Homemade Fly Spray Recipe?

I’d be interested as well. We have really bad flies this year and we don’t even have our goats yet (and have no other livestock). I imagine the flies are going to bug the goats even more than they bug us. Fly spray is on my shopping list but I’d love a homemade recipe.

Most important to me is safety for all animals..we have equine, cows, goats and dogs all bothered by flies.

Looks like my shopping list just grew.
Thanks for the recipe. And I’ll definitely use plastic as I tend to drop things.

I found this recipe today that I'm probably going to try:

3 cups of Apple Cider Vinegar
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
6 drops of tea tree essential oil
Shake well before use.

I'll probably quarter the recipe until I know if it works.

Thanks for the recipes, @happybleats and @MellonFriend ! Let us know how they work on the goats!
The first flies are coming out here now. The chickens are running to catch them, always a fun sight. But soon they’ll be tons again. 😑

MadHouse said:

Thanks for the recipes, @happybleats and @MellonFriend ! Let us know how they work on the goats!
The first flies are coming out here now. The chickens are running to catch them, always a fun sight. But soon they’ll be tons again. 😑

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I'm surprised to hear you say that. I would think that with such harsh winters like you have that flies wouldn't be so bad in your area. Just can't catch a break with these little buggers.😬

MellonFriend said:

I found this recipe today that I'm probably going to try:

3 cups of Apple Cider Vinegar
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
6 drops of tea tree essential oil
Shake well before use.

I'll probably quarter the recipe until I know if it works.

Click to expand...

For sure let us know. I pretty much have everything for this one. Not sure if I still have tea tree essential oil. I need to order a bunch of essential oils anyway. I’m just digging through a ton of threads, trying to figure out what I should start with.
Thanks for sharing the recipe!

MellonFriend said:

I'm surprised to hear you say that. I would think that with such harsh winters like you have that flies wouldn't be so bad in your area. Just can't catch a break with these little buggers.😬

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Yeah, bad flies and really bad mosquitoes 🦟 too. Not quite as bad as in the arctic.

Good to know.
Oh man, I’ve got so many EOs to order. Still working on my list. If anyone knows of a place that has a nice list of the EOs a beginner should have on hand for goat care please point me in that direction. And if the list happens to mention what they’re used for and how much to use, even better.

I've tried a few home made over the years but they just don't last. I'd be curious to see if any of these work. I'm dreading fly season. I usually end up buying some slightly costly horse sprays especially for anything being shown. I want to say last summer I mixed ACV and Permethrin? I'll have to find the bottle and smell it to know lol, but it worked okay.

If you guys have bad flies in your barn and have a place to keep your animals from getting it - barn aisle for example then try this! OMG this works! I seen several people post about it on Facebook and so we gave it a try last year. You set it in a regular 2 gallon bucket, put it on the ground in high fly traffic area away from your animals reach, and the flies die almost instantly and just fall off. We had to dump the bucket out a few times! It also lasts fairly long if you keep it out of the sun and rain.

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/starbar-quikstrike-fly-abatement-strip?cm_vc=-10005

I may have to try that. The bugs are bad this year at my place, all of them. We are already inundated with flies, mosquitoes, gnats, ants, fleas, and ticks. And it was way colder than normal for us this winter. Guess that doesn’t matter.

My recipe worked only okay. It lasted just about as long as it took for the does to finish their grain, but for some reason the flies aren't bad anymore. I don't know if they just had a bloom, but they are way less than there were. 🤷‍♀️

My goats HATE getting sprayed. They run from me worse than they run from the flies. I found the solution. I soaked a cloth in my home made fly spray liquid and called the goat that was being bugged by horse flies over with a yummy branch. While he ate I rubbed the wet cloth all over him. He thought I was petting him! It worked for the time they were out grazing.
Vinegar, water, EOs of peppermint, tea tree, eucalyptus, citronella and rose geranium.

The flies have been no where near as bad anymore. I bought a natural fly spray from TSC that is called Flys-x. It worked okay, but not 100% The sprayer is lovely though so if I every try and make my own I'll just refill that bottle. 🙂