Hi folks,

Is anyone here living in rural environment next to pasture land? I am very close to purchasing a rural dream home that is bordering huge pasture land used mainly by cows and buffalo.

How bad is situation with the flies, especially biting ones (botflies), can you sit in the garden without being enveloped in a cloud of common flies while screaming because you are being eaten alive by botflies?

Thanks

We have cows all round in the fields. The only flies that bother are the usual sticky flies and the horse flies that occasionally try to bite. Not many of those, luckily. We do the same thing we used to do at our horse property in California: Get some salmon heads, put them in a large jar with water, perforate the lid, and hang it downwind. It requires a gas mask to clean out at the end of the season, but the trick is to wait for a cold morning.

I lived on a farm surrounded by other farms for 7 years here, never heard of Botflies in CH, normal flies can be a bother, it's horse flies that give a nasty bite.

Thank you bossybaby, grumpygrapefruit, yes I meant horse flies.


Interesting trick with fly jar @bossbaby, is the purpose to trap the flies or just to attract them to something more "juicy" then humans and their meals?

Be aware of the sound of the bells around the animals necks as they walk around more at night than you would imagine. It can be bothersome when you have your windows open at night for the cool air to come in and you hear the clanging at 02.00.

Also be aware of the smell that comes from the farmers putting down fresh manure regularly as it can really knock you out until it dissipates.

We live next to pâture land, usually used for sheep and have some flies which can be a bit of a nuisance but we don’t find them a huge problem.
We hang up fly traps we get from Landi which seems to help. They’re a bit stinky and gross when full but we hang them well away from the areas we sit in.

No idea what bot flies are though.

Are "bot flies" man-made?

We have cows within 20 metres. Flies are not a problem, though we have fly screens on a number of windows, mainly so we can air with the lights on at night and sleep with windows open when necessary.

The problem is the farmers muck spreading - that stinks. Oh and ladybirds - they may eat aphids in the summer but 100s of them manage to overwinter in window frames...

I echo what others already commented. I live also by open pasture, and insects are no significant nuisance in any way. We have removable screens in some of the windows so that we can leave them wide open in summer and flys and mosquitos don't fill the house. We spend a fair amount of time in our garden, and don't have any more flying insects that we did in our previous home in the center of a village.

We live with pasture land all around us, and several farms and dung heaps.

First thing we did when we arrived, was to have 'up and down' fly screens for every window- actually for the larger bedrooms and lounge, only on one window per room. Best thing we did. In the garden, it is just not an issue. We only had a real problem once- and it was epic. An EF BBQ and one member brought some prawns she had bought a few days earlier as 'on date' - flies just went crazy, hordes of them. Never before, never again - wow. Some still on EF probably remember lol.

We have 2 horses in our meadow, but we never have a problem with horse flies.

However, you must be aware that pasture and cows means 'muck spreading' both solids and liquids. The farm 2 doors down have just got rid of a massive dung heap the height of the farm, accumulated over the winter months. They have been spreading for 2 days now, both liquids from the fosse, and straw manure from the heap. He is such a nice guy and I've known him for 40+ years- and he smiles and raises his hands and shoulders, and blows me a kiss as he drives pas with another load on the tractor. In this area, if townies start to complain about such things, they are soon told to go back to town and quite rightly so.

You can also do what all the farmers do to keep flies away from their house windows. Fill the window boxes with geraniums, they don't just look pretty, they supposedly keep flies away!

And for sticky flies, the Alpine alm-keepers hang plastic bags of water in the windows...the flies love the reflection and cluster around the bags rather than venturing on to the restaurant tables (well, for the most part).

The flies crawl in through the perforations and die in fish-head miasma. So both.

Seriously?

Is that only if red and white are planted together?