joseph69

Has anyone in the past..Been bit By a Horse Fly...In The Mountains,
By Tavira...If so are there plenty of them around....
And if so...What are the best do to....
Jose/

mfesharne

One of the best ways to deal with any insect bite or sting is to immediately zap it with one of those electronic chappies such as this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/MOSQUITO-STI.../dp/B002AXL266

I also have a larger version that's supposed to be used to relieve the pain of arthritis in my hands and that works brilliantly on bites and stings as well.

Insect repellents also usually work well and FWIW, one of the best is Avon Skin So Soft that has a very effective but fairly short lived repellent on it..... and even works brilliantly on tsetse flies in Africa.

The_Hog

Hi Jose. I live a wee bit north of Cotovio and yes, we do get horseflies.
May and June are the worst months but I haven't seen any at all recently.
They can give you a nasty bite witch often bleeds and itches like hell afterwards.
I have found that you become quite adept with a fly swatter!

steve01

most bits /stings are Alkaline, so the best thing to do is to put Vinegar or Lemon juice on as quickly as possible.
Sudacreme, or similar products sooth the bite afterwards
Apparently if you eat lots of Garlic they find you less appetising
We have horses and they are worse than usual this year - especially the very large striped cattle flies

joseph69

Hello, Hog,
We must meet one day..Do you know Cotovio then...My cottage is been Build,
Its a small one , Just passed by the German Villa...
Jose/
i Will have a look on this Electronic Zab....

s5tuart

Good advice there re garlic.
I also find lots of wine and spicy garlicky food keeps a lot of pests (including human ones ) away.

mfesharne

P'raps that explains why I hardly ever get bitten, stung ................or kissed!

liveaboard

We stopped all animals from grazing on our land; and then there were no horseflies, or ticks.

steve01

Livaboard if only it was so easy,
Ticks have a 10year + lifecycle and really have nothing specific to do with grazing animals, most ticks attach themselves to birds, rabbits, dears, mice, rats etc, they bury themselves in the ground and come out whenever its appropriate, climb as high as they can , usually on long grass and react to movement - there are over 100 different varieties in Portugal - some live in trees - the only real deterrent to ticks is to keep the grass cut short / land managed.
Horse / Cattle / deer flies - over 4000 species lay eggs on suitable plant material so the animals being present really have little effect - the females react to carbon dioxide emitted by people / animals and need at least one blood feed to produce eggs.
Like us they have good and bad years - so if you're not seeing many its because they're having a bad year - not because you've stopped animals.

The property we bought in the Alentejo 5 hectares, 2 metre fences all around, hadn't been grazed for over 20 years - but we couldn't believe how many ticks our dogs picked up, oven a dozen a day wasn't unusual.
Best of luck

liveaboard

That's interesting; I also cut all the grass [4 hectares], so maybe that's had more effect.

I bought a 2.7 meter wide major mower/ topper on ebay UK and had it trucked over. After refurbishing, it still came out far cheaper than anything I could find here. It also does brush and cane. I cut my lawn as well as the fields with it.

mfesharne

liveaboard

Can you remember how much you paid to truck it over from the UK to PT?

I've just been quoted UKP1250 + VAT to ship a ride on, wide cut mower which strikes me as a bit expensive.

steve01

Take it apart and ship it snailmail via a pallette and you'll get it for around £200 depending on exact size
standard pallette approx 120 x100 x100 is around £200 = double size is around £300, but varies hugely depending on carrier.
But will be much cheaper than standard pick up

liveaboard

My mower deck is 2 x 2.7 meters and about 500kg. It's an implement for my tractor.
I made a list of all the transport companies I could find that specialized in UK / Portugal transport, then marked their locations on google earth.

Then whenever I saw a machine that looked hopeful on ebay, I'd put it's location into google earth and check if it was close to one of the delivery firms. If it wasn't I didn't bid on it.

This wouldn't be an issue if your item can be delivered to the UK depot by the seller at little or no extra cost; I needed pickup and delivery.

I paid GBP340 from Algarve Removals Ltd.
01245 468888 / 07711 179842
www.algarveremovals.com

I also use direct transport a lot, but in this case they were too expensive because they would have had to drive a couple of hundred miles for pick up in the UK.

Loading and unloading can be an issue as well; the seller was able to load with a forklift, and I could unload the delivery truck with my front end loader. That had to be worked out in advance.

mfesharne

Thanks for the info..... We still haven't decided what to do with the two small fields we have but if we do go that route, I'll look closely at importing from the UK.

We also have several other options such as fence the fields and have a few geese or sheep just to keep the grass down and we won't make a decision until we've finished all the building work.

liveaboard

I've seen many riding mowers advertised for sale lately; when I was looking for one I hardly found anything, and what I saw had been used professionally and was completely shagged out.

But with many Germans and Brits packing up these days, there could be a usable machine for sale somewhere close by.

Do your research, and think about how much area you want to mow. it takes time every week or two, and that adds up.

I'm mowing 1.5 hectares of more or less lawn, and 3 hectares of field.
field only gets mowed a few times a year and much higher. Lawn is watered in dry season and cut short every couple of weeks.

With that kind of area, I need a huge machine to do the work in reasonable time. I spent about E1000 on the mower and E5000 on the tractor; but the tractor does all sorts or other work too.

I have very sandy soil, so it's good to let a root system develop. but some people prefer to plow once a year instead.