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How can you help horses repel flies without using fly veils, without toxic chemical fly repellants and preferably naturally, so you don’t add to your horse’s toxic burden?

Flies are a constant in summer wherever you live. Any animal who lives outside tend to attract them. Actually that isn’t quite accurate, because it only seems to affect the herbivores. I’ve never seen flies bother my dogs or cats even when they spend a lot of time outside, as they mostly prefer to do in the summer.

Many years ago I came across someone who had done an experiment with her horse’s fly veil. She wondered how it affected her horse. So she wore it herself for a day!

As the day progressed she developed a headache. It worsened as the day wore on.

She said she was not a headachy person.

Maybe that wasn’t what is termed a scientific study. But it was good enough for me, because we know that eyes need to exercise, around in their sockets, but also the focal length. Developing a headache, at the very least, seems obvious when we have to focus on something so close all the time

In addition, horses are stoic, hiding their pain, so how would we know?

Very few fly veils are 100% exclusive. I can imagine it would be extremely annoying to have a fly trapped in the veil for any time, as it tries to work out how to escape.

So fly veils were out for me.

What else could I do to help the horses, preferably naturally?

Garlic is an all round wonder food so it didn’t take me long to decide to add that to the horses feed. I started with a single clove, cut up smallish. I didn’t bother to take the skin off.

No-one seems to object, so I increased it to two cloves and so on. It is possible to overdo garlic, so I stopped at half a small bulb per horse. The small bulbs are normally the organic ones. If the bulb is a large one, I try to use a similar amount, so maybe two or three cloves.

It was satisfying to have the horses breathe garlicky fumes over me after they had eaten their food.

Once a day seems to be enough. The horses are certainly much happier without the stomping and constant flicking of flies. Although I can see the odd bump from a bite, I never see flies on the horses. However, one did stomp his foot at feed time. I ruled out irritation as he’s a calm soul. Flies prefer it when their host is stationary.

Then I came across the idea of neem oil.

Neem oil is a natural insect repellant and has no adverse effects. It is harvested from from the neem tree, Azadirachta indica, a fast growing tree in the mahogany family that is grown in India for its medicinal properties as well as its insecticidal property.

It is used in Ayurvedic and other natural health care as well as organic farming.

For insecticidal purposes, the oil is diluted with water, one part oil, nine parts water. A spray bottle is a suitable container.

As water and oil don’t mix well, it needs a good shake before use. I tried adding a little soap to the mixture to help emulsifier the solution, but it made no difference. Shaking before use is not a hard thing to do.

One farmer reported that spraying the mixture over his cows lasts two weeks!

So far, I’ve only applied it once, quite sparsely as they don’t like the sound of a spray, and it does seem to last a long time.

There is always a natural solution to everything. It just may take a little longer to find it. Both these natural solutions to help horses repel flies are effective and non-toxic. And incredibly inexpensive.

The garlic can be added to the food all year round as a proactive ingredient to keep them healthy.

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