Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #10

 This tip on making horse owning/caring for horses less complicated is a quick, easy, and cheap one.

If you, like me, go through more than one quart-sized spray bottle of fly spray in a season with your horse and you don't like to continually buy (and eventually accumulate empty) bottles of fly spray, here's one you may or may not have figured out yet.

Many long years ago, I started buying concentrated fly spray.  It comes in a fairly potent strength, which you then dilute with water according to the ratio you want for the strength you need (warning: do not put undiluted concentrate on your horse.  They will end up with serious skin reactions, possibly even chemical burns).

But, while it is cheaper to buy concentrate and dilute it yourself reusing one spray bottle over and over, that isn't the tip.  Because I also buy a gallon size container of a pre-diluted fly spray (this brand doesn't come in concentrate), which is also cheaper than four quart-sized spray bottles of the same stuff would be.

My tip has to do with getting that concentrate, or the pre-diluted stuff in the gallon, into your spray bottle you are reusing.

For years I would remove the sprayer head on the bottle, and carefully pour in the new stuff I was refilling it with, trying very hard not to spill any.  And, inevitably, one hand or the other would always wiggle or shift just enough that the mouths of the two containers weren't perfectly lined up and I'd end up with fly spray running down the outside of the bottle.  Which meant that there was always some waste happening.  Not to mention getting on my hand/the ground/the barn aisle/the tack room floor.

Until it hit me what a simple solution there was to this ongoing problem:

Use a funnel!!!

Seriously, why had this never occurred to me before?  You can get a plastic funnel for a dollar or less in tons of places.  

The no-spill solution: a funnel.

So that's my tip for today.  If you don't all ready have and use one, go buy yourself a funnel for your barn.  Really.  Go do it.  They're cheap and they also don't take up much space to store. I'm pretty sure mine paid for itself in not-spilt fly spray the first season I owned it.