Making Feed from Japanese Beetles

[centrarchid]

Japanese Beetles are flying in a big way. A single trap captured enough beetles in 8 hours to fill a 5-gallon bucket. Still, too many beetles got to blue berry patch. Another problem is early captured beetles died in reservoir. Beetles need to be fresh when they go into feed mixing procedure.

All has the makings of being an even bigger beetle year than last and last was a record.

 

[centrarchid]

Trapping season is underway. Not protecting crops, rather after feed for animals. Doing a test run on traps.

 

[centrarchid]

After 8 hours with 8 traps too close together we got nearly 60 lbs. Most flying beetles kept flying past traps. Two farthest traps had nearly a third of what we caught.

 

[centrarchid]

My son and I are refining trap design to decrease time beetles spend bouncing around trap entrance. Will not be an official trap day because of storms foretasted for today. Beetles still flying.

 

[centrarchid]

Link below is a tie-in where fresh / live beetles are used as a feed. Accounts ongoing and it is not practical for most situations I am seeing.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...japanese-beetles-to-pens-of-chickens.1256756/

 

[centrarchid]

Today we are doing something special. A student and I will be capturing beetles during a very narrow time window and freezing them in an ultra-cold (minus 80) freezer. The process with be repeated about 4 weeks later at tail end of Japanese Beetle season. Looking to so if nutritional quality varies with time within season. We may be breaking some laws as we scoot around the George Washington Carver Farm on Gators loaded down with beetle traps.


Trap placements should be appropriate to exceed capture rate and possibly yield realized last Saturday.

 

[centrarchid]

We survived. Working out kinks of mass capture protocol.

 

[pginsber]

For years I have been actively trying to encourage insects inside my chicken run.

I have a Japanese beetle commercial trap, with sex pheromone and a floral scent, installed on a PVC pipe that extends above the run. The beetles slide, fly, drop, or crawl down the pipe where there is a hole at shoulder height to a chicken.

Works well midsummer. I actually wish there were more beetles...

Picture please!

 

[boskelli1571]

How long did you freeze them? i put the bag in the freezer for a day or two and the beatles were still alive, but slow enough the birds had no trouble catching them.
I put the pheromone traps in the poultry yard and the poultry would stand nearby and get some before they made it into the trap. The turkeys would occasionally take the trap down.

I usually put them in the fridge for a couple of hours, it slows them down enough that the hens can catch them

 

[Carolrich]

Thi is maybe a dumb question, but could Japanese beetles be toxic? One of our chickens just keeled over and died the day after she ate a bunch of beetles my husband caught and fed to the girls. None of the others died. We thought maybe the one who did ate more than the others. She was the alpha hen.