Flies on Friday

The last days, despite the dropping temperatures the flies have been horrendous.
I thought "Oh goodee the temperature is dropping for a few days there will be less flies"
The truth was there were more. They came in swarms. Usually I put my concoction of fly sprays, wipes, repellents etc on Indigo and the others and they stop stomping for a few hours.
That is the cold hard truth about the fall. Well technically it's not fall yet but it's in the air. The flies come out in force trying to procreate as much as possible to live out the winter.

The other week I went into one of the barns I work at. No one was there. I noticed some new additions. One of these
Down the second isle a bunch of these sticky strips (but not quite as cute as mr.sticky hehe)

A few years ago a friend of mine was grooming her very goofy, troublemaker, Thoroughbred gelding. This boy is known for making mischief and misbehaving. He started to swat his tail and dance around. She smacked him with the brush she had. He did it again, she swatted him again. Finally she looked over realizing something must have been bothering him and his thin little tail to begin with was stuck strait up in the air by a sticky fly strip. She immediately laughed and cut it down. The only problem now was he had half of his tail hair glued to the strip. What to do? She tried picking it out, hours and hours with an already impatient horse was turning into a battle. She gave up and cut his tail. It never quite grew back even a few years later.

Now I wasn't there, I had a similar incident but with my own hair. If you've been hanging around reading my blog and seen any of my posts my hair is very long, very strait. About down to my belt. I was at my friends. He had these fly strips in his basement. I flopped on the couch. My hair whirled about and smack right into a friggn sticky fly strip. EEWWW!! WHY ME!? Well I remedied cutting my hair with half a bottle of vegtable oil. Came right out. Did you know vegtable oil is a wonderful cleaner? Use it to clean paintbrushes, paint spots, sticky stuff that wont come off etc. And it's cheap and more healthy than those chemical cleaners.

I laughed and cringed when I seen a roll of sticky tape right above where this Thoroughbred gelding lost his tail a few years ago. One like this.
I laughed and had to write a note on the board.
The traps are great. You may kill a few thousand flies over the summer but remember that another seventy-thousand will come to the funeral.

What is your fly management? I use fly predators and wipe/home made spray/konk.