From a horse message board........
"a woman I know uses the following recipe and it DOES work: equal parts apple cider vinegar, brown listerine mouthwash, citronella oil, and skin so soft. She sometimes uses half skin so soft and half baby oil to help on cost and both are as effective. Then all you do is and water to make twice as much it is really cheap and works and LAST. I dont really like the smell but there is enough Oil in it to make it last which means you dont need to reapply. Here are some other recipes.
Homemade Fly Spray
1 part white vinegar
1 part mineral oil or baby oil, or skin so soft
1 part listerine-type mouthwash (needs to have eucalyptus in it
Some people add citronella.
Fly Spray/Also gets rid of rain rot
1 part baby oil
1 part amber listerine
1 part vinegar
You can substitute Avon Skin So Soft for the baby oil if you aren't
worried about the extra cost. You can also add a bit of citronella.
I use this stuff every year. It works great.
I gave a friend a recipe for fly spray that we use..
2qts water
2qts white vinegar
about a tablespoon of Dawn dish detergent.. mix it and put it on a cloth and
wipe them down.. she said it worked for her horses.. the flies and mosquitos
will lite and then fly off.. so she said she got the bright idea to wipe it
on her dogs. she lives in deep south Texas and they have sand fleas
everywhere and nothing they have used in the past worked.. well she said she
wiped the dogs down and she saw the fleas starting jumping off..
My animals have not seen a flea in about 10 years.. so i had no idea this
would work on fleas.
I gave a friend a recipe for fly spray that we use.
2qts water
2qts white vinegar
about a tablespoon of Dawn dish detergent.. mix it and put it on a cloth and
wipe them down.. she said it worked for her horses.. the flies and mosquitos
will lite and then fly off.. so she said she got the bright idea to wipe it
on her dogs. she lives in deep south Texas and they have sand fleas
everywhere and nothing they have used in the past worked.. well she said she
wiped the dogs down and she saw the fleas starting jumping off..
My animals have not seen a flea in about 10 years.. so i had no idea this
would work on fleas.
Try this..
I gave a friend a recipe for fly spray that we use..
> 2qts water
> 2qts white vinegar
> about a tablespoon of Dawn dish detergent.. mix it and put it on a
cloth and wipe them down.. she said it worked for her horses.. the flies and
mosquitos will lite and then fly off.. so she said she got the bright idea to
wipe it on her dogs. she lives in deep south Texas and they have sand fleas
everywhere and nothing they have used in the past worked.. well she
said shewiped the dogs down and she saw the fleas starting jumping off..
My animals have not seen a flea in about 10 years. so i had no
idea this would work on fleas.
Fly Repellent
2cups white vinegar
1 cup Avon Skin So Soft (Bath oil)
1 cup water
1 tablespoon eucalyptus oil
Horse Insect Repellent Mix
1 oz. Citronella Oil
2 oz. Skin-So-Soft or Coat-So-Soft
1 Cup Cider Vinegar
1 cup Water
Mix in a 20 oz. spray bottle.
Fly Control
An easy do it yourself fly spray that is relatively inexpensive, and I'm
told it really works! This spray attracts dust. So don't use it before
a show.
500m. (2 cups) light mineral oil
125ml (1/2 cup) lemon juice
10ml (2 tsp.) citronella oil
10ml eucalyptus oil
10ml lemon dish detergent
optional 125ml glycerin
Mix in a spray bottle and spray away
Horse Insect Repellent Mix
1 oz. Citronella Oil
2 oz. Skin-So-Soft or Coat-So-Soft
1 Cup Cider Vinegar
1 cup Water
Mix in a 20 oz. spray bottle.
Internal Fly Repellant
If your horse is allergic to fly bites, try 1/4 cup of apple cider
vinegar on their grain once a day. This raises the blood acid level
just enough to bother the flies, but it is completely healthy for the
horse. It takes about one week to start seeing the effects. Several
old timers have told me that they always put vinegar in their horse's
drinking water during the summer to repel flies and mosquitoes.
Easy Fly Spray
You can mix seven parts water with one part citronella as a fly spray. It's not oily either. Mix it four parts water to one part citronella during the worst of the fly season.
You can take a bottle and fill it with white vinegar and two tablespoons of dish soap. Add water if you wish to dilute it a little. Shake and spray it on for a nice and very cheap fly spray.
A golf course near my home passes out Bounce fabric softener sheets to the golfers to repel insects. Next time you go riding tie one to your Horse's headstall and stick one in your back pocket. It works better than ANY fly spray I've ever tried. The flies won't even fly around you.
I was given this recipe and it does work!!!!
15 oz water
5 oz commercial fly spray ( any brand)
5 oz vinegar
2 oz vegetable oil
2 oz green Dawn dish soap
Mix and use. All natural and will not harm coat.
Visit Stony Mountain Botanicals where you will find recipes for herbal insect repellents!
One Ingredient Fly Spray
Pour six caps full of Skin-So-Soft in a 20 ounce spray bottle, and fill the rest with water. Shake and spray.
Fly relief
If anyone has problems with flies in the barn, try filling a quart jar with this mixture.
3 cups of water
¼ (one quarter) cup sugar
¼ (one quarter) cup white vinegar
Mix, punch holes in the lid, and set it where needed. It works great.
For cheap fly repellent, mix about 1 1/2 cups of plain white vinegar into about every 75 gallons of water in your horse's water tub. If you use this it in the water about a week before flies start biting, it will have circulated in your horse and it helps keep flies from biting.
Anne, please try the home made fly remedy which probably works for
mosquitoes as well :
1 part mineral oil
1 part amber mouthwash (like listerine but generic, contains
eucalyptus)
1 part white vinegar
Rub it on them, hope it helps. "
Great Post! Thanks for sharing these recipes. Porky has been getting eaten by flies like crazy this year!
I hope Porky gets relief from one of these mixtures. The ingredients in each recipe are very similar. Cheap and easy to find, too.
Let me know how it goes with Porky.
Wow, lots of folks are out there brewing up a storm. Interesting about consuming apple cider vinegar detering flies and mosquitoes. I wonder if that would work for humans. I have a friend who is a mosquito magnet and he reacts badly to their bites.
Quote from: Mike on July 26, 2006, 06:57:12 AM
Wow, lots of folks are out there brewing up a storm. Interesting about consuming apple cider vinegar detering flies and mosquitoes. I wonder if that would work for humans. I have a friend who is a mosquito magnet and he reacts badly to their bites.
Seems if it works on 1200 lb. horses, it should work on humans. Lots of folks take a dose of all natural apple cider vinegar each day and say it works wonders for lots of things, it just might work for mosquitos too.
I passed on these recipes to my mother-in-law so she could help her black labs deal with those nasty flies. Chickory their younger female black lab has been getting eaten so badly this year! Nothing they have done has worked and since she is mostly an outside dog, due to high energy, she gets no relief.
The flies have completly stopped bugging Porky. I gave him some of the cider vinegar, but haven't made any of the concoctions yet. I planned on doing it earlier yesterday, but since Porky had his poisoning I didn't have time.
WOW - tons of recipes !!! I hope we get some feedback on how it works. Do you have a need for it in Alaska?
This is great! Thanx Patty!