Think Fly/Garlic Lick/other fly deterrents?

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Suziq77

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The grey princess suffers with fly bites :( aside from her personal discomfort she is a show horse so it is pretty important to me to keep her looking as perfect as possible. She is the type of mare who is inclined to swell up with even the tiniest of cuts so it doesn't surprise me she is also sensitive to flies.

I currently take the following precautions:

Stabled from 6am - 3pm, smothered in fly repellent (yes with Deet and yes also tried Avon Skin So Soft).

3pm - 9pm Out in the field in a weatherbeeta combo fly rug with neck and full belly cover, plus Cashel fly mask.

9pm to 6am out in field naked - although I show her she is first and foremost a horse and I don't like them out overnight in fly rugs unless I absolutely have to, plus if it rains I don't want them in soggy rugs when their real hair would be better.

I don't want to make her wear a full neck turnout rug overnight all summer :eek:.

She is still coming up with lumps from the period after her fly rug is taken off (I am obsessive, I check her at 9pm and I see the new bites at 6am!).

So now I would like recommendations for something I can feed her to help with this.

A friend recommended Think Fly - does anyone have experience of this? My other thoughts were a garlic lick and marmite....ok, not so serious on the marmite but any recommendation along those lines would be appreciated.

Thanks and sorry for the length of the post.

ETA: my little brown TB is out with her following the same routine and doesn't have a bite on her. The grey girl is evidently just delicious to flies!
 
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No one? I am about to buy some Think Fly unless anyone has any better ideas but it would be nice to know if I am just wasting my money......
 
Its called FLYPOR it is quite nasty drench but your vet may sell you a little bit in a bottle. Wear gloves and put some on gauze and dab it on(not where they can reach). It does work we had a mare losing circles of hair and tried Naff off etc etc and the vet gave us this. Job done. You can buy it off the internet.
 
freckles22uk said:
Did you but any and did it work if you did?..

Im thinking of ordering some ready for summer
Click to expand...

Freckles22uk sorry I only just saw this (I was searching again for fly repellent recommendations in case anything new came up for this year as it's approaching that time again....).

I did buy some Think Fly. It smelled vile and she didn't really want to eat it, threw her breakfast round the stable and ate about half - usually a very good eater - tried splitting across her 3 feeds but produced the same reaction. It also made her stable stink. Gave up about 3/4 of the way through as I felt sorry for her, hated the smell and didn't see it helping particularly (admittedly if she wasn't eating it all that could be the reason!).

This year I have bought her a Shires waterproof fly rug and am going to keep her rugged pretty much 24/7, pesky flies :(
 
Thanks for the reply.. :D

Ive ordered the Tri-tec spray to try now, should arrive this week, but the flies are ok at the moment, but when they hit, they are bad!. and it gets to hot for mine to wear fly rugs...

fingers crossed it works
 
We feed garlic to all ours, start around now and stop over winter, and it definitely reduces the flies interest in them. You can see the flies around others not fed garlic and none around our ponies.
 
I put garlic in with her feed and she also has a garlic lick when she is on the yard. My girl is out 24/7 and so far (touch wood) she has been ok :)
 
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