Anyone using black soldier flies?

[BethanyS]

hmmmm hoping it would work. our chickens go out to free range and don't frequent the shed during the /day(I shut the door and they have a separate house for nesting).I was thinking about running a tub from the roof to the bin also and of course a wire over the top so the birds can't get into the bin.We should have a separate bin going outside of it as we will be giving chicken manure fed larvae to the pigs and other house n garden waste larvae to the birds

 

[RichnSteph]

Our crawl off has started to increase a bit and now that the chickens have had a taste of the grubs they tend to stand under me while I open the bin up. One thing else I learned over the last week is that I can feed them the chicken manure, wet down with some of the water out of our AP system, and they will devour it. I've read everything I could find on feeding the chickens something that eats chicken waste and so far have found no concrete evidence of any disease being transferred or intensified. Time to get the other poop boards done so that I stop losing all that manure that can go to the grubs. Maybe I should just build another much larger coop.... yeah... then we can get more chickens to feed the larvae....


RichnSteph

 

[BethanyS]

has anyone experimented with fast growing plants with less fiber than grass(clover,chicory, narrows leaf plantains,Malabar spinach, mustard greens n such )around the bin to cut and toss in.we have little kitchen waist and I've read manure (mostly what we will be feeding) produces little yield

 

[RichnSteph]

has anyone experimented with fast growing plants with less fiber than grass(clover,chicory, narrows leaf plantains,Malabar spinach, mustard greens n such )around the bin to cut and toss in.we have little kitchen waist and I've read manure (mostly what we will be feeding) produces little yield

We can't grow anything around our bin since our chickens free range and they destroy anything at or below beak level. If my garden wasn't 3 feet off the ground and sort of hidden they'd have killed it by now. You might be able to drive by a grocery store and ask one of the produce guys if you can have the stuff they throw out every week. I'm thinking of doing that this weekend. It'd be a great way to get free feed for both the grubs and chickens although you'll probably have to reassure the guys that you aren't planning on eating it yourself.

RichnSteph

 

[sharkman]

has anyone experimented with fast growing plants with less fiber than grass(clover,chicory, narrows leaf plantains,Malabar spinach, mustard greens n such )around the bin to cut and toss in.we have little kitchen waist and I've read manure (mostly what we will be feeding) produces little yield

My harvester is going crazy right now. I throw everything in there leaves, weeds, chicken litter, dead animals. I once put in a dead racoon, it had a funky smell for several days but a10 lb racoon makes about 5 lbs of BSF. If you come across any small roadkill toss it in. Also bad eggs from the incubartor, anything to funkey from the fridge you don't want to feed to your chickens.

 

[aldarita]

I go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest veggies they have. I do not feed meat to the larvae because it stinks to high heaven, I figure I can stand the smell of decomposing vegetables. I also give them corn tortillas and wheat bread. It has been raining very much in my area recently, I found out my chicken feed started to get moldy so I gave it to the larvae. My two colonies are doing great so far. I have already harvested some grubs.

 

[RichnSteph]

We toss everything in ours as well, chicken parts from our processing, a chicken that died out of nowhere (she was bones in less than 24 hours), all our kitchen scraps and anything in the fridge that goes bad. Once I get time to pick up some more brewers grain we'll be feeding that primarily. I've tried getting the trash veggies from local supermarkets but they have some sort of rule about giving that stuff away. We're going fishing this weekend and I'm planning on putting all the fish scraps in the bin when we clean them.

At the moment our bin is about 4 inches deep in grubs over most of the 18" x 36" feeding floor. The girls get a nice breakfast of them in the morning and a warm meal of grubbies before bed time.

 

[sharkman]

We toss everything in ours as well, chicken parts from our processing, a chicken that died out of nowhere (she was bones in less than 24 hours), all our kitchen scraps and anything in the fridge that goes bad. Once I get time to pick up some more brewers grain we'll be feeding that primarily. I've tried getting the trash veggies from local supermarkets but they have some sort of rule about giving that stuff away. We're going fishing this weekend and I'm planning on putting all the fish scraps in the bin when we clean them.

At the moment our bin is about 4 inches deep in grubs over most of the 18" x 36" feeding floor. The girls get a nice breakfast of them in the morning and a warm meal of grubbies before bed time.

As long as you only add a few lbs of meat a day they will bury it and have no smell at all. Maybe some restaurants give there veg bottoms and scraps?

 

[sharkman]

Try a farm stand for veg, sometimes they have old bad bananas and potatoes they are the best!

 

[RichnSteph]

I'm considering putting up an add on Craigslist here asking for fruit and veggies that have gone bad.

In the mean time I've been dumping parts from the duck, chickens and fish that we've been processing in there. There is a tad bit of smell but the grubs are huge. I was in the bin yesterday and watched two females laying eggs, one was about twice the size of the other and I can only assume that the larger one had a higher protein diet. We haven't had any crawl off in a couple days but I think that might be due to the torrential rains that we've had and all the flooding. Maybe the grubs know not to crawl out into the water.

Once a month I go out with a large tined rake and pull all the bones and corn cobs and things out of the bin and chuck those into the trash.