Haematobia irritans is a native of Europe but has been introduced to North America and is considered a potentially dangerous livestock pest.

They often aggregate densely on cattle, each fly oriented with its head in the same direction as hair tips of that site on the host.

Both the male and the female subsist completely on blood, using their sharp mouthparts to pierce the animal's hide to suck it out.

Beyond this, incessant biting is compounded by loss of blood, and results in such detrimental effects on host physiology as to include reduction in milk production, efficiency, and rate of gain.

Primarily livestock (specifically cattle) are affected, but it is known to feed on horses, sheep and goats, albeit to a lesser extent.

Fly control tactics are moving away from dependence on pesticides, due to concern for the environment and pests developing resistance to insecticides.

[5] The tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) is also an effective predator of Haematobia irritans and can be attracted by building tree-swallow houses spaced approximately 100 feet apart.

An active population of dung beetles can bury or destroy 95% of horn fly eggs and larvae and about 90% of other cattle parasites that are passed in or depend on manure.

Even if the fly eggs hatch in the manure balls, they can't get back up to the ground surface after being buried by the dung beetles.

[3] Chemical methods have included pour-ons, backrubbers and face powder bags, with products such as Co-Ral which is available as dust for face/horn flies.

[9] A white-eyed "albino" horn fly was discovered in a colony maintained at the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas.

A colony of white-eyed horn flies was established from this single individual and has been maintained in the laboratory as visible genetic markers such as an eye color mutation in an economically important species like the horn fly may be useful for behavior and population dynamic studies, as well as release and recapture studies.

The insecticide susceptible Kerrville reference strain horn fly genome was assembled by the USDA-ARS Knipling-Bushland US Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in 2018.

[10][11] In addition to the nuclear genome of the Kerrville reference strain, the maternally inherited endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis wIrr has also been assembled.