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I moved onto a farm in the 1980s with flies: it was miserable; just miserable. In our 2nd or 3rd year, mom started keeping chickens free range in the yard; after a few months, we noticed almost no flies at all anymore; turns out the chickens were eating the fly larvae and breaking the fly cycle

I am in Australia and I can tell you, the more a fly suffers the better.

From a veterinarian's perspective, you are doing an absolutely wonderful job! A lot of small farmers neglect the importance of looking after your cattle's health, and it speaks volumes of your efforts that you are willing to forfeit chemical treatments for the sake of your produce's quality and safety, keep up the good work!

Oh my god - I never understood the sheer amount of effort & ingenuity necessary to farm without chemicals. I'm genuinely shocked. I see now why grass fed/organic food is expensive, but even then, I know they still use chemicals. What this guy is doing is so impressive to me & I love this farm so much. Going to share this video with my mom and my friends! Thanks!

I have no cattle, don't live on a farm, don't even struggle with flies but I still watched your whole video and feel the need for fly paper in my life.

A tip for your bait traps: Use vinegar, not soda. Flies are more attracted to smells more indicative of decay than they are smells indicative of sweets. That's why all the traps you said smelled bad smelled the way that they did. Also, Mythbusters tested it, and found that the old adage of "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is not just false, but completely backwards.

that was a yellow jacket not a honey bee :)

Just saw this. My aunt has a cattle farm of about 1800 acres in southern Oklahoma. She uses these but almost industrial level. Has large canvas sheets covers them in rosin and nails the sheets to a plywood base. Once it’s full she takes the sheet off and puts it in her garage where she uses her old chicken heat lamps and scraps it off. New rosin is applied. Cycle over and over.

The sudden drop in flies is related to the lifespan/lifecycle. Black flies live 15 days or so. So if you've been catching flies for 2 weeks, it probably reduced the number of eggs being laid since you were catching the adults. That sudden drop in flies might have actually been that current generation of flies dying of old age, and too few larvae to replenish the population.

I used to work in a fly lab, and we would set up traps with apple cider vinegar (flies are extremely attracted to fermenting drinks/foods) and a couple drops of dawn dish soap. The soap acts to break the surface tension so the flies immediately drown. I do this every time I get a fruit fly outbreak and it resolves within a couple days. Hope this works out for you!

Man who pursues naturalism and healthy life building a farm. Real heroes in this world.

I love the way you film the fact that you keep everything going. Everything is moving along and we are seeing the entire farm and your work and it is very relaxing and informative. Thank you

I would totally expect exactly what you saw with the sudden decrease. You started killing flies before they were laying eggs. That interrupted the whole cycle, but with the acceleration of killing flies AND not having more eggs to replenish them. At first you won't notice it, because the existing eggs were still hatching when you started.

Humanitarian. Most farmers (particularly w/large #'s of animals) just never give flies a thought & think "oh well, that's just part of raising cows." Kudos to you...though your cows can't talk, I'm sure they are a lot happier 😊.

great video, nice that he took the time to explain the different things he was trying. Plus the rotation, not just the cattle but the chickens .

It’s interesting to learn what some farmers are doing to combat flies, without resorting to “fly powder” or other chemicals. I am surprised just how effective the fly paper was for you. Thanks for sharing!

It makes sense that it took you 1-2 weeks to get rid of most of the flies. I imagine it was the time for all the larvae to mature and cycle through, while consistent enough to not give them enough time to reproduce.

Breaking the fly cycle is the key. Once the adults are gone, be on the look out for another outbreak in about 8-10 days. Every cycle should get less and less. Also rainy weather makes flys worse. They are more likely to gather in one place where food is available when it rains. Chickens need to be moved directly behind the cattle to help. Flys lay eggs in the fresh cow pies. What you want is the chickens to pick those pies at the first signs of larva.

the dude has really studied the art of sustainable farming my salutes and admiration to you. we need more like you in the world

I appreciate your farming practices as a horticulture student! Thank you for setting great standards ❤️‍🔥 you’re doing amazing work out there❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 keep it up! Love the experimenting and dedication to keeping your animals safe and clean❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

I knew a guy about 15-20 years ago that was dealing with so many mosquitoes on his property, that he wrapped his entire golf cart almost completely and fly paper or something of the sort that was really sticky, and he drove around the field outside of his house for like 3 hours. There wasn't a spot of that tape that wasn't covered in mosquitoes. He did this about every night for a week. I swear that mosquito population dipped down to about a quarter of what it was

At a guess, the sudden drop-off after a couple weeks is because you're catching the adult flies on the paper meaning that fewer were hatching during the next generation. Hopefully the fly paper will keep you at a manageable equilibrium.

For your bucket traps, try beer, little water, tuna, and some broke eggs (shell and all). Also, try ranch fly traps. They are reusable and you can feed the Flys to your chickens. They love them!

Amazing results. thanks for the tip!

Damn. My Grandpa's farm had about 200 cows and 70 horses. You can just imagine the amount of flies. I once used the roll when cows were returning from grazing back into the shed and in only about 20 minutes the fly paper was completely and utterly full, not a single spot left untouched. At that point I realized it's impossible but you went ahead and fought it and won! Amazing job.

I'm not a farming enthusiast or anything, just here to see flies die en masse. But man you're a delight. The world needs a lot more good dudes with wholesome dreams like this.

You can tell this farmer loves his animals.

Thanks for this. A good friend has a herd and they're covered but his view ( fifth generation rancher) nothing you can do about it. Great to see you can help .

@GoldShawFarm Morgan, came across this video because I'm really into regenerative eco-agriculture, and I'm really surprised you missed the single most effective and beneficial fly suppression method: dung beetles. (Besides lacking the benefits of the method I have in mind, all the traps you used produce plastic waste.) You need to have dug beetles on your land at high enough a density where any droppings landing anywhere get broken up and buried immediately. Dung beetles immediately swarm onto fresh dung and break up the dung into 3/4" balls, and bury them about a foot under ground, right in the root zone of the plants, and lay their eggs in them. This pervasive dung burial fertilizes your land far better than isolated cow pies burning the grass where they land with excessive nitrogen. Their larvae then eat the dung. Their burrows also perforate your land with 1' deep 3/4" burrow holes so that when it rains, the water soaks right in. By breaking up and burying the dung, they remove the habitat in which flies lay their eggs. They also naturally interrupt parasite transmission, since parasite eggs that come out in dung need to remain on the surface to contaminate new grass growth so that other cows will ingest them. By immediately burying the dung balls out of reach of new grass growth and having their larvae eat from them, dung beetles break the chain of transmission of parasites which propagate through shedding eggs in the dung of the cows. Dung beetles are naturally symbiotic with large ungulates. When ranchers brought cows over from the old world, they neglected to bring dung beetles with them. That is the root of so much of the problems ranchers face with parasites and with flies. If you are going to raise cattle regeneratively, you should not neglect the employment of dung beetles. They are part of nature's way of managing ungulates. Sadly, it doesn't appear that the regenerative animal husbandry community knows about this. It would be great if you could test this out, and help get the word out. Managing flies should not involve a constant stream of plastic waste from fly paper and stinky traps in plastic jars and bags. Fly control by dung beetles destroys the problem at the level of egg laying habitat. The way you're holding back the flies involves a constant running expense of fly paper and traps, and the constant production of trash, while the flies are still breeding and laying eggs in the cow dung. That's just not the best way to do it. No amount of trapping will get rid of breeding pairs of flies that lay hundreds of eggs in the cow dung heaps on the ground, but if your land has the proper saturation level of dung beetles, the flies never even get a chance to lay eggs on the dung because it all gets broken up and buried too quickly for them to even lay eggs. You're trying to stop the problem after the eggs have been lain and hatched into larvae, which have then pupated and matured into flies. That is a never ending battle. Dung beetles stop the problem before the flies can even lay eggs in the dung. You won't need to trap flies at such a high rate because they won't even be there; entire generations of fly eggs will not have been lain in dung, hatch into maggots, pupate, and emerge as flies. Do a video search for Doug Pow, the Australian rancher who uses dung beetles on his land, and you'll see how it worked for him.

I bet there was such a sudden drop because all the flies finally hatched. As soon as you started trapping them egg production mostly stopped, but it took a couple of weeks for all the existing eggs to hatch. Development from eggs to adults takes about 3 weeks.

Hi! Fly paper works great and can be less expensive than other traps, but when it did the work, you've to touch it to remove and replace, and, unless I missed anything in the vid, fly paper and its glue can pollute and must be disposed as waste. With yeast and baking soda, Fly Buster bait ingredients shown at 9:01, you can do by yourself effective bucket traps, bait and dead flies can also be thrown as fertilizer. If you use another smaller bucket with holes in the bottom, placed into the other one, you can throw away bug and reuse the bait...

thanks for caring. better for you too. awesome.

When you were talking about not wanting to catch honey bees, the insect you showed on that gold stick sticky trap was a yellow jacket wasp, not a honey bee. Honey bees are usually only attracted to high levels of sugar, they'll even ignore most soft drinks. Hopefully your honey bees will remain safe!

My uncle used fermented shrimp paste and fishsauce as bait for the bucket fly traps, and they were sooooo effective.

Excellent way of multi faceted farming ! Congrats !

Great Idea.. your Cows look Happy😄

One more inspiration: Birds also destroy EXTREMELY high amounts of flies. I don’t know if you have swallows where you live - but they are EXPERT insect hunters. Swallows require unique places to be able to nest. Maybe you can read up on it and provide for a lot of such nesting opportunities.

Considering all the obstacles you will have to overcome as a farmer I will say this. You are probably the most positive guy I have ever seen. Much respect from Denmark 🇩🇰

I was impressed by your video. You are a great farmer, your animals are very lucky to have you.

you should put up some bat boxes to have some extra helpers!! They each eat around 1000 bugs a day so they should help keep the fly population down

It's going to take about 3 years before your soil biome to get established. You need to get more chickens because they need to access the whole paddock the cows were in 3 to 4 days prior. Rem to train them to get on the piles is to put their grain on them. See if you can get some older hens from someone if excess eggs is an issue. Also contact your local food bank/pantry to see if they would like a source of eggs if you will be going with young hens. And stay on the traps! To quote my favorite natural path, "if you show up at my office with a broken bone I'm sending you to emergency to deal with the acute issue, then you can come back and we will work on supportive issues." Until your biome and chickens get to equilibrium, dealing with the acute fly overpopulation is the way to go. Edit for clarity: going heavy on chickens is not the answer per day, but to have enough to cover the same size paddock as the cows. The predatory insects, the soil ecosystem takes time to establish. Overpopulation of flies is part of the process of attracting the predatory species later this year and more so next. The flies are a pioneer species in the permaculture sense. With some traps, you can feed the flies back to the birds. Something will always go overboard, be it flies, buttercup, or mud, when cleaning up a mess. Just as cleaning out a closet makes a bigger mess before it gets better, returning semi-sterile/sterile land back into a functional ecosystem gets messy as things swing back and forth as balance is re-established.

It’s so wonderful you care about your livestock so much.

If anyone is wondering, the "Bee" shown at 14:05 is Vespula alascensis and was for a long time considered to be "Vespula vulgaris", the European/Asian variant of the "Common wasp" but were described taxonomically different due to molecular and morphological studies. They are locally known as a "Yellow Jacket" to the U.S. and true to their name (except for some anomalous colonies) they generally nest below or at ground level. While they are not directly beneficial they do assist in decomposition.

About 20 years ago I sat in on a talk by a cattle producer in Central Texas. He carried 300 cow/calf pairs so he has a lot more animals to observe. One of his observations was that some of his cows had fewer flies than the others and so did their calves. He had an ongoing culling program, but after making this observation, he added a protocol for culling those with flies. He took it a step farther and found the bulls he was using on a neighboring farm and found the bull with the fewest flies. After a few generations of that, he now has a herd of animals that do not get flies. He culls for 1) unassisted live birth, 2) health (natural protection from worms so no medicines are needed), 3) ability to put on weight, 4) symmetrical appearance, and 5) no flies. Basically he has his own genome of cattle.

Super video. Thanks. Hello from South Africa 🇿🇦

Thank you very much for the help!

I admit I don't know you, but as a great grandma, I just want to say how proud I am of you for not only living your dream, but spending the time and money to make it an awesome success. I am now a subscriber and will lending what support I can. God bless you and all your endeavors.

We use fly bags for the barn. They work wonders too! Might be more convenient than the trash cans. But I’m so excited to see you making progress. I know how helpless those tiny buggers can make you feel as you watch your animals suffer from them.

This guy loves his cattle and is a good provider for them!

Congratulations on solving your fly problem. I’m taking notes for next summer

It probably took two weeks to see results because of breeding. When you started, you likely had adults as well as larvae and pupae in the fields. However, by taking out so many adult flies, you had a smaller breeding population that couldn't replenish the number of flies you took out with the paper. I don't know if I said that clearly enough. BTW, I think the "honeybee" you trapped with the wand looked like a wasp.

The fact that you captured my attention the entire video on catching flies speaks volumes to the fact that you were made for making videos! So cool to see you acting on your dreams!

>You died >Gets reincarnated as a fly >Spawned in this man's farm

One thing you will want to be careful about with glue traps is the flies will attract insectivorous birds like wrens. If this happens you can protect the birds by getting a large flight cage with small bars, like they have for finches and canaries, that can fit over the bucket. The flies can get in but the birds are kept out - and safe.

Not honey bees, those looked like yellow jackets. Also, you probably saw a several week cycle of new flies being born every day and you kept the pressure up long enough to see the last of the heavy fly -> egg -> maggot -> new fly cycle. Just a guess! Congrats on winning the war.

You are Doing A Great Job ! Realy Good To See . Thankyou ! I have Lernt Lots . Kind Regards

LOL Love that.. "it becomes much easier than done." FOR SURE!

Honestly incredible that your cattle respect that SINGLE wire boundary setup.

If you get more chickens the excess eggs can be donated to food banks (tax write off) & scrambled up for your dogs as a treat. I like how you tested & experimented to find a solution for your problem. Keep up the good work.

Great video. I must admit that as much as i enjoyed the review, i also enjoyed watching all the little extra things uve done to make your animals happy and healthy. Some grear ideas there ❤

Greetings from Spain. The best bate I found for bucket traps is the left over liquid after distilling alcohol, especially wine. think it's called the backset or back wash. it attracts fly really good.

I love how conscious you are about every decision. Not just for you or your cows, but the environment as a whole!

i love how he brought up how the cylinder traps harm honeybees and showed footage of a hornet

There is a reason you have almost a million subscribers, you are good. Cudos to you.

I see this video as often as it pops up on my feed, third time so far, I love it.

Hey I’m a pest management professional, I would recommend a fly bait called Agita, it’s specially manufactured for poultry and cattle farms. It contains pheromones to attract flies, gives great results and is safe to use around animals. Doesn’t harm other insects

Please look into attracting dung beetles to your pastures! They're actually amazing insects. They do loads of amazing things for farmers like decreasing fly populations :D, improving pasture fertility, and aerating soil. I think they would fit quite perfectly in your vision of your farm's ecosystem.

i am in awe of your efforts,i think i will take some of your advice and use it with my horse to minimize his flysuffering. love from norway

3:38 love your transitions !! Well thought out ;)

I'm watching you from morocco, here we do stuff differently, kinda primitively honestly, but I have been learning a lot from your videos and your experiments to invert the situation on my family's farm in the countryside, and things are going great 😃

I live in lancaster county, pa. Amish county. In our area the amish farmers often have purple Martin colonies and blue bird houses on the tops of the fence posts for fly management on the farms. I checked, I believe both bird species live in your area. I hope that idea gives you so creative ideas. In our area by the river, we have bat boxes for bug management like mosquitos. Best wishes

Amazing info packed video that wasn’t boring…

youre a good man, appreciate your ethics. hope you get more views

Definitely use vinegard in the bucket/bottle trap. My grandmother adds little pieces of anchovies which rot fast and attract more flies.

Although I do not have a farm, I was curious about the fly trapping. This was just as entertaining as informative. I give it a 5 out of 5 dead flies...☺️

What an excellent farm dad, thk you!

You’ve got some great looking Highlands!!

I bought three fly bags and I noticed that while they caught flys, the female flies dropped their eggs when they died or while stuck in the water. THEN those larvae hatched and grew into large flies making the bag look like it was working great, but it was the hatching eggs that caused the excess flies.

safe to say that you trained your cows perfectly. smart animals, they just needed to get over their fear of you. Seeing them stand in line watiting for a paddock change is so satisfying. keep up the great work Morgan.

Loved your video. Your ideas are brilliant!.

Cool video! I don't have cattle, but some of my neighbors do. I have no idea how they control flies. I now have a topic of conversation. Thanks!

Props to you and all farmers!! You guys feed us all and work so hard !! Congrats on winning the war against the flies!!

As someone who works in a warehouse and there's always that ONE fly that won't stop pissing me off, this is cathartic to say the least.~

I own zero cows, but this was interesting and I watched it all the way through. Good job on the fly reduction, and cute cows!

Awesome❣️Very helpful. Thank you💯🇨🇦🇨🇿

I put up Japanese Beetle traps in my tree 5 years ago and had so many that I filled 3 traps and was also vaccuming them. The next 3 years I had no Japanese Beetles in my yard. Last year I repeated the traps and got quite a few but only filled 1/4 trap. This year I've seen 1 beetle so far. Traps work.

That's not a honey bee bro. That's a wasp. :) That said, this was a fantastic video. I grew up on a farm in southern Ontario but we didn't have this problem, despite the hot climate. When I got to Ireland a while back, I was living in the countryside and found it was just miserable even going for walks on the country roads because the fly problem was so severe. I realized it was because of the incredible density of livestock, but now, thanks to you, I also know it's because they weren't rotating their herds almost at all, and clearly not taking any preventive measures either.

this was really cute. I thoroughly enjoyed this very much

I love the extra large fly paper .. I have electric fences.. I wrap my fence post in the fly paper .. it works great

I love how the fly paper has pictures of flies on it already - like decoys to lure in others. Who knew?😅

2-3 weeks to see results makes sense since that's how long it takes eggs to mature into egg laying flies. Starting on day 1 of traps the flies stop laying eggs (since they're caught instead), but the eggs created prior to the traps would still be hatching. Details: Egg laying begins after the adult female is 10 days old, with maggots hatching within 24- 48hours. Larval development takes approximately 8-10 days, with development from egg to adult taking about 3 weeks.

Well done 👍 thank you for sharing

Unlike a lot of professors on here you are doing a great job, you don't know everything and don't profess to, you read and experiment, then do what works best, over time this is what works, good job.

Finally someone who does something, im always confused about farmers just accepting them

Great evaluation. A process improvement suggestion: For prepping your plastic containers with the fly paper, instead of wrapping around, consider just putting on one wider side and cover the normal bottom and then continue to the other side. This leaves the less wide sides uncovered but you can prep more containers in less time. And there's no wasted of overlapped tape. And the clean up effort of pulling off the tape is simpler.

Really enjoyed your video. I've never lived on a farm but found this very interesting and informative. If I'm bothered by flies this summer you can bet I'm going to use the flypaper on a bucket trick.

Such beautiful creatures!! ❤

Interesting. We ran 2,000 - 3-000 head. I don't recall ever having a fly issue. Generally, we didn't manage our feed as tightly as you do, unless we were putting them in a paddock of lucerne. So our cattle spread out a lot further. My grandfather taught us that dung beetles & birds are the key to insect control. The beetles are great for breaking up cow pads. We have bird shelters & bird baths(for drinks) all over. Figure out what native species live in your area that like flies & encourage them But be careful, ensure the insect-eating birds you attract don't eat your bees.If you aren't already doing it, you also want to encourage bees. they are great for crop yields.

I had a similar problem when taking customers on hikes, we got swarmed with flys when the women wear perfumed. I found a plant called Bog Myrtle that smells a little like a cross between eucalyptus and tea tree, I just grab some leave and rub them between my hands then over my head and arms. Seems to work well, keeps the mosquitoes and midges away too.