Protecting your livestock is imperative. One of the dangers facing livestock is bugs like stable flies. This blood-sucking fly most commonly lives inside barns and stables. It resembles the house fly, except that it bites humans. The months of June - October are its most active months.
What Attracts Stable Flies
The semiochemicals found in cattle manure, postharvest waste, and crop residue attract stable flies to a particular area or animal. The flies use these chemicals to navigate to egg-laying sites and identify hosts to feed from. The insect needs moist decaying matter to lay its larvae.
How to Prevent Stable Flies
Stable flies are quite a nuisance but also can be dangerous. Surely keeping them away from your livestock, animals, pets, and property is important to you. Practicing proper sanitization practices and cleaning the barns and stables regularly are the best lines of defense against stable pests. Implement the following tips to keep stable flies away:
- Keep the lawn or turf near the stables regularly trimmed to three inches or lower
- Keep grass clippings, animal waste, and other organic material away from the barn and your house
- Clean up animal manure on a weekly basis
- Clean animal bedding and other areas where animals congregate or live each week
- Keep manure compost piles away from the barn/house
- Use a pest misting system, an expert-recommended solution, inside the stable to provide your livestock with a barrier against stable flies.
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