posted 4 years ago
Hey David, here's what I'm doing to control flies on my farm. I'm using parasitizing wasps, and it's a species of wasp that lay their eggs in fly larvae. These wasps are teeny tiny, hardly a couple millimeters long and do not sting people. I am unfortunately unable to report results as I've just started using them a little over a week ago, and it takes time for a visible reduction in adult flies to be seen. It sounds to me like your adult fly population is quite high, and if you chose to employ parasitizing wasps, it would take a little time for to see a reduction in numbers as the wasps lay eggs reducing live fly larvae numbers and allowing the wasps numbers to grow to a point of balance. I have a handful of cows and released wasps for the first time, and I'll repeat this every 3-4 weeks throughout the warm season this year. According to the people who supply the wasps, their range is something like three or four hundred feet. I released mine in different spots near my cows, and my cows are moving across the farm in rotational grazing, so I'll be releasing more wasps in a few weeks on the other side of the farm to help keep adult wasps where the fresh cow poop is. For those interested, I purchase mine on amazon. Within a day of arrival, I saw a few live wasps in the bag, so I know what I purchased was live and fertile and upon which I promptly released the whole bag.
"Study books and observe nature; if they do not agree, throw away the books." ~ William A. Albrecht