The Black Soldier Fly Challenge

[Lumenos]

On geedub's blog there is a page called "Black Soldier Fly Challenge". I tried to post the following information there, but had no luck. Here is basically what I was trying to post:

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Currently the Black Soldier Fly Challenge reads:

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I questioned this on the BioPod forum and was told by a "representative" of ProtoCulture (Robert Oliver), that they advise feeding BSFL only “FRESH” wastes. This included fresh manure but they added that the grubs/pupae should only be fed to a different genus of animal than produced the manure, and that some reptiles are very sensitive and these grubs need to be particularly clean in some way (see the Phoenix Worm site).

So I thought it would be better to feed FRESH waste directly to poultry but apparently the grubs have a number of nutritional and medicinal advantages. I’d love to show them to you but they are in a thread I made on the forum and the forum is not available presently.

I recently created a thread in the Backyard Chickens Forum about building a soldier grub bin into a portable poultry coop. https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=4135988#p4135988 Then I realized there could be a problem. BSFL thrive in temperatures much lower than compost temperatures which are known to kill certain parasitic worm eggs. What if BSFL can keep compost from reaching adequate temperatures to kill these pathogens? Secondly, soldier grubs move around in compost, so it seems they would distribute the sticky parasitic worm eggs to cooler parts of a compost pile, if they don't kill them. If soldier grubs can indeed help parasite eggs to survive, I am not sure I should even have a BioPod on my property, because I may not be able to keep the BSFL out of hot compost that I am using to sanitize manure. I think if the harvested pupae/prepupae are cooked, this would kill any pathogens from poultry manure, so this is mainly a question of keeping compost/soil free of parasite eggs or other persistent pathogens.

More info on parasitic worms can be found:
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/202800.htm
And here is a nice table listing the parasites and how severe the infection is http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/htm/bc/tpou05.htm

If soldier grubs are likely to reduce the sanitation of my compost, I may be better off getting grubs from someone who lives far enough away from me that their soldier flies won't get into my compost (or redworm bins).

On the forum Robert Oliver told me he was going to pass my questions on, presumably to his father, Paul Oliver, who is an expert in the field. So long as the forum is down I will be posting new information in my wiki http://lumeniki.referata.com/wiki/Black_soldier_fly_larvae or in the Backyard Chickens Forum https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/profile.php?id=31578 (click "show all posts").


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These were the messages I got back:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

That was at "10 Jun 2010 at 3:44 am". A few hours ago I put my real email address (to see if it needed to be verified) and I updated the post. Then I got this message:

Hmmm, your comment seems a bit spammy. We're not real big on spam around here.

Please go back and try again.

I removed a bunch of links (most restored in the above version) and tried posting again. This time it said:

Your comment has been blocked based on the blog owner's blacklist settings.

If you feel this is in error, please contact the blog owner by some other method.

Wonderful. This is why I prefer OpenEdit wikis over typical blog software. The BioPod Forum has stopped functioning (also). So for now all the links I have posted to the BioPod forum, are dead. I'm beginning to wish I'd have spent my time editing the Wikipedia article or Appropedia instead. I was posting to the BioPod forum because geedub (GW) and roliver79 (Robert Oliver) post there.​

 

[Lumenos]

For me, Google now shows only one result from the BioPod Forum. Earlier today it showed multiple pages linking to copies of the pages in Google's cache.

 

[Pollo Blanco]

What is the advantage of the fly larvae over just feeding the chooks the red worms?

 

[Lumenos]

(Black soldier fly larvae are also called soldier grubs or Phoenix Worms.)

Soldier grubs vs redworms:

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Nutritional/medicinal advantages of soldier grubs:

(I'm not sure if some of these apply also to redworms.)

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However some of that may depend on what they are fed:

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Tom writes, "I am particularly interested in BSF because they are high in methionine (by the cited studies ) which is a limiting amino acid in poultry rations. This usually comes from an animal source (like insects)." Link to the aformentioned studies (see page 8 ) (Google search link (it is the first result there).

Raising worms/grubs in manure:

I haven't exactly figured out whether or not I want to first compost manure or feed it to soldier grubs. If feeding to soldier grubs, there may be no need to shovel anything and there are many other advantages listed in the thread "Soldier grub bin under poultry coop. How sanitary are soldier grubs?". For manure, Worm Man says that poultry manure needs to be aged six months before being fed to redworms, but this might be desirable after composting.

If you are not cooking the worms thoroughly, or composting the manure at high temperatures before you feed it to redworms, you should know that redworms can be hosts of numerous severe parasites (see this table). Soldier grubs withstand and generate higher temperatures than redworms, so this should improve sanitation of the refuse. I think that the harvested pupae/pre-pupae might be possible to stir-fry in order to kill any pathogens. It would seem that redworms would be more likely to liquefy or stick to the pan. With the lower temperatures that worms live in, it seems they would be more likely to transmit other pathogens directly.

Convenience and sanitation:

Soldier grubs self-harvest if they are in a bin with ramps. Before they do this they empty their gut and their mouth changes. I think this is called the pre-pupae stage.

 

[Pollo Blanco]

Thanks.............

 

[geedub]

Lumenos,

I don't know what is going on with the BioPod forum; I haven't been posting there lately so I can't help you with that.

As far as my blog goes; you're not welcome there. You've been rude to me too many times and I won't waste my precious time or clutter up my blog with rambling theories created by a person that has never even successfully cultured black soldier fly larvae.

 

[Lumenos]

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That's unfortunate. I thought we were on good terms lately.

You asked for a problem with BSFL. The problem is I don't know if I can keep the soldier flies out of manure and I don't know if manure with BSFL is as sanitary. Maybe for you it isn't a problem but for me it is, because I have chickens. If your neighbors have livestock manure or worm bins, the soldier flies could lay eggs in them.

If you know of a way to kill Ascaris eggs in compost containing soldier grubs, you never mentioned this. Robert Oliver did say that he was told that if manure is less than 15 days old, this could kill/remove/prevent "worms" (I don't remember exactly). I do know he did NOT say that it could kill parasitic worm eggs and certainly not that it can destroy all the eggs, as high-temperature composting can (if there are no grubs present). I don't see how raising BSFL is going to help you answer this question, unless you have some manure with parasite eggs and you are monitoring it with a microscope or something.