Hello everyone. DIY = Do It Yourself.
All I really need to repel are nuisance flies (but being effective on ticks would also be nice).
Please share your favorite homemade bug repellant/fly spray recipes (the kinds of bugs it work on would also be helpful).
Also how do you feel your homemade version compares to commercial brand(s).
My horses and I thank you
in advance for your wisdom on the topic!
I’ve given up on DIY recipes & gone straight to a product that is 10% permethrin in concentrate form: Gordon’s 10 - sold at TSC.
My “DIY” is to mix it with water @ 1.5X the recommended dilution.
So a quart gives me 21+ quarts of spray solution.
At $15 for the quart of concentrate, I save a lot of $.
Permethrin repels flies, mosquitos, gnats & ticks.
I find it works about as well as any commercial RTU spray. Or any Majikal home brew I ever tried.
Horses agree, as there is minimal stomping or tail swishing either in pasture or stalls.
My Recipe:
1 cup water
1 cup white vinegar
1/4 c baby oil
1/4 c Avon Skin So Soft
3/4 c Pine Sol (original)
1/2 oz 10% permethrin: ie, Gordon’s 10
1 generous squirt dish soap
Makes 1 Qt.
Really doesn’t work any better or worse than any $20+ Qt of commercial flyspay IMO.
It surprises me that in this day and age it seems that there is yet to be any fly spray that seems to work well and last
(Most stuff seems to last 1/2 hour if that. 10 hours would be nice or a few days- but no such luck).
Well I’m not sure what your cost is to make this stuff, but at least I reckon you are saving money!!!
I have heard you can use straight apple cider vinegar (preferably organic)
Or use a base of ACV and add a bit of oil, dish soap, and essential oil that the bugs don’t like (there are many including peppermint).
I have pine sol and I could buy 10% permethrin.
Absorbine Flys x contains
.01% Thyme oil
.05% cedar wood oil
.05% lemon grass oil
.05% rosemary oil
.06% citronella oil
.08% clove oil
.70 5 geraniol (whatever that is)
2.5% sodium laurel sulfate (found in most shampoos)
and 96.5% inert ingredients (water, glycerin, and vitamin E)
My photograph of the ingredients of ultrashield’s natural version came out blurry will have to try again.
There was a good long thread on fkyspray last summer.
The takeaway was that all commercial flyspray contains either just natural plant oils, and is not very effective. Or contains permethrin marigold extract and/or synthetic version. And is more effective. But the permethrin family of compounds is quite short lived. That makes it safer but it means that variation between the different brands depends on what inactive ingredients are added to stabilize the permethrin and keep it from breaking down from sunlight.
I remember reading a study about Avon’s Skin So Soft and how it did NOT repel anything. Folks swear by it, but I guess it really doesn’t do anything. Except attract dust in my opinion. (Though it smells nicer than most sprays.) 
I made an Avon Skin so Soft based spray years ago and was not impressed. I think it works on humans if applied full strength.
Since it seems that most commercial sprays are not very effective and are expensive.
To me it makes more sense to make my own for pennies on the dollar.
Just trying to figure out the best way to do it.
If only there were a consumer reports for horse products.
2 parts listerine, 1 part apple cider vinegar, and a splash of dawn dish soap.
It works really really well for gnats and mosquitos but just ok for everything bigger
I haven’t costed it out, but it’s cheap. I think the Gordon’s is $10 a pint at TS and I buy the big bottles of SSS from the Avon lady at the Flea Market for $20 and it lasts for many quarts. I do endurance riding and we are constantly sponging the horses, so it gets washed off frequently. (And we are reapplying at a road trot!)
With this, I don’t feel bad about “waste” and it really doesn’t seem to work any worse than my second go to which is Pyranha yellow (which is almost $20 a quart here and does attract more dirt/dust than my homemade stuff.)
Definitely google for last year’s recipes–FWIW from that resource I made up a mix of (real) pine sol, dawn blue liquid dish soap and water mix (I do not have the exact parts but essentially make it smell piney enough and aqua blue. I was doubtful but realize when I bring horses in at the gate no flies except around their faces (I only apply to body) and none to a few on body which was striking as I had some pretty nasty buggy-ness from all the rain early this year. I wondered if the flies shy away from pine sol as they would get stuck in pine sap?(And I am not sure what the dawn does except I figure it does no harm.)
Can anyone provide link to last years recipes?
It’s oil based. Adding it to a mix may help the spray last a bit longer than a spray with only water based ingredients.
If it’s oil that helps the spray last longer, it would seem to me that there are cheaper oils that one could use than skin so soft.
That’s true. But that is the function SSS is serving. And people find it to be a pleasant scent that helps
mask more chemical smells in fly spray.
Well I am going to continue experimenting to see if I can get something to work. Perhaps I should also write to all of the major flyspray producing companies the body of the text would include …
"I am looking for the most effective fly spray on the market to repel ticks and nuisance flies from my horse.
The qualities that I am looking for include ability to repel ticks and nuisance flies- does your product prevent ticks and flies from landing on horse or does it cause them to immediately go away when they land on a treated horse?
Duration of effective protection- for how long does your product last.? How often does it need to be reapplied?
Do you have any scientific proof that your fly spray is superior to other fly sprays with regard to the aforementioned variables or any other variables that might be important?"
OK gang anything else I should include?
I don’t think anything other than maybe Ecovet can prevent a fly from LANDING on a horse.
Many of the products say how long it lasts on the bottle. Endure and a couple other say it can last up to 14 days (“up to”). Of course that’s variable based on conditions (sweat, rain, rolling, etc.) I am not sure any company is going to be able to predict how often you’ll need to apply, there are just too many variables. Water based fly sprays are going to sweat off pretty quickly under summer conditions. Think how much sweat you rinse off after riding on a hot day. No water soluble spray can hope to do much when it’s getting diluted and worn off with sweat.
I don’t know what kind of scientific proof any company is going to have. I believe all of the testing is for the ingredients in the fly spray, not the formula, and they generally have the same assortment of ingredients with tweaks here and there (and different scents, etc.)
Fly spray active ingredients fall into 3 categories…
-Natural repellents like citronella.
-Toxins like pyrethrin and permethrin.
-Fatty acids (Ecovet is the only company I’m aware of that makes one of these).
Most commercial fly sprays are one of those 3 categories or a mix of them, with added scent and some different formulations to the base (oil base lasts longer than water soluble base).
Short of Ecovet that works a little differently, they’re all largely the same. Flies and ticks may find one mix more repellent than other given your unique conditions-- but these products are all largely the same.
This is just a mix of natural repellents, a scent (that’s what the geraniol is), a surfactant to help the fly spray stick to the horse (that’s the sodium laurel sulfate), and the base which is water plus a little oil.
No toxins in this, so I would have low expectations that it would be terribly effective at killing flies once they land. And it doesn’t appear to have a significant oil content so I don’t expect it would last a long time. If you’re having a serious problem with flies, this wouldn’t be my pick. This is mostly a bottle of nice smells.
Well when my horses are freshly fly sprayed the flies won’t even land on them or land and immediately go away. I wish this would last forever. But it doesn’t. Boo Hoo
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