Black Soldier Flies for chicken superfood

solarnoon.aspen
solarnoon.aspen Posts: 219 ✭✭✭
edited November 2020 in Birds (Land Fowl & Waterfowl)

I've been exploring raising black soldier flies to feed their larvae to chickens. Apparently very high protein and fat and they eat kitchen scraps, manure, restaurant scraps, coffee, etc. It's exciting but they don't like cold weather so it might not work as well here in Canada as it would in southern places.

https://thefrugalchicken.com/black-soldier-fly-larvae-superfood-for-backyard-chickens/

Anyone done this?

Comments

  • vickeym
    vickeym Posts: 2,134 ✭✭✭✭✭

    We have been thinking of doing this as well. Our biggest concern will be the possibility of the odor from the food drawing bears which will then go after our chickens. May try letting the chickens free range some and moving the scrap box a bit further back so if one does come nosing around it won't be right at the coop and they can run back there to safety.

  • solarnoon.aspen
    solarnoon.aspen Posts: 219 ✭✭✭

    good point. That would definitely be a concern here too. Maybe we could grow the flies elsewhere and catch the larvae in a bucket and feed them to the chickens. I could see that working better. The bears would actually like the larvae as well, but wouldn't be near the chickens at least.

  • DebiB
    DebiB Posts: 92 ✭✭✭

    I’ve had the black soldier flies show up in my worm bin during summer and then when the weather turns cooler they disappear. You may be able to grow black soldier flies during summer when it’s warm out but I don’t know if you’d want to start up a bin every year. Don’t know if it would work, just a thought.....