactly cheap - about $8 for a package of 6 - but they sink to the bottom & keep mosquito larva from hatching while harmless to the horses who drink from it.

Bayer also makes mosquito granules I sprinkle in my outdoor fish tank (44gal stock tank) and the water planter in my yard.
They float on top for a while, so I don't like to use them where the horse could ingest them, even though they are supposed to be harmless to pets.

TSC carries a flyspray intended for dairy barns: Country Vet CVD-80
$12.95 here for a 25oz aerosol can.
Recommended to me by my shoer (and shoers know about flies!), it works really well as a premise spray as well as used directly on the horses.
I spray the stalls as well as the manure-filled wheelbarrow (until I can dump it) and my barn is relatively fly-free.

 

[jettgirl24]

I figured it would only help to a certain extent... I figure it can't hurt though and I've been wanting a bat house any way cuz I think they are super cool

I think maybe I'll try the goldfish in the pasture tanks too. It'd be nice to not waste so much water dumping them out constantly... And I also think it'd be cool to look in the tank and see fishies

LOL