I love next to cows, so nothing works but so well. What I have had the MOST success with, is buying the battery operated meter sprayers and putting them everywhere. I have one in each ofmy run in sheds. Once in almost every stall and so about 5 of them inside my barn and 4 in my indoor. I need to replace the spray in a couple of them this weekend. I mix my own fly spray. take a sprayer and add FLicks, Clac Concentrate, bronco, water… then I add Neem Oil, Geranium Oil, Pennyroyal and Mint, and sometimes Lavender also. My husband periodically will mix up a pyretherin spray and spray around the doorways of the barn and that also helps a lot. Right now my donkey is in the stal lbecause if I turn him out he comes in bloody from teh knee down 
Ugh, isn’t that the worst? My donkey wears Summer Whinnys (those socks for horses) and they protect a lot of the leg but his knees and hocks are being eaten this year. It’s so much worse here than usual, presumably because of the mild winter we had.
I installed a Pyranha SprayMaster system in the barn last year and even that does nothing.
What spray container do you use for your own fly spray that will work in the battery operated meter sprayers? Is it the Country Vet brand metered sprayer? What is Flicks and what is Clac Concentrate?
For the spraying of pymetherin, do you just spray the ground of the doorways or also the doorways or walls themselves?
I just started using it and it provides great relief from flies.
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I’ve been using fly predators, Absorbine Ultrashield black daily, fly masks and fly-boots. Frontline spray 2x month for ticks.
But, the best tool of all is the HorsePal fly trap. I put one up a few weeks ago and it’s been fantastic – my horsefly and deer fly problem is half of what it was last year. I also have been letting my guys hide in the aisle where the shade is darkest.
I tried Eco-Vet last year and do believe it helped. This year it has not been a bad year yet for flies…but I was encouraged.
I’d almost come to the conclusion that nothing worked until I tried Eco-Vet…not ready to give a wholeheared endorsement yet.
DEET works on mosquitoes - not flies so much.
I just use the county vet spray in those metered sprayers. I use my own concoction to spray them down when I can… I try to do it once or twice a day and before I ride but my mare hates flies and spray. We use the pyretherin concentrate and I think my husband sprays the barn walls and ground around the doorways. Do NOT get it on your skin as it can cause a really bad reaction. wear a hat, and long sleeves and pants and gloves! We have flies that bite you through your clothes here. I have never experienced anything like them before. Horrid little things. I also like the KEnzington and Rambo fly sheets, but they are HOT and expensive, but if I do not see things get better soon, I am going to break down and get them all one.
Flicks and CLAC are organic fly concentrate mix.
Got same stuff doesn’t repel anything flies drink it and keep biting horse. Natural sprays are a big joke none of them work. Guess if you don’t hardly have any flies but doubt it do anything even then. Even oil based hardly works this year lucky to have it work 5 minutes. Water based anything doesn’t work. Wonder if any of these companies who make these different sprays every actually tried them on a horse. Some make claims their fly sprays last 14 days lucky if they last an hour,more like 5 minutes.
Santa Cruz sent me a free bottle of this as a promo since I had purchased something from them recently, and it does smell nice but doesn’t seem effective to me at all. Honestly, nothing does…
HINT: My TSC store sells Pyrethrins separately from fly spray. It is a concentrate of 10% pyrethrins, which is approx 10x as strong as the amount of pyrethrins in commercial fly spray.
You can add it to regular fly spray (add 1/3rd of the pyrethrins bottle to a fly spray bottle with just that much room for the liquid). NOW you have a fly spray that actually works and will not hurt [most] horses NB: I do not have a wide enough sample to be able to say “all” ---- but every horse I have tried it on have been fine (and fly free). If you are worried about the safety, start with adding just a little of the very strong pyrethrins, and add more until the horse is fly free.
It does not make commercial sense for fly spray manufacturers to make such a strong spray — they would have to price their spray right out of the traditional fly spray cost range. But if you are frustrated, hang the expense (making a super strong fly spray will add about $5 to the cost per bottle).
PS: Adding pyrethrins to traditional fly spry will not help with Sweet Itch, but it will help normal horses who are bothered by flies.
If you do this and your horse shows any bad effects, please stop using it and post here immediately. As stated above, making fly spray 3x stronger than commercial spray has not caused any problem in the almost 100 horses that have benefited from it; it really makes a difference for these horses.Okay, this is very interesting. I started making my own fly spray last year when I felt like none of the expensive store-bought ones worked anyway, and after a few “natural” ones that also didn’t work I bought some permethrin from TSC and have been adding it but at a much lower rate, 15-20 mL per bottle, as recommended by the manufacturer. (I don’t remember off-hand what brand or concentration my bottle is. I think it looks like this but the dispensing measurements are in mL, not oz: https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/pr…z?cm_vc=-10005)
It doesn’t work that well either. I wonder if pyrethrum instead of permethrin would work any better. I don’t see standalone pyrethrum on the TSC website though…
I long time ago, I really loved mixing straight up pyrethrin/permethrin or Repel-X concentrate with Clac. It was stronger than “regular” fly spray and hit what Lord Helpus is talking about, plus the all natural stuff in the Clac–smelled good and worked pretty well!
Black Ultrashield and Pyranha are doing the job for me this year (pretty well, anyway) and I’ve not gone back to mixing up my own stuff in awhile. But certainly something to keep in the fly “toolkit” and perhaps worth trying for those of you who are having a bad year?
Who’s using the Bugpellent stuff? I hung the canister thingies in my shed yesterday and swear I saw the gnats move out in about an hour. It sure SMELLS, though!
I don’t know anything about Bugpellent, but the trick for sweet itch is to get formulas made especially for noseeums. Regular fly spray has no effect on the Culicoides (the particular type of noseeums) that cause Sweet Itch. My “Goober’s Soon To Be Famous Sweet Itch fly spray (also good for all horses)” includes my “secret ingredient” which specifically deters the noseeums. 2 years ago Goober could not be ridden by midsummer because his midline was so irritated he could not wear a girth. Last year he was outside about 16 hours a day without a fly sheet on and never had a moment’s problem…
Once you have a good spray, make sure to spray the center line and groin. Also the mane and tail. In these 2 areas you need to separate the hair and spray directly on the crest and root and then rub it around. Merely putting it on the hair does not deter the Culicoides.
The noseeums are out all day --worse when it is sunny. But they come out in droves at dawn (6am - 8am) and dusk 7pm - 9pm). If possible, keep horses in during those hours.
The noseeums thrive in still water ---- ponds, marshes and even buckets and field tubs which collect rain water, but are rarely emptied. Keep susceptible horses away from water and turn unused tubs over.
@Lord Helpus - hopefully you consider marketing your product to COTHers soon. Libby with her higher standards leather care springs to mind as one who has had wonderful success marketing her product to COTHers.
My poor black Percheron has had a very rough couple of summers. Which is really odd, because he lived in a field in MO for almost 4 years with no fly spray, no sheets, etc. and was totally fine. He is on Kinetic Vet EquiShield SA and Hydroxyzine. I weaned him off the new feed he started when we moved barns last year, and that seems to be helping us lately (he doesn’t really need feed). It was this time last year that he started to have his most severe reaction, so I’m really worried. He wears a fly mask, fly boots are on order, and my barn manager suggested a fly sheet, but both his previous owner (my sister) and my vet said that the sheet will not cover everything and may not be effective against the noseeums, plus he probably won’t keep it on.
I’ve used the black UltraShield spray for the last three years, but my barn manager is telling me it isn’t working. Went back to Zephyr’s Garden natural fly spray, and received a text yesterday that she thinks it’s sugar water because he is just getting swarmed, and she and another barn staffer sprayed themselves, and got covered as well. I am ready to just go down the aisle at tractor supply and buy one of everything!
I saw an article a couple years ago about a woman in England with a big black horse, who painted white stripes on him with a cattle marker to deter flies (theory being that zebras don’t get attacked by flies the way horses do) and apparently had good luck with that. Has anyone else tried that? I may ask my friend who has a zebra …
