I stumbled upon a VERY effective treatment for flystrike just about two weeks ago. With all of the rain we've been quite the mess down here in South Louisiana. My Buff Orpingtons freestyle in the backyard all day long, and I wasn't out as much as I usually am to notice that the flies had descended pretty much overnight. I did notice that she had a somewhat poopy butt, which caught my attention bc they typically don't, but since I wasn't at all familiar with fly strike and hadn't even seen the flies yet at that point, it took a good day or day and a half to realize that they were attacking her aggressively, most likely instigated by the poopy butt. I read that it was potentially a very quickly lethal issue, so did a quick salt water and dawn soap soak; which turned out to be not very effective at eliminating the maggots, but I knew the salt would at least help with the sores and maybe slow the worms down until I could figure out what to do. The predominant advice that I could find at that point was to soak her, but that the maggots would have to be removed one by one with tweezers to ensure they were all gone. Which well...hate to say but she was probably doomed at that point. Then I googled 'how to kill maggots' because I wanted to know if dunking her butt would drown them and if so how long that would take. What I read in one article literally saved the day: kinda random but for some reason "Maggots find CINNAMON 'intolerable'". That's what it said, and it was a godsend. I went out with long rubber gloves on, filled a 5 gallon bucket about half full with warm, very salty water, and threw in about 1/4 cup of cinnamon. Put Daisy in and held on to her with one hand while I kind of wiped and 'excavated' her vent with the other gloved hand under the water. She was calm as could be in the warm water and cinnamon (think SPA, and think 'Cinnamon-Challenge'
) and almost immediately the bucket was filled with the little worms floating up and struggling to try to escape the cinnamon is all I can think because the first time I soaked her they barely budged and just seemed to retreat to inside of the vent. The cinnamon was a game-changer. I sat there with her soaking for about 15-20 minutes, and when I did one more cinnamon/salt soak that evening saw only ONE remaining maggot float up that time. Next day I turned her over a few times to check, and NO MORE MAGGOTS (!). All that was left were the raw and inflamed sores they left behind, so I followed with Vetericyn antimicrobial spray a couple of times a day for 3-4 more days, checking her for any 'next wave of maggots' each time. This was two and a half weeks ago; she felt better pretty much immediately but was slow getting back to laying. First week after, she eventually layed a few shell-less and mis-shapen eggs, but as of yesterday she's back to her normal fluffy butt and laying again. I gave the coop a good spray and a dusting of diatomaceous earth to discourage any fly activity there, and keep a spray bottle handy if I see a cluster of flies out in the yard so that I can target zap them ASAP. Just wanted to share the cinnamon spa treatment method with anyone as desperate for a treatment plan as I was.
