After speaking with the owners of the barn property, and realizing that they were not willing to do anything to mitigate the harrassment of the other boarder's horses towards Daisy, I decided to take matters into my own hands and do everything that I could to make things better.
The first stop was our local feed store where I picked up a fly mask and commercial fly spray (sigh). I hadn't wanted to use chemicals on her, but they were of less concern at the moment than the damage the flies were going to do to her. I didn't want flesh-eating fly larvae embedded in her skin, didn't want her to become allergic to fly bites and mosquito bites (have known other horses to developed this condition and it's a bugger-bear to treat), and didn't want her to develop an eye infection from all the fruit flies drinking her eye fluid. She had started to develop a small amount of yellow gunk at the corner of her eyes.
Fortunately Daisy seems to have worn a fly mask before. She accepted it, including the sound of the velcro being torn away from itself, with equanimity.
I put Bag Balm on the wounds on each pastern, then a spot of toilet paper, then a leg wrap. She was less saguine about the leg wraps. When she felt something going around her leg, she would lift her leg up in protest. It was the wrapping of the fetlock area which really bothered her. When the leg wrap went further up her leg, she was fine.
I sprayed a gnat on Daisy's hair, and the thing instantly died. The flies dissippated to a large extent, once the two wounds on her front legs were covered up. After spraying the fly spray on her body, the rest of the flies left en masse. Her delicate pink skin under the white hair was no longer the delicacy they'd envisioned.
While using relatively harsh chemical fly spray (Endure)--which is said to work even when the horse sweats--on my horse doesn't fill me with confidence, the feed store owner has been using this stuff, she claims, for years now, and her horse is still kicking. I hope to be able to move on to a less manured area with fewer pests, but for now, fly spray is the best defense.
By the way, I was using Avon Skin So Soft, a bit of Dawn detergent, baby oil and water, with a few drops of eucalyptus oil added for good measure. The concoction stinks to high heaven (shoot, just the Skin So Soft is enduringly smelly!) but after two days in the canning jar, it didn't repel the flies anymore. And even on the first day, although I followed the recipe to the letter, after a few hours, and a good roll in the grass, it stopped working.
The next step was to more closely inspect the covered turn-out area and try to determine what she was contacting with thich was allowing her to tear open flesh on the pasterns. By golly, it was very hard to see, but there is a sort of heavy, sharp, thick wire piece sticking out of the gate. Short, and very sharp. I covered that part of the gate, from left to right, with the bubble "pillows" that come in a long attached length, and taped that thingy to the gate with duct tape. If any of the "pillows" end up deflated, I'll know that was the spot she was pawing or striking to tell the other horses in horse-language, to bugger off and get out of her personal space.
Horses are terrific, effortless empaths, who have more trouble tuning out a person or other animal's feelings than they do picking up on them! Daisy knows full well the feelings and intents of the two marauding boarder's horses. She has felt my frustration and irritation with them as well. And they have felt the love and observed the caring I lavish on Daisy. They would like to remove her and insert themselves in the mix. I don't blame them for wanting better care, but there is nothing that I can do to help them, except continue to progress in "ah-hah!"moments in natural horsemanship, and hope to help spread the information and knowledge in my own little area (isn't that what they call "blooming where you're planted?")
I had the opportunity to mention Daisy's plight to a very well-connected friend yesterday and she said she'd make some phone calls and see if she couldn't scare me up a better place for Daisy. I will make some phone calls also in that regard.
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