Horse breeders - Protect your Horses & Stables

A number of insect pests can cause damage and irritation to horses. These insects include biting flies, nuisance flies, lice, and bots. Most Horse owners battle with protecting their horses from biting flies. Don't spray harmful sprays around your horses again - Call 832.868.6500 for your free estimate today.

Biting Flies
These include mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, horse flies and stable flies. Of these pests, the stable fly is probably the most important biting fly pest for several weeks during the summer.

Stable Flies
Stable flies will feed on blood from practically any warm-blooded animal including horses, humans, pets and other livestock. During periods of high stable fly activity, humans can be severely annoyed; this insect has been called "the biting house fly."

Stable flies prefer feeding on lower parts of the hosts such as the legs and belly of horses and cattle. Both male and female flies feed on blood; the female requires blood meals to produce viable eggs.

Stable Fly Management
A sound sanitation program is of paramount importance to fly control; all other types of control are doomed to failure without this important first step. Control of stable flies in barnyards, stables or corral areas usually involves several methods. Chemical control directed at larval and adult stages of both insects is usually required periodically during the fly season.

Horse and Deer Flies
Horse and deer flies are large biting flies, which can inflict painful bites on horses and humans. Several species may become abundant enough to constitute a problem for grazing horses, particularly animals pastured near streams or low, wet areas. Both horse and deer flies have been incriminated in the transmission of equine infectious anaemia. Further, because the bite is painful, horses may become restless and unmanageable when they attempt to ward off attacks by these flies.

Black Flies or Buffalo Gnats
Black flies or buffalo gnats are small, 1/12 to 1/15 inch long, hump backed, biting flies, which may have high populations in the spring and early summer, particularly in pasture areas along streams. The immature stages are found in flowing water.

Adult feeding on horses and other animals can pose serious animal health problems, and the irritation caused by black fly bites can make horses unmanageable. Anemia as a consequence of black fly feeding on the blood of the vertebrate host is a possibility when the black fly population is high. Bites may cause severe reactions such as toxemia and anaphylactic shock; these reactions can result in death.

Biting Gnat
No-see-ums," "punkies" or biting midges can be a serious pest of horses. Blood loss and irritation associated with the feeding of these very small (usually less than 0.04 inch), blood feeding flies can be significant.

 

Horn Fly
The horn fly is normally a pest of grazing cattle; however, when cattle and horses are pastured together, this fly will feed on horses. Horn flies are about one-half the size of stable flies and like stable flies are biting flies The horn fly usually remains on the host animal almost continually, both day and night. Females lay eggs on fresh cattle droppings.

Source: http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/ansci/horse/eb55-1.htm

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