How many eggs can a Female Biting Stable fly lay?

Photograph by Lyle Buss, University of Florida.jpg

In order for them to reproduce they require blood meals. A female stable fly may lay over 1,000 eggs, which hatch in one to three days. The life cycle of the stable fly is three to four weeks. The more blood meals a female can get; the more eggs she can lay.

 

Where does the Biting Stable Fly lay their eggs?

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They lay their eggs in materials such as hay, manure, wet spilled feed, decaying grass, poultry litter that has aged and wood.  They overwinter in those materials and emerge the following spring as adults.

 
 

How to tell the difference in a house fly and a biting stable fly?

Biting Stable Fly House Fly

  • Smaller than the housefly

  • 1/4 - 5/16” in length

  • Lighter color than the housefly

  • long, pointed proboscis which extends in front of the head

 

Where do biting stable flies stay after feeding?

Michael W Dryden DVM, PhD, DACVM  University Distinguished Professor  Department of Diagnostic Medicine, Pathobiology  Kansas State University.jpg

Once the biting stable fly is done engorging itself you can find them on vertical surfaces such as stall walls, partitions between stalls, stall or alley way floors, the side of the barn, fences or weeds.

 

The farm down the road that has biting stable flies. Can this affect my farm?

Yes, Biting Stable Flies have been known to travel one to two miles away.