Black Soldier Fly Larvae?

[jennyf]

My compost tumbler is FULL of black soldier fly larvae. Chicken manure and coffee grounds constitute probably 75% of what goes in the tumbler these days. I'm not sure I want them in there in quite such massive quantities--they kinda gross me out. I keep reading about people who cultivate colonies of them to feed their chickens, but those don't sound like the same people whose larvae are subsisting on mostly chicken manure! Is anyone harvesting these out of chicken manure compost to feed their chickens? I'm not really feeling too excited about fishing them out of my compost tumbler anyway but am curious.

 

[westes]

My compost tumbler is FULL of black soldier fly larvae. Chicken manure and coffee grounds constitute probably 75% of what goes in the tumbler these days. I'm not sure I want them in there in quite such massive quantities--they kinda gross me out. I keep reading about people who cultivate colonies of them to feed their chickens, but those don't sound like the same people whose larvae are subsisting on mostly chicken manure! Is anyone harvesting these out of chicken manure compost to feed their chickens? I'm not really feeling too excited about fishing them out of my compost tumbler anyway but am curious.

Chickens love black fly larvae. There are videos on Youtube where they *gorge* on black fly larvae. That said, I am not sure it is safe to give them larvae raised on manure instead of vegetable scraps? The reason is the intestinal parasites in that manure might be working their way into the guts of the larvae and be passed to the chickens. I don't know the science of this, but it does not sound like a healthful practice.

There are compost bins specifically designed for black fly larvae, and the beauty of those bins is that the larvae "self-harvest" by crawling out of the main container into a feed container. I think that would be much more convenient than running your hands through partly digested manure.

Just curious did you start this compost with red wiggler worms? Don't those normally get fed on vegetable scraps as well? Since when is manure an input to a compost bin when the output of the compost bin is also manure (i.e., the manure of the worms)?

 

[jennyf]

No, was supposed to just be a plain old compost tumbler setup (and a convenient way to put my chicken manure to good use). No worms (or larvae) were supposed to be in the picture!

Sounds like they will all die off in the winter anyway. I'm going to try to load it up on some more dry browns and see if that fixes it. Thanks for your input!