We are getting towards the end of the fly season  (hopefully!) but we are still working hard to fight them off.  Battling the flies is probably the hardest thing about horse ownership.   I had a few bad years where Galahad got nasty bites which didn’t seem to cause him any pain but looked horrid.  Thankfully we have had a couple of good years now where that hasn’t happened.  I put that down to my being much better organised at treating the ponies with deosect once a month instead of just spritzing them with fly spray every day.

The trouble is that Galahad hates the spray bottle.  He has improved immensely  – I used to have to sponge the fly spray or deosect all over him.  Now I can actually spray him although he still has good days and bad.  Some days he stands like a rock, others he completely panics.  At the beginning of the summer he climbed up this giant step to avoid being sprayed. Needless to say, I no longer attempt to spray him there!

We did try using garlic in the ponies’ feed as well but Galahad did not like it and would just leave it.  Strangely, he does like the garlic Horslyx – although as he only gets that as an occasional treat I don’t suppose it does much to put off the flies!