Bye Bye Fly

Anyone with live stock knows the most annoying problem on the farm is the fly. As soon as the temperatures rise into the 60s horses and cows get covered. Most kind horse owners will put fly masks on their horses to keep the flies out of the horses’ eyes. Newer masks even cover the horses’ nose and ears.

A lot of money is spent on fly control products, be it fly sprays, feed through fly repellent, and insects they prey on flies. We’ve been through all of that and they seem to work marginally.

What seems to be working really well for us this year is a manure composter. The photo above is a three bin composter where I deposit the manure every day. I also put lawn clippings, garden weeds and kitchen scraps in there. As the matter decomposes it heats up and destroys any fly eggs and larva. It is covered so moisture is controllable and the compost doesn’t turn into soup that leaches into the stream. Best of all it doesn’t smell.

I used to pick a spot and then I’d dump manure there it never decomposed properly and the mounds just got bigger and bigger. I’ve been using this composter since May and I have yet to fill two bins. One will get high and I’ll use the next bin giving the first bin time to cook down. After two weeks the pile has gone down enough to accept another two weeks worth of manure and clippings.

The best part is that we virtually have no flies. We can saddle up the horses and go down the road past other farms that have live stock and the flies from those farms will swarm us until we get far enough away from their manure piles.

Another benefit is that next spring we will have a couple cubic yards of garden compost. It is win-win all the way around.