Why do horses attract flies?
The summer months are a welcome sight for horse owners. The days of muddy legs, hairy ponies and cold mornings become a distant memory of winter, but there is one hot-weather plague that can make summer almost unbearable for horses and their owners.
Flies can be a nuisance to a horse as it tries to swat and get away. Besides irritating the horse, the biting flies can cause physical irritation. Flies often gather around the face. Flies often deposit Habronema larvae on open wounds and the horse's eyes.
What attracts them to their target most is warmth and exercise, both of which horses usually provide. Daases thrive on horses and they extract protein not only from their blood, but also from the moist material around horses' eyes.
Dazen flies:
Will identify their target by colour and movement, and are especially attracted to dark colours. They are also attracted to heat, sweat therefore animals and people are the perfect targets for these biting flies. This is also the reason why flies land on you and your horse while riding on warmer days, as body heat and scent of both horse and rider are a wonderful invitation for daes!
Odours and sweat are one of the biggest attractors of deer, so masking these odours with a deer spray is a useful way to deter these insects.
Dazen flies are even worse than common house and stable flies. These flies are at least 10 times the size of a housefly, have large mouths and transmit more diseases than a house or
stable fly.
Good Fly spray like the naturally based "anti insect spray with neem oil" from Paardenkriebels.co.uk
It extends to the face, not just by spraying the body, but by using things that are safe for their eyes," .
If there is a serious fly problem, it is better to use a product every day that you can reapply regularly to keep the population down.
Other options to protect horses from flies include an automatic fly spray system in stables, moving manure and waste piles away from the horses, drying out the manure pile.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can protect yourself and your faithful four-legged friend from these irritating pests.