Black horses - flies

Supertrooper

Supertrooper

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Do you find your black horses are more attractive to flies? Ours is like a fly magnet so he has to wear a fly rug all through the fly season. Being a shire x it takes alot of fly spray to cover him!!

I've put his fly rug on today for the first time as it's so warm ATM he's getting sweaty and at least the white rug reflects some of the sun and keeps him cooler xx
 
oooh no i hope not! this will be my first spring/summer with a black horse. previously ive had greys and i would have defo said they were magnets for all manner of flies and beasties to the point of clusters of the buggers being on every whorl in the hair and causing bleeding
 
Dark horses = more flies as far as I can tell. Nightmare, but I don't do fly rugs as she will rip them, so just a few squirts of my magic fly stuff and she has to cope.
Grey filly doesn't get so bothered by them.
 
Started fly rugs weeks ago, with older mare it is like a bee to honey pot! They drive her mad, eventually in the height of summer I put a sweetich rug from premierequine on as it has cover up and over ears all in one, but doesnt have the restricted covering lower down for when the horse flies appear, they send her running round the field. The other girl doesnt attract the same way and yet are fed the same feed, but rug her aswell. Both girls are friesians.
 
Yep, I read a paper on this last week actually! Some flies are just attracted to the extra heat of the dark colours but horse flies in particular like black horses.
Black horses give off horizontally polarized light that horseflies are attracted to because water gives off the same and that's where they lay their eggs.
White horses give off unpolarized light so are the least attractive in horses.

It was a study into zebra stripes, they were the least attractive of all colours/patterns suggesting they give off very confusing light.

:)
 
Yep :D
I'm sure there will have to be more detailed studies first though, they're not sure how much the fly-repellant contributed to the evolution compared to camouflage and stuff because if it was that important surely horses would have evolved the stripes too, or something :p

But that would be an interesting one, comparing zebra print fly rugs to dark coloured ones and light coloured ones :p
 
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