I thought today would be a good time to talk about a maintenance issue that I have had in the past. I hate flies. They annoy me immensely. When I got chickens, I quickly came to the conclusion, that I would need to up my maintenance habits. I have two dogs which require daily poop shoveling to maintain a relatively sanitary backyard. Unfortunately, I have neighbors that don’t spend as much time doing maintenance that also have dogs.
Since I have a very small backyard, don’t have a lot of room to spread my different projects out. My compost pile butts up against the chicken run. I had to figure out how to get additional assistance in the fly eradication business. I looked at the hanging fly strips and decided with my luck I would be the one to get stuck to it.
Disappointment
I went to a local feed store that I frequent and purchased a Fly Trap by Starbar called the Captivator®. Couple of things that I didn’t like about the Captivator® is that since I try to minimize my trash, I knew that if I had to empty the jar, I would be releasing any flies that hadn’t died. The attractant refills cost 3.50 each. I have to tell you that I was very disappointed, the directions were followed explicitly and I caught two flies. If that was all the flies I had I would have been impressed, but that wasn’t the case. I called Starbar and was told by them, sorry it didn’t work just take it back. I didn’t have the receipt anymore, so that wasn’t going to happen. It was about $10 so I wasn’t very happy about it.
A couple of days later I was at Wal-Mart and went into the garden dept. to see if they had anything different. They carry a product called Rescue® Fly Trap for about $5. Not a bad price. Once it is full, close it up and dispose of it.
Success
I have to tell I was very pleased with this product. I placed it according to directions and it started to collect flies within an hour. I went out and purchased a second one to put near the coop to catch any stubborn flies. There weren’t that many in the coop trap so I am thinking that I got outside assistance in filling up the trap in the yard from the neighbors’ dogs. Around mid season I disposed of the full trap and moved the coop trap to the yard.
A couple of things to be aware of:
1. The trap bait does stink, so make sure keep it away from your normal hanging out areas in your yard.
2. Make sure you follow the directions as far as placement is concerned.
3. Make sure you follow the directions on how to remove the yellow funnel or be prepared with some tape to repair it.
I hope you are blessed with a fly-less season
but if you aren’t, you may want to try the Rescue Fly Trap.
A woman walked into the kitchen to find her husband stalking around with a fly swatter.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Hunting flies,” He responded.
“Oh, killing any?” She asked.
“Yep, three males, two females,” he replied.
Intrigued, she asked, how can you tell?
He responded, “Three were on a beer can, two were on the phone.”