Black Beauty, Secretariat, or the Black Stallion, it makes no difference to horseflies. In fact, you don’t even have to be a horse to get the attention of these blood-sucking insects. Cattle, horses, and humans are the objects of their affection, and they are pretty hard to ignore when they are slicing up your flesh in search of their next blood meal.
Horse Fly Identification
Ranging in size from 3/4 of an inch to 1 1/4 inches long, horseflies have gray or black bodies, six legs, antennae, wings that are solidly colored, and big eyes that are brightly-colored in lovely shades of green and purple. Their mouthparts have tiny knife-like features that slash open their victim’s flesh so they can drink the blood that pools in the wound. If their mouth blades don’t get your attention, and you somehow miss the fact that a giant fly is drinking your blood, the swelling and irritation will get you.
Found throughout North America, horse flies like to hang out in wooded or forest-like areas but are commonly found in all areas where there’s some sort of a body of water nearby. No wine or candles necessary as the watery setting is all that is needed for a little horsefly romance. Bom chica wow wow!
Horse Fly Lifecycle
After breeding and then fertilizing her eggs with a blood meal, mama horseflies lay their eggs in the wet soil close to the water. One mama can lay between 100 to 800 eggs per year, which equals a lot of baby horseflies that will eventually join in on the slashing, cutting, and blood-sucking.
Adult horseflies are excellent fliers, which makes sense given that they are FLIES! Some scientist somewhere even figured out that they are capable of flying more than 30 miles. Traveling only during the day, they are fast, attracted to light, and are known to make their way into our homes when they are searching for a meal.
Female horseflies are feisty blood-feeders, while their baby daddies only feed on pollen and plant nectars. Daddies have the same hacking and slashing mouthparts that their lady friends do, but given that they aren’t using them to tear into the flesh of humans and animals, they don’t have the strength of the lady jaws.
How To Get Rid of Horse Flies?
If you suspect that you’ve got a horsefly situation on your hands and you are tired of your flesh looking like the scene from a slasher movie, HowToPest.com can help you with all of your horsefly needs. Whether or not you have the next Secretariat grazing in your pasture, horseflies don’t discriminate when it comes to their next blood meal. Unless you enjoy that meal being you or your kids or your pets or your livestock, HowToPest.com has the solution to your horsefly problems.
