The pests chewing on our horses seem to get more aggressive and numerous every year, and it can be really frustrating. Recently, we held a contest on social media asking about your worst frustrations for both you and your poor horses during heavy fly and pest season. We decided to address some of the most often repeated fly control issues, and offer up ways to solve them!
My horse won’t leave any fly mask on; he rips it off as soon as he can.

• Try our newly designed UltraShield® Fly Masks. They use advanced materials from the sports world to be cool and comfortable, and are designed to fit right, so your horse won’t want to remove them.

The worst thing is that our horse is allergic to insect bites and immediately breaks out in welts, and itches until she bleeds.

• A really good fly spray like UltraShield® EX is the place to start, but also consider improving your horse’s immune system. Sometimes, horses have an omega fatty acid imbalance from their diet, which can lead to an immune system imbalance and hyper-sensitivity. The Missing Link® Skin & Coat Supplement is designed to correct the omega balance in your horse’s system.

We live in a very warm and humid area. My horse sweats often and we’re afraid our fly spray gets wasted when it sweats off.

• UltraShield® Sport is a sweat and rain resistant fly spray designed to bond to the hair, and stay effective even in wet conditions or when sweating.

The flies come right back right after I apply fly spray, nothing seems to work.

• It’s really important you apply it correctly. It takes 45 pumps of our UltraShield® sprayer to work at full effectiveness on an average sized horse. Shake the bottle well every time before applying. Ruffle the coat against the direction of growth ahead of the sprayer, then brush it back down to even out the coverage. Make sure to get every inch of your horse – flies will find an untreated area. If flies do land, they will absorb fly spray from the hair through their feet, where it enters their system. It may take a few moments, but the flies will die after they fly away.

I’ve used one fly spray forever and it worked great, but lately it seems to have stopped working.

• Try switching to out UltraShield® Red. This formula uses different active ingredients. It also uses more active ingredients than any of our fly sprays, flies will likely not be used to it. After several years with UltraShield® Red, switch back to UltraShield® EX.

Ticks are really bad this year, I find some almost every morning.

• UltraShield® EX, UltraShield® Red, and UltraShield® Green all work against ticks. Make sure to apply it evenly to the lower legs where they usually jump on your horse first.

Thank you for reading our list! If you’d like to learn more about what makes fly sprays work, how they are different, and how to apply them most effectively, we have a great blog about How To Compare Fly Spray.