Bot Fly Pests.

Feilding Star, Volume XIX, Issue 54, 1 September 1897, Page 2

Bot Fly Pests.

Dealing with the subject of bot flies f writer in the Auckland Weekly News says : -Horse bots have been in this colony a good many years, and have now spread, it may be supposed, to all locali ties where horses are kept. Every recurring season thousands of horses arc % isited by these bots, but how few are the cases of mortality reported ! And even when bots are alleged to be tho cause of death to horses, the probability is that the fatality might have arisen from some other cause. I have just been looking over about thirty reports of in«pectors of stock as recorded in tba last report of the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, and, though hots are generally alluded to, I believe there \s only one case where it was thought chat horses had died through the effects of the grubs. Inspector Drummond, < I the Napier district, reports as follows, and his report may be taken as a sample of what many other inspectors have to say abont bots:— "The bot fly has spread and increased, as I have observed it in places that last year were apparently free. I cannot say that I can trace any mortality directly to the ravages of this insect. Wherever ex amiuations have been made as to deaths attributed to this cause, veterinary surgeons have invariably ascertained the existence of some other malady, which they confidently pronounce to be the immediate cause of death, notwith* standing that bot worms were found in considerable numbers in the stomach."