"MAGOTS"

I used to "grow" maggots for the chooks and probably will again.  They enjoy the extra protein and every maggot eaten is one less that grows up to be an annoying fly.

I had a friend explain how to make a maggot breeder with a whole in the bottom so they fall thru and the chickens have yummy food.  I am just not sure I am ready to breed maggots on purpose....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Euphillia 

I had a friend explain how to make a maggot breeder with a whole in the bottom so they fall thru and the chickens have yummy food.  I am just not sure I am ready to breed maggots on purpose....

Haha - yes its pretty easy.  I took a coffee can and drilled numerous holes in the bottom, then strung it with an old shoelace, to the branch of a tree.  In the bottom place some dried grass, and over that put a dead animal - there is always road kill.  The flies will be attracted almost immediately and in a few days the can will be a seething yellow mass.  As they are ready to morph into flies, their instinct is to burrow down into the ground, so they will burrow through the dried grass on the bottom and out through one of the drilled holes.  I placed an old planter base under the can to catch them so they didn't just burrow into the ground from there, especially because they fall around-the-clock.  It didn't take the chooks long to learn that it was a great place to head as soon as they emerged from the coop in the morning.  Then, one or two of them would hang around it all day, catching them as they fall.

I understand the instinct to not breed maggots on purpose but the way I figure it, that road kill was going to attract flies anyway, and those maggots were going to be born anyway, except without chickens to feast on them, they were going to turn into more flies.  By doing it this way I'm actually reducing the fly population.  And just look at all this yummy protein LOL:

Oh my, my pregnant tummy just flip flopped a bit .

That is a pretty neat idea though... for those that can stomach it . It definitely would take a lot for me to breed them intentionally though... but maybe way out back, out of sight, out of mind (and way downwind!) would be OK. Like you said, they are going to grow anyway, might as well make use of it!

Are they the magots of flies or the larvae of black soldier flies?  If they are black soldier fly larvae you couldn't feed your chickens a more nutritious treat.  Plus, they will eat anything you wouldn't feed your chickens or compost but not cellulose (paper, grass, stuff like that).  They love coffee grounds, fat, meat, melons, dead mice.  When they come out of the muck they cover themselves with an antibiotic so they can enter their next stage of development.  The adults are pretty scary looking.  They look like black wasps but are harmless.  They don't have a biting mouth or stinger.  Their mission in life is to find a mate and a good place to lay their eggs.  The only time I had a problem with smell was when a package of meat got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten.  In that case I would recommend cooking the meat before you stick it in the bucket.