Horse~have you tried :

[thistlebloom]

So nobody actually read the report?

 

[Beekissed]

I did! I'm wondering if a topical spray of the garlic or sulfur would yield good results if the horses were unable to ingest? Or maybe feeding sage instead of garlic?

 

[ducks4you]

Before fly spray people would wipe their horses with vinegar and feed tobacco leaves to deworm. This has reminded me to order my Fly Predators, which my horses do NOT ingest are NOT applied topically and DO rid the property of many flies. Also, bathing after a really sweaty day riding takes away the odor that draws flies, plus keeping up with manure pickup.
Don't know what else to say!

 

[thistlebloom]

What Ducks said.
And I'm also going to start ordering fly predators.
We have a very healthy wasp population, which I dislike in general, but they do hunt flys, so I leave their nests up in areas where we aren't likely to have a conflict.

When I was a kid we put ACV in the livestock water, (horses, sheep, goats) but I doubt it was effective at all judging from the flys that were always on them.

The trouble with some of these treatments is the subjective nature of what we see as results. Unless you do some kind of long term study, involving several horses and keep everything very consistent I don't see how you could definitively know.

Guesswork is tricky, you don't want to do harm. Inter-species treatments don't work equally across the board.
For instance, goats need copper, but it is toxic to sheep, even though they are both pretty similar genetically (with differing numbers of chromosomes).

 

[valley ranch]

Someone way in the back of the room called out: What report?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I was always told that garlic (and indeed all alliums) were toxic to horses (and, indeed all non-human animals); that they would destroy their livers. But if there is an actual product, I suppose that can't be true (or at least, that there is a sub dangerous dose)

 

[Nyboy]

Pulse I always heard onions not garlic

 

[Beekissed]

I feed garlic to dogs, cats and chickens on occasion~and have done so to sheep as well~ with no evidence of toxicity. I wouldn't feed it every day but a bolus once or twice a year seems to be the ticket.

 

[lcertuche]

 

[thistlebloom]

My neighbor mixed up some homemade fly spray with essential oils+vinegar+water and said her horse was fly free on a trail ride while the other horses were flipping their tails and shaking their heads. I don't have her recipe.