I’ll put it out there right now. With regard to flies, I’m a wimp.
I can handle chicken surgery, chicken blood, chicken poop, heck, I can even handle culling a chicken, but I CAN NOT handle this.
If you are quiet, you can actually hear them buzz from inside.
A large jar filled with baked-bean-flies.
You can clean your coop all you want, you can mix things into the bedding, but if you are going to have chickens, you are going to have flies. Especially if you let them free range – poop and flies just happen.
We have found the best solution is these disgusting fly traps. You mix a God-awful solution and place it in the jar. The flies, attracted to the smell (and yes, it reeks don’t put them near the eating area) enter the chamber and then can’t find their way back out. Eventually they either die from drowning or exhaustion. It’s a very effective (and disgusting) solution.
During our worst summer with flies (I think it was 3 years ago) we were filling two of these jars a week. Yup, each week Marc would take the full jars out to the woods, dig a hole and then empty the – what he called “black baked beans with wings” into the hole and then covered them over.
This summer we’ve had enough flies to get out the traps again. I think in part it’s because of all the rain we’ve had. Regardless, they’re back in our lives (and in my nightmares.)
Once again it will be Marc emptying the traps, because even after dealing with chicken problem and after having 6 kids with all their puking and pooping, I’m still not seasoned enough to deal with the bucket-o-flies.
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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