Goat Fly Control
One of the biggest and most constant challenges for anyone with a goat herd is the whole issue of fly control.
For the production of milk and the general well-being of the goats, the number of nature of flies around the place can have a very profound effect on what will happen next.
The first thing you have to do is to learn all about your enemy. You need to examine just what is eating your goats, quite literally. For any herd of animals, there are a few main suspects involved: These are usually the stable fly (or the biting stable fly, if you like) and the housefly.
The flies move fast in terms of reproduction during the warmer days. In as few as 10 days, the complete life-cycle of a fly goes around, with new adults emerging, each of them laying about 200 eggs and infesting your goat manure with up to 1,500 maggots per pound.
Breaking the life-cycle of the fly, therefore, is the primary aim for any good fly control program. Essentially, the housefly and the biting stable fly look pretty much the same and they have the same characteristics with the important distinction (as your goat would tell you if he could talk) that the biting stable fly bites and the housefly doesn’t.
The biting will not only have an annoying effect on your goat, but it also means that it carries very strong risks of infection. This, in turn, will have an effect on the milk production of your goat and also on its longevity. Depending on whether or not your goats are a commercial interest, this can translate into a lot of dollars and cents in your pocket.
As a famous Roman general once said, if you fail to prepare, then you’d better prepare to fail. The plan to combat these flies on behalf of your goats is all important.
The thing about flies is that if you fail to prepare, the situation gets exponentially worse. When you think back to those figures on how many eggs an adult female can lay, then you really get a sense of how fast a fly infestation can develop from almost nothing. The best way to do it is to combine the fly trap with the fly predators. The latter are a grouping of benign insects that won’t cause you and your goats any harm but who will love attacking the pupae and/or larvae of the flies. These are the greatest silent fly killer and they will do the majority of the work. Added to that, is the use of other natural substances such as the best mosquito repellent, which is a natural substance. Once you start down this route, you’ll know how to get rid of flies.