Photograph courtesy of Oregon State University Cooperative Extension. It is a major pest of confined livestock throughout the world, including Colorado. It looks like the common house fly except that its mouthparts are adapted for biting and sucking blood. Females can live up to a month and may require several blood meals during this period in order to continue laying eggs. It is a daytime feeder, with peak biting occurring during the early morning and late afternoon.
Stable flies prefer to attack people around the ankles.
It does not appear to be an important vector of any human diseases. The variety of breeding sites, and the fact that the adults fly several miles to feed but spend little time on the host, make it difficult to manage stable flies. Little can be done except to use repellents and protective clothing. Specific techniques have been developed for managing stable flies in confined livestock operations. These are especially important if the livestock operation is serving as a source of stable flies for nearby residential areas.