# Garlic as Alpaca Fly Repellent?



## GCKRanch (May 27, 2014)

We're battling flies like crazy like everyone else out there, with the strange exception that our goats are hardly bothered at all. Its the poor alpacas that are just being swarmed constantly. We tried to spray them with an essential oil mix to ward off the mass of flies, with no luck. It wasn't until I was preparing a (hopefully) lethal brew of hot sauce, dish soap, and chili pepper flakes for the fire ant hills that I had a thought, what about garlic? It's a super strong scent, and I've read that people feed cloves or powder to goats and horses, but what about alpacas? Do you think I could feed it to them, or spray them with a mix of garlic powder and water? We're desperate to get rid of these flies, and nothing has helped so far. Thoughts?
We're getting some DE in the mail this week, so I'm also going to try feeding them that too.


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## ksalvagno (Oct 6, 2009)

DE is a waste of time and money. Plus if it gets in their lungs you can have problems. You can try the garlic on their feed. Natural fly predators work. Permethrin spray works. The trap and toss fly bags in the barn work great. There are also the the cube fly traps that you put a pan of fly attractant under and they fly up into that. But you do have to clean that one out.


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