FLIES!
The Four Riders of My Farm's Apocalypse
To get into the writing zone, I like to throw the ol’ outside influence reducers into my auditory intake receptacles and let the music guide me into what kind of flavor I want to imbue into my stories. This time I am settling into the dulcet rhythm of a synthed lute and electric organ in “Music from the Dark Ages” on Youtube.
Yes, yes, the whole album hits about as hard as the Black Knight prior to losing his arms and legs to Arthur.
Hunched over the keyboard, I frantically click through webpages as the screen reflecting off my glasses shows nothing but ill tidings. My understanding of the cows demise deepens a little more in what feels like a swimming in a shallow part of a vast ocean of information. On the verge of gaining a higher level of understanding, something annoyingly insistent pulls me back to the present; unfortunately, it is just my coworkers telling me to quit slamming the keys and that my weird, raspy mouth breathing is bothering them.
I can forgive them because they don’t have an awesome soundtrack playing in their ears as they devise war plans, nor do they have waves of encroaching pestilence at their door…and I AM supposed to be working; however, I have seen the enemy amassing their forces on moist patties, their original landing parties have breached our defensive lines, and the sanity and health of my bovine are in peril! How can I expect to work quietly when I understand that the messengers of doom are on their way to terrorize my little slice of heaven and my sweet cattle (minus the beef cows that I can’t wait to process) are under constant pressure to succumb to the Four Flies of the Apocalypse!
The fly of War:
The Horn fly is named for its tendency to congregate around the base of the horn like some grotesque nightclub where the menu is filled with hemoglobin martinis, but I also see them partying along the neck, back, withers, and flank. That’s right, the Horn Fly is a blood-sucking variant of fly and despite having access to our non-furry flesh, they prefer cows, horses, and dogs over us. It turns out that cows don’t just flick their tails and shake their skin because the flies are a nuisance, but rather they are under a lot of stress at being eaten with no recourse other than swishing a tail to and fro, or throwing a hail-Mary lick at some foreign quarter of their body.
The fly of Pestilence:
The Stable Fly is named for its favorite dive bar and hangout…the barn. If the barn is non-existent, the little devils will also procreate in pastures where they can lay their nefarious maggot children into decomposing fibrous material, cow patties, or crop by-products. The Stable fly is another bloodsucker, preferring to feed on the legs of the cattle which allows for coexistence between the Horn flies and the Stable flies because the buffet is large enough that they don’t bump into one another.
Both flies have been implicated in being carriers of the Bovine Leukosis Virus, a tumor-causing virus that is relatively undetectable until blood work is done. The stable fly also carries anthrax, while his buddy from the horn side of town carries Staphylococcus Aureus, a mastitis causing staph-based pathogen. Boy oh boy I love learning about nature!
The fly of Famine:
The Face fly is not going to be as devastating to the cows because they aren’t penetrating the hide in search of that sweet sweet California Red, all the while passing blood-borne pathogens around. They hang out around beautifully large bovine eyes, mouth, and nostrils, slurping up whatever juices happen to be flowing from their respective origins. This particular fly grows in cow patties, right alongside the previous two, and while it is not a gross bloodsucker, it is a major carrier of bovine pinkeye, eye worms, and bovine rhinotrache…wait. Eye worms?!?! EYE WORMS! NEMATODE EYE WORMS?! The crescendo of horns and booming of Middle Age percussions echo within the cavity of my blown mind as I hesitantly open a new tab and type in the words.
It is exactly what it sounds like.
The fly of Death:
The common house fly is a stranger to no one on planet Earth, and even though I have grown up around these things and understand that they are gross, I have never considered that they are one of the largest disease carriers in the world for more than just humans. Also face huggers, these grotesque, flying dirty bombs feed on all bodily fluids including blood, but they differ in that they are not able to pierce the hide of the cow to consume it, so they will choose to gather around open wounds. They are known carriers of antimicrobial E. Coli, staph Aureus, salmonella, and bovine respiratory disease. The one good thing about the common house fly is the amount of consumer research that has gone into eradicating them using chemical smells to attract them to traps.
Really, that is the only good thing about it.
The worst part about finding all of this information is that we have very little recourse in how to handle it immediately. It will unfortunately be another bad year of flies for our cattle, but a new dawn is breaking and even though there is a lot of bad, there is a silver lining in that existing research is available to look at and try. We don’t want to spray chemicals and we don’t want to use ear tags that are impregnated with chemicals for a slow release because the flies grow resistant to whatever chemical it is and then I have to buy a different one that they aren’t resistant to and it never ends. The agricultural industry is riddled with these costly reoccurring treatments that never end, never become cheaper, and only create a larger gap in true care of the land or animal.
Next year I hope the pasture is ready and I am able to start running the chicken after the cows and the little dinos will just take care of the flies for me; however, it still leaves this year for the cows to succumb to the flies, and I am not apt to sit by and watch my ladies get eaten up. There is a paper from Oxford University that goes into previous trials using different naturally occurring botanicals and remedies ranging from nicotine to geranium oil to address the problem, along with a variety of different essential oils. Right now we are rubbing in a lemongrass EO and castor soap with water into their fur and it does seem to negate the interest in the flies in the area where we are treating. Several of the remedies previously mentioned had very little efficacy, but the outliers that showed repulsion for several hours into several days are the ones we plan on trying out.
Stay tuned, I’ll be sending out pictures and updates of the different techniques we are going to be trying!
Excellent info, hideous though it is. Have you looked into Cedarcide, a natural product for at least repelling noxious insects, if not eradicate them?
Your writing is quite descriptive. I never knew how much our herd animals suffered, nor that there are so many varieties of flies and diseases. Good luck (though it will really be lots of work and research) finding a safe, effective way to treat your bovine ladies.