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Hiya,
Oh boy, my second favorite subject next to nutrition---I got to teach
parasitology for three years and BOY, can I trot this stuff out (except
for some reason people never want to hear about it at cocktail parties!
;->)
There are various products on the market that will scrape off bot fly
eggs, BUT what I don't like about them is that they don't work all that
great AND what's worse, it's very easy to then have loose bot eggs
dribbling about on the ground. Sorry if this turns into alot more
information than everyone wants, but if you understand a little about
the life cycle, it's easier to understand a better way to get rid of
them AND eliminate the chance of further investation to your horse.
When the fly lays the eggs on the horse's legs, the eggs mature in five
days to the hatching stage. What is going to "trigger" the eggs to
hatch is the moisture and rapid rise in ambient temperature as he rubs
his face on his legs. At the top of the bot egg is a sort of hatch door
called an operculum that literally pops open, the larvae jumps out and
attaches itself VERY quickly to the face of the horse and crawls into
the horse's mouth, where it eventually migrates through the mouth and
stomach.
If you simply scrape the eggs off the legs, they have a tendency to go
blowing about the yard and can still hatch and attach themselves to the
horse as he goes nosing about. The eggs can happily remain infective
for a very long time, just waiting until a nice horse nose comes along.
So just getting them off the legs isn't completely solving the problem.
(Plus alot of people use clippers with surgical blades so now the horse
has scalped-looking legs to boot.)
Spraying the eggs with insecticide while still on the legs isn't going
to kill the bot larvae entirely because the larvae are nicely tucked
away inside the protective egg.
What DOES work very nicely is to fill a bucket with fairly hot water.
NOT scalding, but what you are comfortable putting a hand into, around
104 degrees. Bath water temp, more or less. Add a little malathion,
lindane, coumaphos, whatever to the water and sponge it onto the horse's
legs. If you don't like using heavy-duty chemicals on the horse, you
can wash it off in just a few minutes. Tie the horse so he doesn't have
his face down there checking out what you're doing and thereby infecting
himself with bot larvae as they emerge from the eggs.
The hot water is going to fool the bot larvae into thinking a nice
horsey nose is there for the taking and hatching, and as soon as the
hatch door opens, they're promptly killed by the insecticide in the
water. No infection at all, and no having to clip all the hair off.
Doing the same thing with cool water isn't going to trigger the eggs to
hatch, you MUST use warm enough water to simulate the warmth from a
horse's breath.
After you've killed the larvae, if you wait another day or two, you can
usually scrub the remaining empty eggshells off the legs without
trouble---I just use a vegetable scrub brush (no, I don't use it on
vegetables as well) and off they come.
If you don't know how long the eggs have been on the legs, you might
want to repeat the warm water and bug spray bath for another day or so,
just in case the eggs are less than five days old. If they are, then
they're not ready to hatch and you won't have killed them.
Anyway, this is the method we teach at Cal Poly. Hope it helps.
Susan Evans Garlinghouse
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