06/01/2026
Back from our first vacation in 5 years so let’s talk about ⭐️🪰FLIES🪰⭐️ or really- the war against them and how I keep the flies down in the summer!
First of all, the battle starts early in the spring but it’s never too late to start.
Faze 1 is TRAPS. The trick with the traps is to place them 20 feed AWAY from where you do NOT want the flies to be. Bait them with something revolting. My choice you ask? Placenta chunks that I cut up and save through kidding season and freeze in little bags. My freezer looks like a 🔪 scene but the flies reeeeeally like placenta.
Faze 2 is CLEAN YO NASTY BARN. Where there are animals there is dirty poo poo. Where there is dirty poo poo there will be flies. We have the luxury now of having equipment to help, but for years we did not. So I scooped 💩 by hand, put it in tubs, drug it out to dump ect. Every. Single. Week. Just do it guys. We have a concrete floor now which tbh is a blessing and a curse. Easy to clean, easy to sanitize. Does anything drain? YEAH NOPE. So I layer our bedding. Lime, pelletized bedding then shavings to help extend the life of a clean. Barn is gutted every week/week and half depending if the goats are up or not at night. Stalls more often if I have does up with kids. Our goats have a lean-to off the barn where they hang out most of the time. The stall mats there are clean DAILY.
Faze 3 is PT-Alpine spray. Some flys will make it past your faze 1 and 2. Find your “fly hotspots” because this does not attract, it kills them on contact when they land. My hotspots are the panels of the Retriever Kennels I use for stalls. I dust the panels off EVERY BARN CLEAN DAY before re-applying so the spray can have something non-porous to stick to. The flys land and they die a torturous death. Quite fun to listen to honestly.
Faze 4 if they make it past 1,2 and 3 is Quick Strike Fly Bait. I have a tub of this in a locked kennel so the flies get lured in to happily poison themselves but my cats, dogs, chickens and goats don’t.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOME FLIES IN A BARN. In some capacity it’s unavoidable. The amount of flies you have though is up to you and your level of war you want to rage. One fly can lay 500 to 1,000 eggs in her life time. Think about that…. then times how many you have flying around.
This is what I DO. Might not work for you, maybe it will. Just sharing because I’ve seen quite a lot of posts lately asking!
🔪🪰🔪
