Help Your Horse Survive the Winged Pests of Summer
Everyone knows the seasonal annoyance of flies. For horses they can be a real tail swatting foot stomping head shaking skin twitching aggravation. But flying insects such as midges gnats horse flies deer flies black flies face flies house flies mosquitos and others are more than a nuisance they can cause serious skin irritations and can also carry diseases.
Midges black flies and horse flies can cause sweet itch pruritus along the mane back and tail causing horses to rub furiously and inflame the sites further. Infected mosquitoes cause West Nile virus. The potentially fatal equine infectious anemia EIA or swamp fever virus is spread by horse flies deer flies stable flies and mosquitoes when they take a blood meal from an infected horse and then settle on another. Equine encephalomyelitis an infectious disease that affects the horses brain is transmitted by mosquitoes the vector after it has picked up the virus from reservoir hosts such as birds or rodents. A horses skin is also at risk from allergic dermatitis mechanical from scratching and rubbing dermatitis the transmission of fungal infections and in more severe cases bacterial infections. The skin disruption that flies cause draws in more flies adding more complications.
Horse flies feed on the nectar of plants and plant exudates such as resins gums or oils substances that ooze from a plant. But the female needs a blood meal in order to consume the protein required to produce eggs. While the male flys mouthparts are quite weak it is the female fly that has the cutting and sawing equipment to do the job and cause grief to horse and human hosts in the process.
