Horse colour/flies

[Bodshi]

A few recent posts have got me thinking about fly bites. Are horses with pink skin more prone to fly bites than dark skinned horses?

YO has a coloured horse who reacts quite badly to fly bites, but we've noticed when hacking that he seems to attract more flies, especially to his white parts. At the moment half his sheath is swollen due to a bite - the pink half, the black half is ok.

Raf is grey and isn't too bothered by flies, neither does he have any particular reaction - the odd lump but nothing much. Jack is bay. He really hates flies, but again he doesn't seem to react much to their bites.

What are yours like?

 

[Tina2011]

I have one grey (pink nose) one black and one black and white. I would say mine are all about the same.

The grey does tend to get more 'spots' which then attract flies but I think that's more to do with her skin (she gets the odd greasy pustule :giggle: )

This spring, the black one was attacked by something and had big swellings on her tummy for around a week. The other two where unaffected.

I have a feeling its more to do with skin type and how thick or the texture of the coat.

 

[Trewsers]

Not sure really - both our greys attract them - but then so did Joe who was dark bay.

 

[sjp1]

Tobes who is pale, doesn't seem to get as many flies as some others. Having said that, his sheath does seem to get midge bitten, but I am feeding him cider vinegar at the mo - which I think is helping

 

[TBminx]

Mine are bay and are tortured with flies and cleggs feast on them :furious:

 

[joosie]

Bucas, the rug company, did some research which showed flies were attracted more to black and brown horses than to pale coloured ones - something to do with polarisation of light. This was on their website when they launched their zebra-print fly rug -

"The scientists painted wooden pallets containing vegetable oil different patterns of black and white stripes or all black or all white. These pallets were then placed in a fly-infested field and results showed that there were far more flies in the black painted pallets, fewer in the white but the fewest flies of all were found in the pallets painted with very thin black and white stripes.

Afterwards, researchers carried out a similar trial on model horses covered in glue. At the end of 59 days, the black horse had caught 562 flies, the brown one 334, the white one 22 and the zebra patterned horse had just 8! It is thought that the flies find the stripes confusing and as a result they tend to steer clear."

I found this as well (I assume that ^^ is the research it's referring to) -
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/25149/flies-show-horse-color-preferences

ETA the full study can be read here -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871857/

So it seems dark horses have it worse off when it comes to attracting fllies - which has definitely been my experience! But I think when it comes to reactions to bites I'd assume that skin with less pigmentation is more sensitive, so pink skin would be most vulnerable?

 

[sjp1]

I think Joosie is right and this is also bourne out by my friend. My friend and her horse are both dark and they (she and horse) always get bitten more than Tobes and I who are pale!

 

[squidsin]

Poppy isn't bitten as much as the other horses (she is dark brown/black) but that's possibly because she's not being ridden/worked at the moment so doesn't get as hot and sweaty. Although that will be changing tonight!

 

[Kis Vihar]

Fella and Zahlia (a liver chestnut and a grey) share a field. Fella gets COVERED in flies and has a fly sheet, hoodie and neck cover, yet Zahlia never has more than 1 or 2 around her!

Rio and Daisy (grey and buckskin) share a field - they BOTH get lots of flies, but Rio gets more.

So we have 1 grey who gets hardly any, and 1 who gets loads!

 

[Ruskii]

Bizarrely the bay was never bothered by them, however my coloured gets pestered by them. I had a good look underneath his belly and around his sheath today and I noticed he has a lot of speckled blood from something biting him around his sheath

 

[Bodshi]

Oh, so basically it seems they're all different but research points to darker horses being more affected - which completely blows my theory out of the water lol.

 

[Laura_107]

We were talking about this at the yard tonight. The clegs were seriously awful, I felt so pad for my poor boy, he was getting driven demented by them.

My thoughts are some get bothered more than others, but I think the big thing is how they react. My boy seems to get them pretty bad, but he doesn't appear to react that badly to the bites. I expected him to be covered in lumps & bumps tonight, but luckily he seemed ok. Another horse up there was speckled all over with tiny pin pricks of blood from the clegs, he was so upset by them he barged through the gate & broke it. He's a chestnut.

 

[Kite_Rider]

I think it's more skin type or coat density than colour but am probably wrong, Oscar (Bright bay) used to get bitten a lot and was quite sensitive to bites, Belle (Haflinger) attracts them but either doesn't get bitten or doesn't react to the bites, Coloured on our yard is plagued by them, his poor boy bits get covered in flies and his owner has tried everything including medication from the vet and sweet itch rugs but they still find a way to get in for a good munch! Poor boy.