- Thread starter
- #11
It can get more gross. We are about to run a bunch through a meat grinder to see if we can make pellets. I am pretty sure it will smell enough to gag a maggot.
Making Feed from Japanese Beetles
- Thread starter centrarchid
- Start date
Could you just sell them frozen to local poultry farms? Regardless of how you end up disposing of them, my hat's off you!
Crackpot Idea: drying would seem to make the most sense for keeping things hygienic. But how to do it cheap, easy, and large-scale? You know how a parabolic mirror will reflect light from any direction into its "focus"? This is how certain solar thermal plants work...
Perhaps get a couple longish lengths of 3' corrugated galvanized roofing... screw them together on a long 2x6 sitting on (or better yet staked into) the ground. Next lift the outer edges of the roofing sheets until the cross-section is basically a parabola shape. Install braces to hold the metal "trough" up...
Next build a drying screen out of old window screens or something fine-meshed stretched over a rigid frame. Suspend that meshed frame in the trough and the "right" height that corresponds to the "focus" of the parabola shape you made.. "Right" height can either be calculated or figured out with some trial and error. Or, more likely, first one then the other. Anyway...
Get a big floor fan. Set the trough up on a sunny day in an east-west orientation and stick the floor fan at one end to blow into the trough. (Or better yet get two and have them on each end - one blowing into the trough, one "sucking" air out of the trough). If there are prevailing winds, obviously take those into account...
Place JBs on the meshed frame and stir them around periodically until dry.
Cheaper than an industrial dehydrator! And it might even work!
Crackpot Idea: drying would seem to make the most sense for keeping things hygienic. But how to do it cheap, easy, and large-scale? You know how a parabolic mirror will reflect light from any direction into its "focus"? This is how certain solar thermal plants work...
Perhaps get a couple longish lengths of 3' corrugated galvanized roofing... screw them together on a long 2x6 sitting on (or better yet staked into) the ground. Next lift the outer edges of the roofing sheets until the cross-section is basically a parabola shape. Install braces to hold the metal "trough" up...
Next build a drying screen out of old window screens or something fine-meshed stretched over a rigid frame. Suspend that meshed frame in the trough and the "right" height that corresponds to the "focus" of the parabola shape you made.. "Right" height can either be calculated or figured out with some trial and error. Or, more likely, first one then the other. Anyway...
Get a big floor fan. Set the trough up on a sunny day in an east-west orientation and stick the floor fan at one end to blow into the trough. (Or better yet get two and have them on each end - one blowing into the trough, one "sucking" air out of the trough). If there are prevailing winds, obviously take those into account...
Place JBs on the meshed frame and stir them around periodically until dry.
Cheaper than an industrial dehydrator! And it might even work!
Could you just sell them frozen to local poultry farms? Regardless of how you end up disposing of them, my hat's off you!
Crackpot Idea: drying would seem to make the most sense for keeping things hygienic. But how to do it cheap, easy, and large-scale? You know how a parabolic mirror will reflect light from any direction into its "focus"? This is how certain solar thermal plants work...
Perhaps get a couple longish lengths of 3' corrugated galvanized roofing... screw them together on a long 2x6 sitting on (or better yet staked into) the ground. Next lift the outer edges of the roofing sheets until the cross-section is basically a parabola shape. Install braces to hold the metal "trough" up...
Next build a drying screen out of old window screens or something fine-meshed stretched over a rigid frame. Suspend that meshed frame in the trough and the "right" height that corresponds to the "focus" of the parabola shape you made.. "Right" height can either be calculated or figured out with some trial and error. Or, more likely, first one then the other. Anyway...
Get a big floor fan. Set the trough up on a sunny day in an east-west orientation and stick the floor fan at one end to blow into the trough. (Or better yet get two and have them on each end - one blowing into the trough, one "sucking" air out of the trough). If there are prevailing winds, obviously take those into account...
Place JBs on the meshed frame and stir them around periodically until dry.
Cheaper than an industrial dehydrator! And it might even work!
I would think it's too humid in MO for solar dryer.. I know in IL it would be... tried it on veggies... tried the fan assists too.. even the electric dehydrator struggles, taks 2x as long as it says it should
I was thinking of MO's humidity - it's a good point... 
dunno... Done right I would THINK it would work. People can use a setup like this to melt salt (~1500 degF / 800 degC). BUT! Of course it has to actually be constructed in a precise manner in a solar thermal setup to do that. Flashing (i.e. smooth) would be far more likely to succeed than corrugated metal regardless of humidity, but it would be much more cumbersome to construct.
Also the fiddling required to ensure a somewhat uniform heating rather than vaporizing the middle inch of the JBs and not really heating the rest...
I called it "crackpot" for a reason!
This is the sort of stuff I dream of doing on the homestead. But right now I'm still working on just growing and preserving enough food for us! Baby steps...
dunno... Done right I would THINK it would work. People can use a setup like this to melt salt (~1500 degF / 800 degC). BUT! Of course it has to actually be constructed in a precise manner in a solar thermal setup to do that. Flashing (i.e. smooth) would be far more likely to succeed than corrugated metal regardless of humidity, but it would be much more cumbersome to construct.Also the fiddling required to ensure a somewhat uniform heating rather than vaporizing the middle inch of the JBs and not really heating the rest...
I called it "crackpot" for a reason!
This is the sort of stuff I dream of doing on the homestead. But right now I'm still working on just growing and preserving enough food for us! Baby steps...
Cool idea! But ew!
Cool idea! But ew!
True. But then again, chickens love mealworms and those are pretty... ew...
Grub Digger
Chirping
This is fantastic! The more people trapping these suckers and feeding them to their chickens the better!
This seems interesting my girls used to love Japanese Beetles, subscribing
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