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remarkikkin, you can do both. The BSF grubs pass through 5 stages as larvae, and the final stage is a very dark brown color. If you wait to feed them to your chickens until they reach this stage then they will have eaten all that they will ever eat in their lifetime.
It has also been suggested that when the larvae make that final transformation that they secrete an antibiotic in preparation for pupation. If that's true then there may be benefits that are passed on to animals that eat the mature grubs.
remarkikkin, you can do both. The BSF grubs pass through 5 stages as larvae, and the final stage is a very dark brown color. If you wait to feed them to your chickens until they reach this stage then they will have eaten all that they will ever eat in their lifetime.
It has also been suggested that when the larvae make that final transformation that they secrete an antibiotic in preparation for pupation. If that's true then there may be benefits that are passed on to animals that eat the mature grubs.
Geedub, thanks for the great advice! I love life cycles and symbiotic relationships and if the antibiotic hypothesis is true, that's so interesting!
And, don't worry about Kelly being a great resource - she's in the worm world (which is also fascinating for your chookeners who haven't gotten into vermicomposting yet) and you're in the chicken world. Chickens are higher on the food chain! LOL Keep up the good work!
Thanks remarkikkin, but to be fair I'm not really in the chicken world. All I know about chickens is that they stay moister while roasting if you brine them first.
I'm in the fly larvae world and that puts me pretty much on the bottom of the food chain.
AmyRey, I'm just curious about how many black soldier fly adults you've seen considering that you have lots of the larvae. My experience has been that the adults are relatively rare even when you maintain a healthy colony of the grubs (larvae) (ok, maggots
I live in So Cal where I think they are pretty common. I see at least 3 or 4 of these adults a day in my garden from June to August usually, and sporadically a few later in to the fall. The compost is really full of the larvae these days with all the yard, orchard, and chicken waste this time of year. There are lot folks that compost in my neighborhood, so maybe that adds to the sightings being more common.
The kids freak out whenever one gets in the house because they mistake them for wasps. I just trap and release them.
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That is the prissiest most cutest little girl evah! Hehe and that black chicken, well she's a pig. She's entirely too quick, and I think she got most of the worms.
I just spent an hour reading all these posts on this topic from page 1 to 13. I'm new to this forum, but having read through the last year of posts I feel like I know you pretty well.
I live in the city, and my wife and I recently got 7 chickens due to our interests in sustainability, local food security, and darn good fresh eggs. Since this spring, we've had two "bins" of compost in our backyard, and one has become overrun with thousands of what I thought at first were maggots (but now am fairly convinced they're BSF larvae, though I've never seen a BSF adult around). Thanks to Jerry, I've learned that our set up isn't the best to specifically grow BSF larvae, and this is so interesting and efficient we might end up going with a separate bin just for the grubs, and another for our compost. Because, as Jerry pointed out earlier, if you're composting for fertile garden soil a traditional compost method is better and will give much greater amounts of said fertile soil than if you fed it all to BSF larvae. And we do need plenty of good soil from our composting efforts.
At the beginning of this summer, since we had extra tires, we started a stackable tire compost pile with a heavy plastic piece as the top lid. They're currently stacked between 4 and 6 tires high. So obviously there's no way to turn the compost pile...we just throw our extra scraps in, both from our household (currently 5-6 people living in our house) and from one of our roomate's job doing food prep at a restaurant. So mostly veggies, occasional other random things like fish eggs and scraps to incubated eggs that didn't develop. I haven't tried coffee grounds yet, but my larvae are especially fond of melon (someone mentioned that) and eggplant or squash. I picked up a half eaten eggplant this morning...and there were hundreds of larvae "worming" their way up into it as they devoured...maybe I'll take a picture next time.
So, from reading all of this wonderful material, I have 3 main questions.
1) Though I've read about some dangers of feeding maggots who've been feeding on rotting compost and carcasses and such, I've not seen anything that suggests there is risk in feeding these compost-loving BSF larvae to my chickens. (that was supposed to be a question) If that is correct, should I limit my larvae feedings? We have enough larvae that I could feed them those exclusively and save our money on chicken feed, I LOVE feeding them, the chickens LOVE eating them much more than regular feed, and it seems that some have even noticed increased egg production after larvae feedings. My gut tells me that "all things are good in moderation," from beer to chocolate to BSF larvae...but I'd love to hear from the chicken dietician experts.
2) The pictures online I've found of maggots seem smaller and don't have the distinct, multiple segments that the pics of BSF larvae (and whatever's in my compost) have. Is that definitive? Or could I post a picture of them and let one of you tell me for sure whether or not they are BSFL?
3) Last question deals with harvesting the grubs. Currently, I have to reach down into the bin with a couple of plastic bowls/scoops to get a cup or two. I would LOVE to build some kind of ramp into my tire system where they'd walk the plank themselves, but I can't think of a way to do it. Any ideas?
Again, thanks for everyone's contributions!!!! This is a great topic.
Much larvae love,
Daniel n Amanda n their girls (chickens)
