I had always thought that seeing a lady bug was something special – a lucky sighting, that didn’t happen every day. And if I remember correctly, you got to make a wish on that bright-shelled bug (while you pleaded with her to go home and save her children) making it an extremely fortuitous day for all.
In an effort to control what may or may not be a problem with flies and our chickens (long story) I’ve been looking into different types of fly control.
Offered are standards like those long sticky tapes (the ones that always seem to catch your hair as you walk by and that get tangled in themselves by a touch of the wind) and a large assortment of fly bottle traps (or chambers of doom as we like to call them.)
You can also buy “critters” to combat your flies. Like ladybugs (who wouldn’t like to have an infestation of ladybugs in their backyard, how much fun and luck would that be?) and “predatory ants” whose claim to fame is that that apparently they like to eat fly eggs. Oh yum.
Seriously? Our yard abuts forested land. Can you imagine how destructive it could be to introduce non-indigenous “predatory ants” as a way to control some suspected flies in our chicken coop? Did we learn nothing from the rabbit fiasco in Australia?
Alas, there will be no ants for us, and as much as I would love to have stunningly-adorned bugs gather on the screen of our back door to wish me a good morning, we will also not be getting those little ladies. Instead it will be the reusable chambers of doom for our coop.
They sure aren’t as pretty as ladybugs, but if they work like they say they do (with the added bonus of not upsetting the ecological balance of our backyard), I will consider myself to be as lucky as if I had made a wish on a mother who flees on a puff of breath to ensure the safety of her children.
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Lessons Learned from the Flock 
Wendy, very nicely written. Haven’t been here in a while. Looking forward to catching up!
Hey sis: Be aware that there are differences between Ladybugs and the other beetles that look just like Ladybugs. I don’t know if they can cohabitant or not. Anyway, we would buy them from the hardware store and put them on our mock orange busy to eat the aphids. I didn’t realize they ate flies as well.
Pingback: Lesson 596 – Those darn flies – part 2 « Lessons Learned from the Flock
Had I read this post first, I would not have suggested what I did on your other (Flying Predator Wasps). I don’t know anything about what other larvae they might attack, so it is true, introducing them to your local forest ecosystem could indeed pose problems. Thank you for your sensitivity to your ecological habitus. Another friend of mine in Garland uses the hormone traps that seems to collect thousands of flies before the bag is full. I think he purchased them at a garden store or home depot. There was no detectable scent that I could discern, and though he still has mosquitoes, his lovely yard is fly-free. From the rather grody look of the plastic bag filled with fly carcasses, it seemed to work specifically on the flies and didn’t capture or attract innocent fly-byers. Good luck!
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