THE MENACE OF FLIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 24

THE MENACE OF FLIES

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, YA and YZ stations of the NZBS by

DR.

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy-

Director-General of Health

‘THE fly season is’ upon us. In the warm months ahead they will be breeding: apace. One female lays about 500 eggs in her short life time, several batches of 100 to 250 eggs. In less than one day, if warm and favourable weather, or say otherwise a day and a half, each egg becomes a white maggot. This maggot feeds where the eggs were laid. In towns this will be decayed lawn clippings or vegetable matter and rubbish, old clothes left lying about outside or sacking or paper so long as all these are damp and warm, and in any kind of animal excreta they can find, in towns mostly of dogs and cats, or that of cooped up birds or poultry. The fowl run and fowl house, if not regularly cleaned out, can breed flies prolifically. In the country it is more common to have privies for the disposal of human wastes and these are favourite breeding places unless made flyproof. The manure heap or droppings of horses, cows, and pigs are also favoured. Flies breed at a terrific rate, Even if one female lays but 500 eggs, and allow ing for all the death and accidents’ that happen while the egg-maggot-pupa-fly evcle goes on, lasting on average a week to ten days, the chances are there will be almost half a million flies from that one female in seven wéeks. The maggot

lives in the fhith already indicated for about four days, then migrates away within two or three feet to burrow into the earth to go into a resting or pupal stage, brown and hard shelled. From this the adult fly works its way up to the light and emerges fully grown in about four days. I am talking about the fly now, at the beginning of our warm months, because it is obvious

that if we attack this prolific breeder in the spring and early summer, our effort is going to have much greater effect on the prevalence of the pest in our homes, than if we are tardy and wake up to do something about flies when numerous in midsummer. Remember, that fly you didn’t kill when first seen in early spring, has about half a million progeny by early summer. There is a mythical story that an Egyptian Queen asked her God to create the housefly so that she could daintily swish it thereby showing up her shapely hands and arms loaded with bracelets. Since then mankind has had a neverending task swatting flies. They exist everywhere, and in every country they produce diseases. They have been proved guilty of carrying germs of the dysenteries, typhoid fever, infectious eye diseases, yaws, and tuberculosis, and the eggs of some parasitic worms. On a single fly inside the house, there may be six and a half million bacteria and germs. Not all of these germs are dangerous to human beings but in our country, amongst them there are often those of the large family causing bowel diseases, such as summer diarrhoeas in infants, and several kinds of dysentery. Flies get us into trouble by their filthy feeding habits. When a fly feeds on polluted material, as it loves doing, it covers its hairy legs, body, and wings with it. Some of this germ-laden filth is deposited

on the next thing it drops upon-the milk jug, baby’s bottle, baby’s face and mouth, the sugar bowl, the bread. In addition it pops a drop of its spit on the food to dissolve it and make it easier to suck up. If this is insufficient it vomits on the hard food to soften it. While feeding, it quite often empties its bowels as well. The vomit and the fly waste are germ laden. Altogether a nasty insect. Inside the house, please see that there is no food unprotected from flies. Cover baby’s pram or cot with muslin when baby is sleeping in the day time if flies are bad-and don’t leave baby’s soiled napkins about. Please get going with that insecticide spray, with its D.D.T. or gammexane or chlordane. If you use a knock-down type of spray, sweep the flies up and burn them. Outside the house, father, please tidy up or bury all decaying rubbish, and

keep a wary eye for any possible breeding place. Treat your compost with 10 per cent. D.D.T. powder, and the margins around, weekly, in warm weather, or else build it to conserve heat, stripping the top and side six inches once weekly and turning this into the hot centre. Everybody, _ kill flies!