Goodbye flies

The first of the hard frosts has hit us. I really like to have that event because that means flies are dying, and I can stop hanging up those gross fly strips. So many visitors have not been around a farm that has flies. With all the flies trying to stay warm to keep alive, many head into my house and the tour shed where I start with an introduction on safety for the tours. I don’t hang fly strips up in my house or in the tour shed, but often enlist a group of kids with fly swatters and call them the Swat Team. They get to practice their hand-eye coordination, and with the competition, many flies die quickly. The game can get pretty intense, with some of the kids acting like evil characters cackling with every kill. 

I think we have a lot of flies in the areas where we raise calves, cows and replacement heifers. These little pests are dormant at night, so hanging fly strips after the morning calf chores works well. The fly strips that we hang are clean one day and by the next, need to be changed. It looks like hundreds of flies on the yellow strip. Students and foreign visitors are amazed by these strips. This is often the topic of many conversations. Some of these visitors from other countries comment that they have many more flies than our farm. They don’t have fly strips and ask where to purchase them. Some of the flies that are stuck do a lot of buzzing and will catch the eye of students. They are the ones who ask, “Why do you have so many flies?”

Flies can live anywhere there is manure or garbage. The life cycle of a fly in the summer can be complete in as little as 7-10 days. In the spring and summer, many generations of the flies will carry on. When we clean our calf and heifer pens, we move the fly eggs from the pens out to the fields where we spread the manure. They hatch out there and when we are chopping hay throughout the summer and then on to corn silage in the fall, the flies come back to the farm in a massive congregation. There are two types: the house fly and the stable fly that bites cows and people. Flies need food to live. They love sugar that is in corn naturally and that is in all the feed we feed our cattle. To complete the life cycle, they will need to lay their eggs in wet manure or old feed. We can spray for flies and have used other products and traps, but typically the answer is to keep food mangers and pens clean. Usually, if it is wet, we get it out.

That explanation usually works. But then we have a few students who need to stimulate their brains more and ask, how many flies can two flies make in a summer. It has been looked up several times with kids that have their own cell phones to ask Google. The answer is 191,010,000,000,000,000,000 by August. I don’t even know how to say that number except that it has many zeros. The answer is so big that we must eliminate as many as we can because they spread diseases to our cows and to us.  

It is the end of the growing season, harvest is finishing up and I am thrilled to not be hanging fly strips any longer. I like that the mornings are cooler, and the days are still warm. The smell of the dry leaves is pleasing, and the leftover pumpkins are being tossed to the pigs for a healthy snack. Walking around the pens on the farm I can still see the flies that are still alive grouped together on posts and headlocks. This might sound gross to some, but when I have my gloves on, it is very satisfying to just give a little pat to that group of flies. I even sometimes giggle and cackle knowing those little buggers are dead. Goodbye flies.

Tina Hinchley, her husband Duane and daughter Anna milk 240 registered Holsteins with robots. They also farm 2,300 acres near Cambridge, Wisconsin. The Hinchleys have been hosting farm tours for over 25 years.