Anyone using black soldier flies?

[RichnSteph]

My chickens are wishing you were our neighbor

Seriously though, want to move into my neighborhood? You seem like the type of person I like to have coffee with!

Hehe I like to be a good neighbor. Considering the amount of BSF we have down here and the huge number of them that I had in the compost pile (I had thousands of them in there before I knew what they were and what I could do with them) before I got the bin running I don't see why other folks aren't doing this. If I can convince some of the neighbors that it's a good food source for the chickens then I'll take the next step and help them build bins to collect them. A lot of folks don't have chickens due to the cost of feeding them in large numbers. A well running BSF bin would cut that feed bill down quite a bit and it has the added benefit of reducing landfill waste with regards to food stuffs and kitchen scraps. I think it's great that I can throw all of our kitchen scraps into a bin that produces a high protein feed for our birds.

On a side note I went out today and turned the compost pile and found quite a few pounds of them in there eating the scraps from last week. I've stopped feeding in the BSF bin since there are almost no grubs left in there and I plan on cleaning it out and putting all of the spent food in there into the compost bin. I'll refill with grains once my indoor brooder has produced a few flies and they've laid eggs on the compost I have in there for them. At last count I had 60 grubs in the brooder. If half of them produce females and 10-20 of them lay eggs I'll be back in business for the winter. If not then I'll just let the compost pile be a staging area for them until spring and then hope they come back to the bin.

RichnSteph

 

[RichnSteph]

Checked the brooder today and have three females in there that hatched in the last 12 hours. I'm hoping some males hatch soon and they get to making little ones.

 

[simply blessed]

Yay on the females! Maybe males will be your Christmas present!

 

[aldarita]

wow you are lucky, I have not seen an adult fly in a long time. I just emptied one of my biopods yesterday because it was out or larvae and grubs, I guess they all self harvested and the chickens had a feast

. I am still feeding the other biopod because it still has larvae, however I think once they all mature I will run out and will have to wait until spring to get more.
Interesting that you still have flies.

 

[RichnSteph]

wow you are lucky, I have not seen an adult fly in a long time. I just emptied one of my biopods yesterday because it was out or larvae and grubs, I guess they all self harvested and the chickens had a feast

. I am still feeding the other biopod because it still has larvae, however I think once they all mature I will run out and will have to wait until spring to get more.
Interesting that you still have flies.

Well I kind of cheated. I put a bunch of mature larvae into a container with some soil and put it on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

RichnSteph

 

[RichnSteph]

Anyone getting spun up for the 2015 BSF season? We are! I've cleaned my harvester out and have about 100lbs of fermented feed waiting to go in there once the weather decides to stay warm. I also removed the material out of the compost "heater' under the harvester and have it sitting out at the back of the property during its cool-down period. We've even refilled the compost bin with grass clippings, dead leaves and the poo from the chicken coop along with all of our kitchen waste for the last few days so that we can start composting again for later on in the year. The compost bin also does very well at attracting the BSF females to the harvester.


What have you done to get ready for this year?

 

[BethanyS]

I WANT to!we have yet to clean the deep litter out of the tractor the chickens spent the winter in.I'm seriously thinking about setting a bin up under the roost in the shed this year.should have a greenhouse built onto it by winter...wonder if that would extend the season

 

[RichnSteph]

I WANT to!we have yet to clean the deep litter out of the tractor the chickens spent the winter in.I'm seriously thinking about setting a bin up under the roost in the shed this year.should have a greenhouse built onto it by winter...wonder if that would extend the season

Just an FYI. If you set your BSF bin up anywhere near the chickens then they will eat the flies when they land to lay eggs. You'll never get any grubs if that happens. Your best bet is to build a stand alone BSF bin that us up off the ground and away from the chickens.


Ours is producing larvae at the moment although none have matured enough to self harvest yet. We'll probably start seeing crawl off in another 10 days or so. The first few harvests are going into soil pockets that I built into the bin so that the larvae can mature in safety and will hatch within the bin itself. That way they won't get eaten and will have a chance to fly/mate/lay eggs back into the bin. We've already seen thousands of larvae in ours in stages from large white almost-mature to very very tiny. The cardboard we set in there for egg laying has several pockets that are full of eggs. I'm hoping to be able to feed almost 100% BSF larvae within a month. Should cut back on the feed bill for our 20+ birds I think.

 

[aldarita]

RichnSteph good to hear from you. It looks like your are up and running with your BSF colony. I want to ask you if the cardboard you placed in your container for eggs gets soggy very quick. I have a problem with the cardboard egg traps I put in the biopod, I hung them in the biopod cover but they fell off within few days. Last year I didn't use egg traps at all for this reason and I still had plenty of larvae but I wonder if the traps will help to get even more.
I have adults in my biopod right now. With the heater and thermostat I placed in my grub house, the temp never went below 55F so as soon as it started getting warm the grubs started hatching.
BTW you should continue to give your chickens layer feed even with all the grubs you will be giving them. The grubs have a very good nutritional content but the feed is specifically balanced to fulfill all the chicken nutritional needs. You don't want them to start having any health issues due to the lack of some nutrient that they don't get in the grubs. I give my chickens grubs as a treat and keep their feed in their feeders all the time, they also free range so they get plenty of other bugs and grass.
Keep us posted !

 

[RichnSteph]

aldarita,

Glad to hear from you as well! Sounds like your over-wintering has given you an advantage over mother nature this year. I hope your biopod produces like mad. The cardboard I have in out bin was left over from last year. Yes it got a little wet but it never fell off. Last year I didn't see any eggs in the cardboard at all and was going replace it with some new before the flies arrived and just plain forgot.

On the feed... I'll probably still leave out some all flock and the oyster shell on the chance that they need extra nutrition. They do free range over an acre so they are eating who-knows-what during the day. I'm just hoping to cut back on the feed bill a bit if at all possible.


Luck in your endeavors!
RichnSteph