How to Identify Which Flies are Bothering Your Horses, Family, and Other Animals on Your Property.
Not all flies that are biting your horses and family are horse flies. The H-Trap Professional Horse Fly Control System is specifically designed to catch horse flies only. The flies our horse fly trap catches are commonly known as greenheads, yellow flies, deer flies, and black B-52 bombers. These flies are from the family Tabanidae. Other biting flies that bother horses and help carry diseases are stable flies and horn flies. These are from the Muscidae family. Horse fly eggs and larvae are found in wet, swampy areas. Stable flies and horn fly eggs and larvae are found in fecal matter, urine soaked bedding, or in the wet, decomposing straw found around round hay bales. Another difference is the way these different flies bite. Signs of horse fly bites are trails of blood from the wound that the horse fly leaves after cutting the skin and pumping in a substance that allows the blood to flow. Stable fly and horn fly bites tend to be less bloody, with much smaller ‘dots’ of blood left after feeding.
To help identify which kinds of horse flies you have on your property and to distinguish between horse flies and other biting flies click on these two helpful links from the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences:
In addition, view the image below of the tabanids (horse flies) that a H-Trap purchaser from Florida caught in June.
As mentioned above, the Bite-Lite horse fly trap is not meant to catch flies from the Muscidae family as this species of flies has totally different characteristics than tabanids. Click on these helpful links from the University of Florida to learn more about stable and horn flies and their very different habitat from the horse fly:
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/ig/ig13300.pdf.
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/livestock/flies/horn_fly.htm
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/livestock/deer_fly.htm
If you are still unsure about what type of flies are present on your property, please call us before purchasing an H-Trap. If you have pictures that can help our entomologist identify the flies that are bothering your animals and family, please send them to us by email at [email protected].