flys---- as related to what smells bad enough to attract them--- personally i don't think horses smell too bad, so the object is to find something that smells worse-- so flys would think it smells better and would prefer that to horse blood.--- i went this road ?20 years ago- you take milk gallon jug, cut and invert the top put a slurry of chicken liver and specific dog poop-- a little bit of water-- duct tape teh pieces togethere leaving the center hole... and hang it-- that rig will catch 4" of dead flys pretty quickly... i put one in the t tent and it worked wonders for 2 days in the hot sun... it continued to work well for a week- we were not bothered by flys at all -- mostly because we could not get near tht t tent because of the stench-- a bit of hot sun on that "slurry" and it smelled so bad we couldn't enjoy th t tent either...... it seemed to attract flys from 47 miles away-- beacuse that is how far away the stench drifted.... it wasn't even a "smell" or "odor"-- it was a stench. but we caught flys..
so now ----cp steve tailspin sent me an ad for rescue fly catchers-- i bet these will work.. - these are the same concept---- i ordered 2 to try and if they work we can hang some more...-- in the fine print , id does refer to an "odor" -- i am so proud of the cleanliness of this place ... and often note even with 55 dogs, the place does not smell at all. so now i am going to hang up smell producing devices?
might be interesting to hang one in front of the donkey camera which is almost outside? if thease smell as bad as my chicken liver slurry there is no amount of fabreese that will help...
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now for the intellectual part of my study of dogs..... i mentioned specific dog poop in my fly catching instructions.... it is a fact-- there is some dog poo piles that are more attractive to flys than other piles- i have studied this- for a while i theorized the dog was not fully digesting the protien- and thaerefore it was more attractive to flys- i tried to relate this to the tendency of dogs to recycle the pile of used food- but i got sidetract
and forgot the project til now.
as for flys related to other kinds of poo,, - another fact---- there will be a pile of nhorse manure that is "alive" with tiny flys-- these have not been attracted to the pile, but in my opinion... just hatched when they hit fresh air... because of this-- someone invented something to feed horses that did something to that cycle-- i tried that stuff once- and maybe it was a coincidence, but i ended up with birds walking all over the barnyard, so i gave that up...and never dide a "scientific blind study" to verify that happening
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a new barn fan is due to arrive -- sent by cp- marjorie-- and the breeze does help in fly/ mosquito control
becasue all this smelly fly control does not deal with mosquitos at all. there were not many last year, but there have been seasons when i could capture a cup of dead mosquitos in a net as they got blown thru a fan.
in keeping with the insect study-- boxford road was closed yesteerday while they cut down a huge 30 inch diameter tree-- and as i watched them load teh carcass, the entire center was hollow/ black-- ants had eaten the tree... i am sure we have several trees like that here...i have seen sawdust at one by the pond.
one other million ant story--- when we were building this house, ( 1979) after we had poured teh concret i saw a 4 inch wide column of ants coming out of the flat field- across teh drivewaqy and going into a hole next to the new concrete- i put a pile of dirt in the column and tehy kept going straight ahead up and over--- i tried chemicals-- and a blowtorch, i killed a few but they kept coming i don't know when they quit, but the next morning there was no column- they were small ants-- and i have not seen any extraordinary amt of those ants in the house-- we ahve a small supply of large black-- but not teh smaller ones.
for whatever that means..
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bless the shoe fairy !! last night at mail call i recieved a matching pair of shoes- so this morning my feet match... i wll put the old RWT and LNT in the bottom of my closet bedcause somewhere in it's depth must be a RNT and LWT for possibel future rescue operations.
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Hi, Linda!
I just wanted to let you folks know that I dropped off my first "19th of the month" cake today. I work in the downtown area of Knoxville, TN. So I ordered the cake from a bakery nearby and took it to our Downtown Fire Station. I also gave them a flyer explaining the "19th of the month" concept. Hopefully, they'll enjoy the cake and find the explore.org website!
Thanks!
Jenifer Huey
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for any new commers-- we decided the 19th of the month was teh day to take a cake to your local fire department-- it is a very strange thing to do but they sure get a smile and it is so easy to do. last count we had cake delivery in 42 states????