Making Feed from Japanese Beetles

[Nifty-Chicken]

This is brilliant! Please keep us posted!!

 

[centrarchid]

We put out six traps for two one hour trap periods. We got 10 lbs easy. Will have to repeat because I want tailings of harvest season.


Below has beetles in trash bag with dry ice. They went down fast but took much longer than I expected to actually cool off. Mode of action appears to have been CO2 poisoning rather than chilling. Took just a couple seconds to deny flight. As shown only about 3 lbs.

 

[centrarchid]

I now have to look through bags of beetles to remove bycatch by hand. The most frequent non-target critter has been the June Beetle like shown. They would be easy to remove using a grader but probably do not negatively impact meal quality.

This is second batch we are processing for analysis. Meat grinder has a hard time working on the biomass when no fluids added.

The white chunks are frozen fluids in the biomass.

 

[centrarchid]

We are preparing to make all kinds of good stuff from our 2018 Japanese Beetles harvest. A point that will be stressed is that we could have caught much, much more which will be done next year. We got just about 130 lbs based on live weight where the bulk was collected over only two days when we were just about getting biomass, but did not even have all the traps out yet. We could have collected a ton in about three weeks if we wanted with only about a dozen traps. Season was close to 6 weeks long.
We split this batch between two protein tubs and mixed in effort to get uniform mass.

Black, green. copper and red gold.

Coming out of meat grinder. We had to experiment a little to work out rate that would not bind grinder.

We packed it into 5-gallon buckets with lids. Some placed in plastic bags like used to store meat. All then placed into upright freezer.

Smell with these properly stored batches was likened to butter or of all things, ice cream. Out wheels are turning on what we can do to evaluate potential uses. We are still waiting on composition analysis report so we can formulate diets.

 

[glib]

So CA, to summarize this wonderful thread:

1) season in the Midwest is about 3 weeks.
2) Optimal placement of traps along property lines is one every .... ft
3) One well placed, well built trap will yield .... lbs of meat per day
4) it takes .... days in the sun to dry the things

 

[Blue Tiger]

Got results back on nutrient content. With respect to some nutrients, early season beetles are better. Significantly so?

Nutrient profile is very different from batches collected in previous years. Those differences I attribute to capture methodology and processing prior to storage. Those differences are almost certainly important.

 

[Blue Tiger]

Table below show results of crude composition analysis. Amino acid profile, not reported below, is very good as typical of fish meals and other high end protein sources. The disparity between crude protein and total amino acids is dominated by the chitin which is largely the crude fiber component. Fat content of about 3% is only about 1/3 or what I would like as that would be the minimum required to enable lipid extraction using a cold oil press. Low lipid content will make storage of dry product less likely involve rancidity issue. Incorporating the Japanese Beetle biomass as a dried product into a scratch mix at a rate of about 30% will put protein levels and likely amino acid profile into a range suitable for chickens where final product will be closer to a complete diet minus calcium and likely some vitamins. Cool stuff found with carotenoids as well. Fatty acids not as good as I hoped, especially for use in fish feed, but likely very good for chickens.

 

[centrarchid]

So CA, to summarize this wonderful thread:

1) season in the Midwest is about 3 weeks.
2) Optimal placement of traps along property lines is one every .... ft
3) One well placed, well built trap will yield .... lbs of meat per day
4) it takes .... days in the sun to dry the things

1) Season in central Missouri was approximately 6 weeks long.
2) Optimal placement of traps greater than 100 yards apart with arrangement perpendicular to wind
3) Traps we used could produce upwards of 5 lbs in a day on good flying days if emptied once, more frequent emptying may reduce repelling action of too many beetles dying in reservoir. Beetles do not keep well in bucket so I recommend chilling / freezing ASAP. We are working on trap design to make much more effective. Location overrides just about everything.
4) Ground beetles will dry within a day with good airflow and a little stirring assuming beetles where not too deep. Depth of ground beetle biomass we used was less than 2".


For the typical backyard poultry keeper, the bio-attractor approach likely to be most practical.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...etles-using-a-low-cost-bio-attractor.1258075/

 

[glib]

It is basically lean meat, similar nutritional profile to, say, earthworms. I would guess chitin is not a problem for a chicken, they have been eating chitin for millions of years. Most humans can digest it too. I assume you are saying that there are sufficient amounts of carotenoids. Non trivial info because insects are usually without vitamin A (and D, and essential fatty acids) or its precursors. All you need to complete this meal is a source of fat (at the backyard scale, what is left of tallow or lard rendering will do), and maybe some dried alfalfa.

 

[centrarchid]

It is basically lean meat, similar nutritional profile to, say, earthworms. I would guess chitin is not a problem for a chicken, they have been eating chitin for millions of years. Most humans can digest it too. I assume you are saying that there are sufficient amounts of carotenoids. Non trivial info because insects are usually without vitamin A (and D, and essential fatty acids) or its precursors. All you need to complete this meal is a source of fat (at the backyard scale, what is left of tallow or lard rendering will do), and maybe some dried alfalfa.

The samples we assayed have lots of carotenoids, we suspected they might based on some knowledge about their reproductive biology. Other insects having low carotenoid contents based on research I have done so far indicates life-stage not considered. If carotenoids as high as I think, then inclusion of alfalfa meal would be over something other than vitamin A. I would be using an whole oil seed of some sort to bring up fat levels in a mix.