Hey everybody, just wanted to do a quick video on fly masks because it's fly season and there
are flies everywhere, you can get fly masks for a pretty good price, anywhere between
15 and 40 to 50 bucks depending on the quality or the type or the fit or the material or
just where you buy them and there are just flies everywhere now and it's just getting
into this warmer season here in B.C. and the warmer days or a nice sunny day or a clear
day, the flies are just everywhere, they're all over the horses and one of the things
to think about if you have all these flies on them they like to go to the eyes a lot
and get to the mouth and any cuts on their face or body, the files will just stick like
magnets, for cuts and stuff like that, the only way to get around not having flies on
them is to bandage them, cover them up with something you can use zinc oxide or petroleum
jelly even to keep the flies off the wounds so they can heal up a little bit quicker and
the horses won't rub on them a lot because it's quite itchy, like that, now I don't really
want him to rub on me especially during fly season and one thing to think about safety
wise, for safety purposes you wouldn't want to let your horse rub on you during fly season
or any season really because when a fly gets to them, get back here, come here, back up,
thanks, when a fly gets on them and they're sort of scratching or rubbing, there might
be one that just sort of really irritates them and they'll lift their head up or they'll
shake it and in situations like that you can easily get hit in the head or the body or
any part of your body and it can really hurt because their heads weigh a lot and they're
very powerful so for safety purposes alone I would recommend never really letting your
horse itch on you, rub on you or scratch on you just for that, I mean if you feel like
you're safe, you feel like it's ok, to each his own, it's cool but it's something to think
about if you do do that you may not have been aware if you're new to horses or just have
never experienced it because it does happen, maybe not a lot but once in a while for sure.
So I'm just going to show you, I've got two fly masks here, one of them fits him and one
of them doesn't because they come in different sizes, this one as you can see is an extra
large, this one is size horse, size horse, he's pretty normal size so we just call that
size horse for this particular brand but the reason why you want to get one that fits is
because horses tend to rub these things off and they're not necessarily trying to get
them off, they might if they're uncomfortable or itchy these nice fuzzy ones here, when
you wash them they stay wet for a while you need to kind of wring them out a bit or put
them on a towel but they're a bit nicer than something that is a little bit rougher I guess
you could say.
So we've got two different sizes, the green one is actually Luke's and the red one is
Lena's because she's a much bigger horse, she's part draft slash oldenburg so they're
big animals, big heads, you might use these for standardbreds, a large thoroughbred head
or a quarter horse that's been a stallion for a while perhaps they have bigger heads,
anyways, so a bigger one while it will fit, the horse will more easily rub it off, now
generally you don't put these things on with their halter on them but it's sort of a bit
puffy and if you look here I can actually wrap it all the under and it's not really
what you want, so the bottom part of it and I'll show you comes together just velcro so
this piece of velcro comes up this piece of velcro comes on so if this overlaps too much
then you're not going to get a proper bond where this piece comes back over that's why
you wouldn't use too big of one because if you do fit it on properly and it fits as it's
supposed to maximum to there so that this can fold over then you just get a really baggy
fit and they'll very easily just kind of rub it on a fence post or something like that
and it'll just come right off putting them on is very very simple, these ones, others
can be a little more involved, some of them a little less involved and very strong when
you double, do the double velcro thing, we'll just wait for him to be ok, a little bit itchy
again there's lots of flies and mosquitoes around this time of year and it's warming
up and getting to that time, so just put it over his ears, carefully, their ears are very
sensitive, now there's a lot of flies, I don't know if you can see them in the video but
there's flies hanging around now I wouldn't usually do this with the halter on, I'm just
doing it for now because I'm going to take it off so he can play with the boys in the
arena here but this fits and I'll just take this here to show you, this fits like this
so slimming it down to where it's on his face properly and fits well up here on his ears
and stuff like that, should not make this part extend to here, or beyond here, so it
won't, so we'll just get this on reasonably straight and that goes on like that and you're
done obviously with no halter but I'm just about to let him go play and stuff and while
you can sort of let horses play with fly masks on and everything, if you have the opportunity
to not do it it'd be better, they can see better, it's a little bit easier, if they
are just loafing around in an area you'd toss it on, he's got a fly somewhere in here and
last but not least you can take their forelock out like so, I get it you're itchy, poor thing,
if you can take their forelock out then do so and it just makes it a little bit more
comfy for them so anyways I'm going to take that off from here, just a couple of quick
tips putting fly masks on, things to think about, why you do it, safety big deal and
then, you look ridiculous, they look ridiculous to be honest but they're good for them, it's
good for the horse, keeps the flies away, keeps them from sometimes, actually Luke has
a little bit of an injury on his, above his eye, we'll take this off, again taking it
off be gentle, just come across their ears nicely, like that, but you can see right here
he has a, he hit his head, now it was a little swollen but he's fine now but he likely hit
his head because he was shaking his head around so much and he probably hit something, like
that, they shake their head around a lot when there's flies and there's flies everywhere
as you can see, I don't know, they're pretty quick movers.
So something to think about hopefully that helps and thanks for watching, see you guys
next time