Our first year on the farm 5 years ago we had a plague of flies. They were everywhere and in everything. We could not believe how many flies were around. We talked to a few neighbors and they recommended chemical treatments for the flies. They all used pour-on chemical insect repellents on their cattle or chemical fly traps to kill the flies. We do our best to be chemical and pesticide free here on our farm so we were not excited about using either of those options to control the flying insect population.
Our natural solution was to build 150 blue bird and swallow boxes.
That first winter here on the farm we spent many hours crafting these boxes. We were not fully sure they would work or not. From research we discovered that each swallow ate around 850 flying insects a day. We figured if they eat that many flies the population has to go down. That first year out about 60 percent of our bird boxes got used by the swallows and blue birds. They next year the percentage was up to around 85 percent. We added 50 more boxes this past year and have never regretted it.
Each year now we have more and more beautiful birds flying around and less and less flies. We have not eliminated all the flies but there is no comparison to the first year when we were here on the farm. It has been a total transformation around here with flying insects. They are much fewer and farther between.
We love finding natural ways to solve problems around here. Without using any chemicals and no pour-ons for our cattle we have solved a major problem with these bird boxes. They are easy and fun to make. This is the basic plan that we used.
Thank you for reading and following along. I hope if you have a fly problem on your farm or homestead you can look into making some bird boxes and naturally solving your problem.
