Julie:

How can i stop bottle flies from coming to my yard? They have laid their eggs on my rabbit’s rear end and she’s now recovering from this. I have cleaned the yard of all the poop and soaked it with water everyday to get rid of any urine or poop smells but they still come to my yard and they are just every where please help. I need a pet safe way to keep them away from my yard, my rabbit and turtle eat the grass so no toxic stuff can be used.

Well believe it or not but they are actually doing you a favor. Females lay their eggs on the material that the larvae eat…so they are actually acting like a clean-up crew for you. With that said though, they can get out of hand with their numbers. They need two types of food sources, carbohydrates, which they get from pollen/nectar and protein, which they get from decaying and fecal matter.

The first and best thing to do is the method you are already employing and that it remove their breeding sites. Keep the rabbit and pen clean and free of any decaying/fecal matter. Also try to keep the area dry as they will lay eggs anywhere it is moist, especially because they can detect even the faintest hint of that material using the receptors on their tarsi (feet).

There are fly baits you can put out in trash bins and such, see here. There are also fly sticky paper traps and bottle traps. Examples of the bottle traps can be found here , including the ‘Victor Fly Magnet Bag Trap’, which specifically advertises for control against bottle flies.

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