Those Darn House Flies!

Those Darn House Flies!

 The common house fly (order Diptera) can merely be an annoyance or  it can also be the carrier of diseases such as  typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, poliomyelitis, anthrax, leprosy, and tuberculosis to name a few.

 The house fly is a scavenger that lives on fecal matter, discharges from wounds and sores, sputum, and all sorts of moist, decaying matter like spoiled fish, eggs, and meat.  They hang out in dumps, sewers and then come visit us!

 The most effective method of limiting your exposure to house flies is keeping your home environment as sanitary as possible.  If you own horses, remove manure daily (that’s their favorite!), do not allow garbage to build up and rot, dispose of weed and grass clippings and keep trash cans clean and tightly covered.

 Screens are our best defense in keeping flies out of the house.  Make sure there are no gaps above or below doors, and train family members to keep the door opening and closing brief!

 Ultraviolet-light traps, sticky fly traps and baited fly traps can eliminate a lot flies inside a home, but the old fashioned fly swatter is a cheap and effective method for eliminating the occasional fly.

 If the fly situation in your home is out of control, you can use a pyrethrin aerosol spray to knock them down. This is a temporary fix but it can buy you some time to work on sanitation and screening. Recent products developed for the commercial environment have shown very promising results. So much so that companies like Hydrex Pest Control are now offering fly management programs to our commercial clients.