Egg Laying, Habitat and Feeding
The horn fly lays eggs in fresh cow manure, and the female is known to lay her eggs in the feces before the cow has even completed defecation.
The larvae remain in fresh pats of the animal's dung and feed on both the resident bacterium and the compositions of the decomposition products of the resident bacterium.
The adult will finds a suitable host and remains on it and others in the same herd for life, with the female only leaving to lay her eggs. Horn flies will also move around to different areas on the same animal to regulate their temperature and minimize their exposure to the wind. Both the male and the female subsist completely on blood, using their sharp mouthparts to pierce the animal's hide to suck it out.
Males typically feed around 20 times and females around 40 times daily, and when not feeding they tend to rest around the horn region of the host.
Read more about this topic: Haematobia Irritans
Famous quotes containing the words egg, habitat and/or feeding:
“Today everything is different. I can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and catsup. I’m an average nobody, I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
—Nicholas Pileggi, U.S. screenwriter, and Martin Scorsese. Henry Hill (Ray Liotta)
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)