safe way to get rid of flies?

Not really. Try to keep poo up, and everything clean and dry. That's about the best you can do without getting into chemical means of control. Of course, you could go that route.

 

At the risk of sounding like an idiot. I tried the vanilla tree things and it worked. I was extremely skeptical but it did. You can search it to find the info.
sharon

 

muscovys!

 

Despite what folks say, food grade DE with the deep litter method in the coop works for me. The reason I believe, is because it dries the poop up fast and the flies are no longer attracted. I went from fighting them off, to hardly ever seeing one, and I only clean it twice a year. Once in the Spring and once just before Winter. If it's all over your back yard, then that's another story. Just try to keep the poop cleaned up as much as possible I guess.

 

I strung up 8 vanilla leaf car fresheners around my chicken coop and I literally could see all the flies laughing at me. Didn't stop them a bit. I don't know the answer as the only thing that got rid of mine was fall rain.....I did try the bag type fly trap which caught about 1000 flies, but they just kept coming. Don't get the Billy Maes as-seen-on-TV one. That one caught a whopping total of one fly. The raid bag traps are the ticket.

 

At tsc, they have 'fly catchers.' Not really sure what they're called but they're dome shaped or you can turn an old milk jug into one also. They let the flies in and they don't escape - works great! I think I paid maybe four to five dollars for mine. I just set it outside the run door. Even when I free range them they don't bother with it.

 

I use the vanilla tree car air fresheners. They work!

 

We are under attack from fly swarms. Every year in the fall they come looking for a place to stay warm = our house. This began before the chickens arrived. Do you live near a cow farm, cause that can do it!

 

I tried the vanilla trees and it did seem to work, but the scent doesn't last long so I had to replace them constantly. Plus it seems like you have to use quite a few, and the smell of chicken poo and vanilla is not very appealing. I just went with the little bag traps, which are extremely nasty to dispose of but seem to work fairly well.