Over the last three days I've counted 16 females in the bin laying eggs, at an average of 500-900 eggs per female we'll be well on our way to feeding our chickens out of that bin in a few weeks since the mature ones will continue to show up and lay eggs. I've also noticed that the common house fly, horse fly and some other blue flies have been laying eggs in there and we're starting to get crawl-off of the mature larvae. Those little buggers go straight to the chickens and ducks and they just gobble them up. We did see tonight that there were several... well, hundreds of thousands of some very very small larvae in there. No idea what they are but they will eventually either crawl off or get eaten by the BSF larvae so they'll provide feed one way or the other. Another bonus is when the BSF larvae come online in mass the other flies (to include mosquitoes) all leave the area so we won't have to deal with them for the remainder of the year. I can buy 500lbs of spent brewers grain for $50 and that, along with our kitchen scraps, will keep that bin running for at least a year. I've still got grains left over from last year that I seeded the bin with this year.
With our chickens free ranging every day I'm hoping that the grubs will help cut our feed bill down to pennies each month with 25 birds. Wish us luck!
With our chickens free ranging every day I'm hoping that the grubs will help cut our feed bill down to pennies each month with 25 birds. Wish us luck!
