Clean up manure, old bedding and spilled feed. If needed, you can spray your manure pile with insecticide to keep larvae from developing. Build proper drainage systems and eliminate buckets of standing water. Cover your pool or pond at the peak of horse fly season. Horse flies can find a suitably moist and cool breeding ground in tall grasses and weeds. Insects sometimes also retreat to shady vegetated areas during hot parts of the day. To avoid this, keep your grasses trimmed and weed on a regular basis, especially along ditches. A barn, stable or doghouse will give your animals a place to retreat when horse flies are bothering them outdoors. Make sure that windows and doors are screened to prevent horse flies from entering.  The fly population should be minimal at that time, which will prevent horse flies from flocking toward the animals' wounds.

Summary: Keep your animal areas clean. Eliminate standing water near your livestock. Trim weeds and tall grasses. Provide a shaded, sheltered area for pets and livestock. Apply ear nets, face masks and repellant tags or tapes to your animals. Perform annual rituals like castration during the winter season.


You don't need a tester to see your battery is dead most of the time. When you turn the key or press the start button, you won't get any cranking at all from your engine. Your headlights also won't come on, or if they do, they will be very weak. If your battery is almost dead, the car may crank some but won't actually start. While that's not always the battery, typically it is. Turning the car off before testing the battery is safer and will make the process easier for you. If you're not sure where your battery is, check your owner's manual. Lift the hood and look for a black rectangular box marked with positive (red) and negative (black) terminals. Your battery may be covered with a plastic hood. If it is, refer to your owner's manual. You'll likely need to unscrew a few screws to take it off. Put either device on DC voltage if it's digital. Place the end of the black probe on the negative terminal and the end of the red probe on the positive terminal. Watch the readout on the multimeter. You should be looking at volts on your reader.  If your battery is reading at or above 12.45 volts, your battery is still in good shape, and any problems you may be having are likely caused by something else. If your battery is reading below that, it won't consistently start your car, and you'll likely need to get a new one. A car battery tester will do the same job. All you need to do is place the black clip on the negative terminal and the red clip on the positive terminal. Most auto parts stores will come outside and test your battery for you to see if it's dead. They have a vested interest in doing this because they want you to buy a battery from them!  Most auto parts stores will even put in a new battery for you if you don't know how to do it. If your battery is dead, you can jump it or charge it to get to the store.

Summary: Look for signs your battery is dead when you start the car. Turn the car off and pop the hood so you can access the battery. Use a multimeter or voltmeter to check your battery. Check your battery at an auto parts store if you don't have a multimeter.


This trick isn’t as much about levitating an actual coin as it is about the illusion of making the coin invisible, then making it reappear.  To begin the trick, you will need to make the coin disappear from your hand. It’s easier to learn with a larger coin like a half-dollar, but you can use a quarter or other similarly large coin. Using a finger palm vanish, pretend to transfer the coin from one hand to the other. The finger palm works like a regular palm, except you keep the coin in place with your two middle fingers. Hold the coin in place between your fingers and the first joints closest to your palm.   This part of the trick is similar to a French Drop where you pretend to transfer the coin from one hand to the other while palming the coin in your original hand. While finger palming the coin, bring your empty hand up toward your eye level while you lower the hand with the coin. Rub your fingers together with your empty hand to make it look like you’ve made the coin “vanish”. However, describe to your audience that you’ve simply made the coin invisible. Open your hand to reveal the invisible coin. Here, you can explain how in order to levitate the coin, you have to make it invisible so that it no longer weighs too much to float.  Pretend to pick up the coin as if it were there. The next few parts of this trick will require you to be convincing with your space object work. Also note that you are picking up the invisible coin with the hand that is actually holding the coin. Keep your coin in finger palm position, and always angle your hand so the audience can’t see the actual coin. Before doing this trick, practice actually picking up your real coin. Notice how the weight feels in your hand, how your fingers are positioned, and how your hand moves. Pretend as though you were picking up a coin now. Remember what it looked like when you actually picked up a coin. Don’t pinch your fingers together. Even though a coin is thin, there would still be a tiny amount of space in between your fingers when holding one. Remember the weight of the coin as well. Place the invisible coin in the air and let go. Describe that you can simply put the invisible coin in the air where it will hang until you need it. Keep in mind when you do this that you will be finger palming the actual coin. As you place the coin to hang in the air, angle your hand so your audience can see the open palm, but keep the coin covered by holding it in between your fingers. Once you’ve let the invisible hanging coin part of the trick settle in, grab the coin out of the air with your empty hand.  Take the invisible coin, paying attention to your space object work, with the hand that you’re not palming the coin in. Raise the hand with the real coin in it up to meet your empty hand. As you do this, keep the coin in your finger palm but tilt your hand just enough so the audience can see that your palm is empty. Describe that whenever you need the coin back, all you have to do is make it reappear. As you place the invisible coin into the palm of the hand that is holding the actual coin, begin to curl your fingers over.   As you begin to make a fist, let the coin drop out of the finger palm. It will fall over the index finger of your other hand. With your thumb, pinch the coin in between your thumb and forefinger as your other hand curls around into a fist. You will now be holding the coin in the same hand that you used to grab the invisible coin out of the air with. Open your hand to reveal that the coin has become visible again.
Summary: Make the coin “vanish”. Pick up the invisible coin to levitate it. Grab the invisible coin. Make the coin reappear.