When Morgan Gold and Allison Ebrahimi Gold founded their Gold Shaw Farm in Peacham, VT in 2016, they knew they would gain a lot of experience.
They chose to farm Scottish highland cattle.
And, as of now, they have 4 cows, 2 heifer calves, 2 bull calves, and a steer.
They are still learning. However, in a vlog post seven months ago, Morgan shared that he didn’t expect to start a war against flies.
He knew he would face some challenges when he chose to raise cattle since planning and executing is very different.
Morgan’s a proud organic cattle farmer.
He never feeds them commercial pellets and moves them to fresh pasture every day.
He also recalled having a problem with winter lice before, but he chose to use natural remedies instead of using ivermectin or permethrin.
The way Morgan sees it, people consume beef, and just the thought of having these chemicals inside them wasn’t appealing to him.
His method is rotational grazing.
He uses the cattle’s manure to fertilize the grassland and, after a few months, it’s ready to be grazed again.
Last year, his cattle were infested with flies.
They were infested with different types of flies and it was worse than he could imagine. Aside from the health risks, his cattle faced stress.
His fly mitigation techniques first included him moving them to different locations, but that didn’t work.
He also tried utilizing his movable chicken coop, where the chickens would follow the grazing pattern of the cows.
Then they would peck and scratch the cow manure and eat the baby flies.
Sadly, neither method made a dent.
The fly infestation was severe, but he had another method to try, which was fly trapping.
When it comes to natural fly trapping, Morgan was confident that he tried them all, and in his vlog, he shared what he thought about them.
Method 1: Plastic bag
It traps well, and it’s cheap, but it smells bad. For Morgan, it’s a decent solution, but not the best.
Method 2: Gallon fly traps
He used soda as bait, but sadly, it wasn’t effective at all.
Method 3: Fly Busters
Now, these fly busters do attract and trap flies and it was good, but they were pretty expensive.
Method 4: Pop traps
This requires a few days for the bait to activate, but it works. It also stinks a lot, but it’s one of the most effective traps that he tried.
Method 5: Wand fly traps
Think of it like flypaper in stick form. It’s expensive and doesn’t trap as well as the real flypaper traps.
Finally, we have method 6, or, as this farmer likes to call it, the winning method.
Method 6: Flypaper (WINNER)
That’s right, a roll of flypaper is Morgan’s top choice. According to him, it works incredibly well and it’s cheap.
Morgan tested this method for two weeks. Every day he got different results, but overall, he got more than what he expected.
However, whenever there’s rain or wind, it gets torn away, so he shared an extra helpful tip for those dealing with the same dilemma.
Wrap the fly tape or paper around a barrel or trash bin. That’s what worked well for him, at least.
The key is to also constantly move the fly paper and have it near the cows.
Morgan can proudly say that he won his battle against flies with an all-natural and cheap method that’s worth the effort.
See just how well these different methods worked in Morgan’s video below!
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
