b'FARM&BARNso human hair or swishing horse tails are unlikely to come into contact with the sticky surfaces.Fly TrapsFly bags are another successful me-chanical measure for trapping adult flies. These pesticide-free traps are literally bags filled with water and a stinky attrac-tant. Flies are enticed by the scent and fly into the bag, cant escape, and eventually drown. Hang fly bags to draw flies away from your barn and horses. Bags come ready to hang and are easy to dispose of (simply throw them in the trash) when full of flies. Reusable varieties are also available if you wish to reduce plastic use. The downside to these traps is they are quite smelly another good reason to locate them far from barn areas.Other kinds of fly traps include sticky tubes, which are brightly colored (to at-tract flies) and might or might not use an attractant. You can hang these up high, out of horses reach, in stalls or elsewhere in the barn, replacing them with new ones when the old are full.Barrier Methods While barrier methods such as fly masks and sheets wont reduce fly num-bers, they will provide your horses some relief. Fly masks act as physical barriers between horses and flies, and many offer the added benefit of protecting horses with white faces from the sun. Some masks protect the eyes, while others also protect ears and nose. Fly sheets are open-weave lightweight mesh blankets that can help keep pesky flies off a horses body. Fly boots are also available to protect the horses legs. Biological ControlsEncourage insect-eating birds to nest on your farm to help reduce the adult fly population. Members of the swallow fam-ily can be tremendous assets to horse fa-cilities. An adult barn swallow consumes close to a thousand insects per day, which is comparable to a bug zappers capability and safer than pesticides. Common North American insect-eating birds include violet-green swallows, tree swallows, barn swallows, bluebirds, purple martins, and cliff swallows, to name a few. Encourage nesting by putting up nest boxes specific to the bird species. For help determining TheHorse.com|The Horse May 2020 39'