UncleChuck
Chirping
I've been messing around and learning about soldier flies since my chickens were still in their eggs and I've noticed a few things that aren't mentioned in most two-page instructructions.
Ants can find anything anywhere.
The bigger the box the harder it is to move.
Small colonies won't make an impact on your feeding bill.
They regularly crawl straight up the sides of the box and squeeze their way right out of vent holes and apparently sealed lids especially in the rain.
Egg traps and starting larvae on food that is easy to process is a huge learning curve booster. I use a beach sand sifter with cardboard egg traps over a box of fermented gamebird grower. The adults lay their eggs and they drop through the holes into the grain. Everything got rained on so the photos are far from Instagram-ready and there aren't any crawl off to show because my birds have already feasted on the post-percipitation exodus.
Putting the box on a platform inside a small kid pool eliminates the need for a harvest bucket, which doesn't work anyway since the little buggers will crawl fight up out of a bucket if they don't just crawl out under the lid. They all fall into the water instead and I just scoop them out with a small net. And the number of larvae that end up escaping out the sides of the pool to become adults is a much more appropriate tithe than having them come out of the vent holes.
The small amount of extra work to collect the larvae gets traded-off by the practically endless supply of compost tea. When the water gets too dark to see the larvae, I use the water to feed my plants and fill it back up so I can see through it again. And broskies, the plants seriously love the stuff!
I'd LOVE to get a self-harvesting system to actually function as intended but in the meantime, this has actually worked quite well. The box is centrally located between my birds' housing so it's easy to feed the worms to the birds and the bird poop to the worms.
Has anybody else had some of the same issues getting theirs to work? How did you adapt?
Ants can find anything anywhere.
The bigger the box the harder it is to move.
Small colonies won't make an impact on your feeding bill.
They regularly crawl straight up the sides of the box and squeeze their way right out of vent holes and apparently sealed lids especially in the rain.
Egg traps and starting larvae on food that is easy to process is a huge learning curve booster. I use a beach sand sifter with cardboard egg traps over a box of fermented gamebird grower. The adults lay their eggs and they drop through the holes into the grain. Everything got rained on so the photos are far from Instagram-ready and there aren't any crawl off to show because my birds have already feasted on the post-percipitation exodus.
Putting the box on a platform inside a small kid pool eliminates the need for a harvest bucket, which doesn't work anyway since the little buggers will crawl fight up out of a bucket if they don't just crawl out under the lid. They all fall into the water instead and I just scoop them out with a small net. And the number of larvae that end up escaping out the sides of the pool to become adults is a much more appropriate tithe than having them come out of the vent holes.
The small amount of extra work to collect the larvae gets traded-off by the practically endless supply of compost tea. When the water gets too dark to see the larvae, I use the water to feed my plants and fill it back up so I can see through it again. And broskies, the plants seriously love the stuff!
I'd LOVE to get a self-harvesting system to actually function as intended but in the meantime, this has actually worked quite well. The box is centrally located between my birds' housing so it's easy to feed the worms to the birds and the bird poop to the worms.
Has anybody else had some of the same issues getting theirs to work? How did you adapt?
