Flies

The flies have been horrendous this year, both in the house and outside all over the animals. They cause all kinds of problems on the animals.

Poor Harris has a big hole in the top of his head where he has injured round his horn scratching where the flies are bothering him. He spends a lot of his day not eating properly with his head in a bush trying to keep them off too. We have been treating his head with pine tar which is antiseptic as well as keeping flies off to a certain extent. But this morning the skin kind of cracked away when it was pushed squishing a load of pus out, I feel a bit queezy thinking about it, blood I am fine with but not gross infections. We have cleaned it all out and sprayed with antiseptic and added a barrier cream to try to keep it dry as well as smearing deet all over his head to try to keep the flies off. We need him to be in peak health very soon as it is breeding season coming up!

Mrs Suffolk has managed to get an enormous hole in her leg and she won't leave it alone as the flies are all over it, so it is not healing and we are worried about fly strike there. We have treated with pine tar and it is starting to look better.

The cows have their eye infections which were spread to them by flies. They sometimes seem really bothered by the flies and don't eat too.

The horses get really annoyed and tetchy with being covered in bitey flies all the time.

The pigs have lice on and off. I keep thinking we have got rid of them, then I see one again. At the moment they seem ok, but good to have something that can treat them.

I have ordered some stuff called Coopers Spot On which can be used on all the animals and should apparently keep the flies off a bit as well as killing ticks and lice along with maggots so we can use it to treat any future cases of fly strike we might get. 

It is quite difficult to chose a product like this as there are a lot of dangerous chemicals used on farm animals that I don't really want in my milk or meat. I don't think the Coopers is great, the active ingredient is deltamethrin, but it seems less nasty than organophosphates and it is licenced for dairy cattle along with the other animals and has no withdrawral time for meat. We have tried to avoid using such things (except on the dog and cat for ticks) but we have given in as the flies are just such a bother. Hopefully it will work a bit at least, realisitically I don't think anything can solve the whole problem. Shame it can't kill the ones in the house too.