Fly Spray

I’ve been playing with different fly sprays lately. I usually make my own – 1 cup skin so soft, 2 cups vinegar, 1 cup water, 1 Tbs Eucalyptus oil, and 1 tsp citronella oil. It works fine, but requires a lot of coverage on the horse, so I use more. Of course on the flip side it’s cheaper to make than it is to buy most sprays. Anyways, I ended up trying Ricochet horse spray, which is all natural. It works really well, but once the horse sweats much it’s gone. I think it repels using the smell and that’s why. I recently got some Equicare Flysect Citronella since I always think citronella works well. The bottle lasted me over a week with 2 horses, which is pretty amazing. If I only ride one horse a day it’s still 3 whole applications of spray. The horses haven’t been stomping when I’ve been riding or out grazing, and the only bugs I’ve seen on them were the monster horse flies which I promptly killed by hand (eww!). The Flysect also has a dry texture for being oil based. It really doesn’t attract dirt and also makes the horses look extra shiny. Anyone else have any good fly spray finds?

I ended up doing a jumping school Monday night since it was just me. Stampede was fairly obnoxious when I was warming up on my own. He has this certain spot in the ring I was riding in that he is always wary of. There are a bunch of jump standards and poles that we use for shows stored over there and evidently he thinks the boogey man hides amongst them. So we end up doing a lot of bending and moving off my inside leg to get past that spot. After I got done flatting I went over to the other ring and started jumping and he forgot all about any scary objects and focused on the task at hand. He jumped well so I was happy with him. I have a bad habit of forgetting to use my leg when he’s going nicely and I seem to be getting over that.

Rode Phoenix today out in the field. We trotted over this manmade hill a few times, I figure it’s good for keeping his hind end strong. He always enjoys the field more than arena work. I guess at 23 years old he’s probably spent a ridiculous amount of time in the arena. Besides he’s always good so why not take advantage of a nice summer night.

Here’s an updated of Stampede’s leg funk from a couple of days ago. It is definitely looking better, but it’s taking forever.

Leg funk again

I started giving him the tetracycline but he decided that he wasn’t going to eat grain if I kept squirting that junk in his mouth so I had to stop. It’s hard enough to keep weight on him that it’s not worth the fight. His blood work came back kind of funky, but didn’t show anything that would indicate infection. Must be localized at least. My vet is still trying to come up with a reason for the strange blood work, but we are taking him off supplements to see if things go back to normal or if it’s something else.

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6 Comments

  1. Hillary H.

    Hope that there is nothing going on with that blood work. I never thought of making your own fly spray… I use Pyranha Wipe N Spray. Flys are still a little irritating but definitely less than without… I think this bottle has lasted me about 1.5 months now. Some days I won’t put any on though. A bottle a week is a lot of fly spray!!!

    Reply
    1. stampyandthebrain

      Do you read the fugly blog? I read it after writing this post, but it reminded me how creepy the contents of fly sprays are. Made me feel like making my own is probably a good bet since there isn’t anything too scary in skin so soft. The Richocet was all natural though and not really any more expensive than the others. I’ve never been brave enough to use pyranha, I know it has caused some skin issues for horses and I already have enough of those!

      Reply
      1. Hillary H.

        Yikes just read it. Now I feel like I have been torturing Houston. My old horse could only use green fly spray because his skin was so sensitive. Whatever we used had marigold in it and smelled great. Cant find it online but I do remember it being pretty expensive. My local tack store doesn’t carry it anymore. Absorbine makes a green fly spray too but I haven’t looked at the ingredients yet. I would like to regain my motor controls and avoid facial distortion or muscle atrophy so maybe no more pyranha in my future either!

        Reply
        1. stampyandthebrain

          Is it the Eqyss Marigold spray? Not sure if that’s a fly spray though, just what comes to mind. I found a gallon of the Richocet I mentioned on amazon with free shipping for $50 which is all natural. A gallon sounds like it would last you forever, lol. The Equicare Flysect citronella says it uses botanically-derived pyrethrins, not sure if that makes it better or not. I will say it doesn’t make me feel like holding my breath like some of the others. Mosquito halt in particular is some nasty stuff. I only use it when the mosquitoes are trying to carry us away on rides.

          Reply
          1. Hillary H.

            I saw that when I was looking it up and I don’t think that is what it was… Ill try to figure it out and get back to you.

  2. Karley

    I am going to have to read that article now!!!

    I am currently using the Equicare and seem to like it, for now lol.

    I can’t seem to find anything I am crazy about but this one isn’t bad 🙂

    Reply

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