With a flight range of 20 miles for house flies and 70
miles for stable flies, no fly management program
can completely eradicate fly infestations. However,
there are fly control measures designed to reduce fly
populations significantly.
Fly sprays may be used to repel and kill flies, but
they have many limitations – primarily that they are
only effective against adults. The insecticides used in
many common fly sprays become diluted with
water as a horse sweats and may become less
effective with increased exposure to sunlight. For
these reasons, fly sprays should be used as part of
an overall fly control program that targets other life
cycle stages of the fly.
“You can spend hundreds of dollars every fly season
on products that will repel flies for a short while, but
the problem goes unchecked,” said Jay Donecker,
VMD. “Reducing the risk of disease from insect
vectors starts with reducing flies’ access to breeding
materials.”
A basic step in any fly control program is to remove
manure and other possible breeding materials at
least twice a week. Flies cannot develop in dry
environments, so spreading the manure thinly will
help to break their life cycle.
Removal of manure from stalls and other confined
areas where horses are kept is usually already part of
daily management. But flies will continue to breed
in decaying organic material – this may include
paddocks where manure is mixed with damp earth,
saturated stall areas or feeding areas where grain
has spilled. Since house flies will lay eggs in fresh
manure, elds and pastures also need to be maintained
as part of a fly control program.
Complete elimination of all fly breeding materials on
a weekly basis is not possible for most equine
operations, so the addition of a feed-through insect
growth regulator (IGR) is an excellent step to significantly reduce adult fly populations. IGRs inhibit
insect growth at specific life stages, preventing
larvae from reaching the adult stage.
“In most cases, it isn’t possible to remove all fly
breeding materials from a farm or stable,” said Dr.
Donecker. “IGRs are a great resource and an effective
addition to any pest management program. Feedthrough
fly preventatives can be effective – and
safe. With Solitude IGR™, a product that contains no
organophosphates, there should be a significant
reduction in adult house and stable flies within two
weeks, with full results realized within four to six
weeks of administration.”
A feed-through house and stable fly preventative
offered by Pfizer Animal Health, Solitude IGR is
virtually nontoxic to humans, other mammals and
sensitive pollution indicator species, such as fish.
Once excreted in manure, cyromazine – the active
ingredient in Solitude IGR – inhibits the production
of chitin in fly larvae, causing the immature stage of
the fly to die without becoming an adult. Cyromazine
breaks down into a slow-release fertilizer and
will not harm horses grazing in pastures with treated
manure.
No fly control program can completely eradicate
house and stable flies, but careful management of
fly breeding materials may help to reduce the health
risks these pests create. Fly sprays help to protect
horses from adult flies, but a comprehensive
program should focus on breaking the fly life cycle
in addition to reducing adult populations to achieve
maximum results. And those results are easy to see - and feel.
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