Organic Cattle Fly Control
Prior to purchasing cattle I don’t remember seeing many flies. I can’t remember swatting at a fly and definitely didn’t expend any intellectual or emotional capital thinking about flies. Then the cows arrived. Holy cow. We were inundated with flies almost instantly. I was shocked at how quickly the fly situation got out of hand. The flies completely covered our cattle within days.
It took over a month but the fly situation is finally under control. Here is what we did:
Fly traps- in a 3 acre pasture we hung 6 traps. These were full within days and apparently each hold about 100,000 flies.
Tree swallow boxes- each pair of tree swallows will supposedly eat 8,000 flies a day. (The fly killing ability of each method resembles that of a fisherman’s tale several years after the trip)
Fly eliminator program- from arbico organics. These are beneficial insects that kill flies.
Sulfur based minerals for fly control - FBG mineral from Agridynamics. I put this in 1/3, the 1:2 and 2:1 in the other third of the Fly Killer Kover
Ecto-phyte- This was initially produced by Agridynamics and can only be ordered by calling Nevin Martin at Martin’s Agri-Supply. It works very well when used with the fly killer kover and mineral oil. We also applied this to a field rub.
Fly Problem before the Battle Began