Treats from a compost pile

[floriojj]

My friend has a compost pile and he found a bunch of maggots, he gave some to his chicks and I brought some home for mine. I'm guessing it doesn't hurt them. Are they mean to be treats or is something, if harnessed, can be a food source?

Video won't up load so here are a couple pics

 

[Ridgerunner]

A lot of the scratching they do is looking for choice morsels like this. If you can start a compost pile in your run they will keep it turned for you looking for these kinds of things, but you need to have fairly high sides all around or they will scatter it everywhere. Just toss in your daily kitchen wastes. The chickens will do the rest.

There are a few threads on here about how to use this type of thing to feed them. Some people raise mealworms or crickets or buy them. I wouldn’t do this anywhere close to human habitation but some put a chunk of raw meat in a can with a screen bottom with fairly large holes and hang that in the run. The fly larva fall through the holes in the screen for the chickens to find. Personally I just feed them the meat.

There are other methods people use to feed them larva. It is a protein rich natural food that does not make them sick.

 

[Demidog]

Is there no health risks associated with feeding chickens rotting food?

 

[Ridgerunner]

The larva are not rotting, they are living. No risks there.

If you toss your kitchen wastes in daily, they are fresh, not rotting. The chickens will eat what they want of that and keep the compost pile stirred up so the rest can rot as long as they have daily access.

Someone can probably dream up some scenario where the chickens could might possibly be exposed to something dangerous, but this is much the way free ranging chickens eat. it's always possible something bad could happen, but you'll find actual the number of incidences of that extremely rare.

 

[RichnSteph]

Unless I'm completely off my rocker those look more like Black Soldier Fly larvae than plain old maggots. If so you are in a prime position to have a great, natural, protein filled and easy to harvest food source. Do some looking here on "Black Soldier Fly" and you'll see plenty of folks that have self sufficient farms that produce the BSF larvae for their chickens.

/me being jealous.

 

[RonP]

Your guess is spot on.
Lucky chickens as you surmised.

 

[floriojj]

First off thank you for all the responses, this community is a great resource for knowledge. Hopefully one day I will be able to leave some advice for others to take.I youtubed the black soldier fly pen and it looks fairly easy to set up. Perhaps in the near future it would be a great source of unlimited treats for my chickens. For now I will take advantage of what my friend is harvesting from his compost.

Thanks Jesse

 

[Nutcup]

This is all I hoped to find out! These soldier fly larva are in the chicken poop pile from cleaning the hen house and it also has pine shavings & wheat straw.
3 pullets gobbled at least 50 of 'em in a minute or 2. Pecker wasn't interested... (pecker is my "special" girl - another story.)

I was worried if they could eat too many of them. In the wild they'd be lucky to find that many in one place. They seem to like them better than red wigglers because they're just a bite full. They stare at the worms until most of them have crawled off into the stuff they scratch through...

Chickens are a trip!

 

[RonP]

As a treat, they are an excellent protein source.

Like everything though, use in moderation.

They do not contain all that a chicken needs nutritionally.

Your birds will know...

 

[Chris09]

That had to be a cold compost pile for fly larva to be in it.
I can't remember mine ever getting fly larva in it but mine stayed hot all the time.