Shoo, fly! Catnip oil regrowth vampire flies (science daily)

PharmaLive.com (8 December 2010) - cats, plant attracts domestic cats as an irresistible force proved 99 percent effective to repel blood-sucking flies who attacked European horses and cows, causing annual $ 2 billion lost to the livestock industry. This is the word for a report published in food chemistry and ACS journal of agricultural.

Junwei Zhu and colleagues note that stable fly not only inflict painful bites, but also transmit many diseases. Tormented by these leeches cattle can produce less meat and milk, have trouble reproducing and potentially life-threatening diseases. Traditional methods of barn command - even heavy applications powerful insecticide - flies are proved to be less effective. Scientists thus transformed to catnip, oil already known to repel the families of more than a dozen of insects, including the House flies, mosquitoes, and cockroaches.

They made pellets of catnip, oil of soybean and paraffin wax and spread them in a feedlot cattle. Within minutes, the pellets shooed flies, with the repulsive action for a period of three hours. Pellets without oil of catnip, on the other hand, had no effect. Scientists are now working to repulsive action last longer, as they say is the key to catnip to protect cattle feedlots and pastures in both.

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Source of the story:

The story above is reproduced (with drafting adaptations by staff at PharmaLive.com) materials provided by The American Chemical Society.

Reference of the review:

Junwei j. Zhu, Christopher a. Dunlap, Robert w. Behle, Dennis r. Berkebile, Brian Wienhold. Proofing a formulation of peppermint oil cats based wax against stable flies. Journal of agricultural and food chemistry 2010; 58 (23): 12320 DOI: 10.1021/jf102811k

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