Feeding a million mouths

The larvae have been steadily eating and growing. And you might be wondering how or what to feed larvae. It's really simple: Make it smaller and anything except bones. 

I have not counted the larvae, but I have weighed them. On August 10, I had 38 pounds of larvae divided between 5 bins. On August 15, their weight increased to 58 pounds. I'll do some weighing and counting and report back on a rough quantity, but I think a million sounds like a good number at the moment.

So what have I been feeding these hungry creatures? I was recently gifted 22 pounds of over-sized cucumbers from my aunt and uncle. You can see my incredibly complicated method to process the food.

Step 1: Acquire overgrown cucumbers from family members. Step 2: Throw a few dropped apples in with cucumbers. Step 3: Bring out the handy floor scraper and CHOP the heck out of it. Step 4: Chopping is complete when the size of the food is about an inch or smaller

Mom and Dad bought be this sweet hand grinder to process apples

Twenty-two pounds of cucumbers lasted about 24 hours before the larvae were looking for more food.

Before: Food has been added to the bin around 7 p.m. (Saltines, cucumbers and apples. Weight unknown. Maybe 3 pounds)

After: At 9 a.m. the next morning, these are the only food remnants

I've been collecting dropped apples from the tree every day. I've helped my grandmother clean out her chest freezer. I've taken donations from co-workers who want to empty their pantries and fridges of old food. I also took the food refuse from the church's strawberry festival. (This amounted to only a few pounds of food, which is about a few hours worth of food.) I've soaked rice and roughly blended it with a blender. I've purchased clearance bread. Mom has purchased bread. [Note: Purchasing food is not the goal, but it was necessary to keep them happy.] The larvae are at a peak food consumption point right now. It won't be long before they will crawl off to become flies.

Ideally, all food would get chopped up and left to ferment for a few days before the larvae would get it. Larvae like sauerkraut, but they're not crazy about raw cabbage. The fermentation process helps the food break down for them to efficiently convert it to frass.



I have been very happy with my recent acquisition of a second mosquito net (from Surplus City. It's my favorite store.) House flies, fruit flies and other undesirable insects stay out; the larvae stay in. It also makes a great dog cushion, as you can see in the video.

Four of six larvae feed bins

The original larvae bin that Dad and I constructed wasn't ideal for dealing with odors. Odor is a big issue, and I have a few ideas on how to deal with it on a large scale. For now, the storage totes have been great for air flow. After feeding 22 pounds of cucumbers to these bins, there wasn't too much moisture to create an anaerobic environment. Heat can also vent up more easily with the staggered stack of the totes. They will heat up to 90-100° F. Mom asked me how I'm going to deal with the crawl off out of these. I have an idea, and if it works, it'll be ingenious. I'll post that success/fail story later.

In the meantime, you've read this far so here's another picture of the helper dog.

So helpful