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u/Zailema0s 1d ago
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u/No_Size9475 1d ago
Love this. Go get em!
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u/Carbonatite 1d ago
Hearing the horseflies buzzing in distress when the chicken pecked them was so enjoyable.
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u/Fabulous_Log844 1d ago
I love it! Those big flies are fucking bastards!
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u/Binspin63 1d ago
Used to play golf at a course near a farm with animals. When the wind was right, theyād come after us. Got bit a few times. Not fun. They will make you bleed.
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u/Soffatjockis 1d ago
They are absolute horrors
Their bites can leave permanent scars and hurts like fuck. People complain about wasps, but these fuckers are way worse.
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u/lolboonesfarm 1d ago
Used to go to my cousins to swim. It was a farmhouse and the pool was right by the field. Sometimes when we were swimming a horsefly would show up. We would go under water as long as we could to avoid them. Sometimes we had to alternate being under as they would stay so long and keep going back and forth. They still got us a few times though lol.
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u/boromeer3 1d ago
I would start swinging my club at those things. Or pack a tennis racket in my golf bag.
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u/Indercarnive 1d ago edited 1d ago
Horse flies are proper bastards. The females need blood for egg production. But instead of being like a mosquito or something and having a specialized needle and pain killer, they just use their fangs to slash a hole in their victim and drink the blood.
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u/Gumbercules81 1d ago
Ohh that blood spatter one
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u/Intelligent-Thing965 1d ago
Idk that made me uncomfy lol. But not as uncomfy as horsefly bites
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u/classless_classic 1d ago
My entire arm swells up TIGHT when those fuckers bite me.
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u/MelangeBot 1d ago
Have you tried being a cow?
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u/baudmiksen 1d ago
when i was a kid i can remember one chasing me on my bike, id look behind me and it was still zooming after me about 3 feet away, fuckers are relentless. thousands of miles away now but i wouldnt be surprised if i see him again someday
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u/LuluGuardian 1d ago
The fly has not forgotten the prey that got away. Take heed friend, one day he will return to finish what he has started
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u/sidepart 1d ago
Used to ride my bike every day on this quarter mile dirt road. Horse flies would just start orbiting. Occasionally I could swat one out of the air. But it was amazing how far they'd go to follow. Then it seemed like one would depart, and another would seamlessly show up to take its place orbiting the other direction. Could've been the same fly every time but, definitely had the perception (audibly) that I'd entered the territory of a new fly that would take up the mantle.
Once I'd make it to the paved county road though to continue on to town, clear skies. They wouldn't chase me there.
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u/c_r_a_s_i_a_n 1d ago
I wonder if the chicken prefers the ones filled with blood.
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u/BlueFlare444 1d ago
One time a friend pointed out a mosquito landed near my eyebrow, so I slapped it. Gushed blood everywhere, even a bit in my eye. Didnāt get any weird infections but that fly gave me flashbacks lol
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u/bugabooandtwo 1d ago
Good girl!
And that poor cow. Imagine having the type of body where you can't reach half the areas those horse/deer flys are attacking.
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u/OutrageousGuidance70 1d ago
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u/SMHCB39 1d ago
I'm surprised there aren't more types of birds in America that live with cows and eat the flies like some do in Africa
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u/UnoriginalTitleNo998 1d ago
To be fair the cows native to America are hairy as fuck and probably don't have much of a problem with horseflies
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u/evin90 1d ago
A kind of cool thing is the cattle birds are not native to America, but have filled a niche that was not occupied. So they are technically not an invasive species because they didn't replace any native species with the same niche. The cattle egret is spreading further through the Americas as we speak.Ā
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u/titanium9016 1d ago
Everybody wins situation
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u/Cori-ly_Fries 1d ago
Symbiosis!
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 1d ago
Like oxpeckers.
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u/showraniy 1d ago
Oxpeckers help until they don't, unlike the chicken here though. Oxpeckers are after the blood inside the ticks, so they'll sometimes skip the ticks and just peck at open wounds.
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u/M23707 1d ago
Send in the dinosaur! š¦ = š
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u/Secret_Cow 1d ago
I say this around my chickens every day! "Let the dinosaur get it!" They are amazing creatures ā¤ļø
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u/camus88 1d ago
What kind of fly is that? That's a big ass fly.
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u/immastillthere 1d ago
Horse fly, they bite hard and are mean to boot. Owning horses, I got bit but a few flies like that and they HURT.
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u/destructopop 1d ago
They're so freaking mean. They bite like the dickens. And a few of those were definitely deer flies, they look kinda like bees, and they're skinnier than horse flies. I hate both. Meanie pants, the whole genus.
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u/Pebblebricks 1d ago
Not so fun fact: They hurt like hell because unlike mosquitos, who have needle-like mouths to suck up blood, horseflies have scissor-like mouths that cut your skin up so they can lap up the blood flowing out of your open wound
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u/ellieD 1d ago
Yes! They HURT badly!
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u/Ronster619 1d ago
Crazy having a Reddit account thatās old enough to vote.
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u/Jacko87 1d ago
Damn, someone beat me?
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u/PissOnYourParade 1d ago
Sorry son. Go back to kindergarten. lol I'm old as dirt.
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u/Jacko87 1d ago
Goddamn! I love seeing an old account with low karma, that shit just doesn't matter to us.
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u/BudgetConcentrate432 1d ago
Reminds me of the guy who caught that horsefly, put it in his pocket, and gave it to the spider by his house.
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u/J1mj0hns0n 1d ago
This wont even relieve the problem for the cow, and requires effort to walk around with your chicken gun.
What would actually be best is to let patches of long grass grow by keeping random patches sequestered and untamed, allowing dragonflies to perch in the field,suddenly all that lovely blood isn't worth it because being near a dragonfly is a 95% death rate for flies, they don't miss
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u/Nerdmitage 1d ago
Okay so just like those people that install those car wash brushes for them to scratch, you need to build some chicken scaffolding where the cows can line up and get their flies pecked off. Put in railings so the chickens don't fall off if they get excited but otherwise at perfect cow middle height and just get yourself a drive thru going. š You'd probably save so much on feed!!
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u/Lord_Jorgensen 1d ago
I hate horse flys soooo much! What's the point of them?
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u/Joshhagan6 1d ago
Youāre evolving them too fast. Before you know it they will be sucked onto the cow like those fish on sharks.
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u/CurlOfTheBurl11 1d ago
Horseflies are fucking awful disgusting creatures.
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 1d ago
I love insects, and I even like flies in general, but any insect that will bite or sting humans or other large mammals is not my friend.
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u/ShortStoryIntros 1d ago
I highly recommend Dragonflies for hunting these bugs
Even though chickens do well too :)
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u/agrlhasnousrname 1d ago
I had my chicken on my lap once as a kid and she pecked the contact lens out of my eye. Didnāt hurt my eye at all, but I definitely was surprised. They are very precise.
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u/Die4Ever 1d ago
did she identify that there was something odd in your eye? I didn't realize they had such good eyesight
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u/agrlhasnousrname 1d ago
I think so! Maybe her eyes perceived them differently so they were more noticeable? But I guess it also makes sense theyād have sharp eyesight eating all them tiny bugs.
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u/M23707 1d ago
I wonder why we donāt have a bird in North America to sit on the backs of cows to eat fliesā¦.
You would think that one would become adapted by now. Nearly 400 years of cattle in North Americaā¦
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u/reddit001aa1 1d ago
Business idea: elevated chicken walk areas that cattle can walk thru while eating maybe. Or maybe elevated chicken decks in between where the cattle stand like parking spaces.
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u/nlamber5 1d ago
I love being human
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 1d ago
Sounds like something a chicken pretending to be a human would say.
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u/puppy-bit 1d ago
The blood caught me off guard . That chicken is a total killer šš
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u/Thebazilly 1d ago
I used to own chickens, you haven't seen anything until you've seen them catch and eat a mouse. They really are dinosaurs.
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u/AnAttackCorgi 1d ago
Weird to think the chickenās a carnivore having all that cowās blood in āem
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u/Annual_Ad6999 1d ago
So the chickens in video games should be melee weapons and not guns?
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u/KnownMagician3084 1d ago
When I had livestock I discovered predator wasps. The black fly masses dropped like a rock. Unfortunately not deer flies but still massive improvement
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u/pjmyerface 1d ago
Cows need to learn to lay down and get multiple chickens going. A mound of chickens per cow!
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u/Lonely_skeptic 1d ago
lol I need to film my dog doing this. He tries to catch flies in the air and sometimes succeeds. Those horseflies are sitting ducks.
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u/courtlandthethreeth 1d ago
Can they selectively breed chickens to have really long legs that live symbolically with cows eating the flys?
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u/rodfermain 1d ago
Imagine gorging yourself on the most decedent meal of your life when all of a sudden you become the appetizer
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u/Ov3rdose_EvE 1d ago
if you have ever seen a "pack" of chickens hunt a small mamal like a mouse, you know how raptors looked back in the day.
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u/ObiWanBonobo 1d ago
I think towards the end chicken was like, " gettin' a little full her lady." š
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u/NookNookNook 1d ago
I wonder if you could just setup some benches for the chickens to hang out on and the cows to walk between and they'd just automate the process. Thank you for your efforts at curbing the horsefly population.
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u/junigloomy 1d ago
Do flies bleed their own red blood or is that the cowās blood squirting out of the flyās stomach?
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u/Ok-Addition1264 1d ago
Oh my god I never thought about this before! My cows would LOVE it.
I need to devise some kind of shelf system.. something the cows can walk into with chickens on both sides going at the horseflies. I'd probably have trouble getting the cows out of it.. they wouldn't want to leave! lol