Raising maggots - 10/17/06 03:21 PM
We used to raise maggots. The problem we ran into was that the small reptiles and birds didn't eat them all and we had flies everywhere. That's when we changed to raising mealworms.
Maggots are the larvae of the common house fly. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need rotten meat to raise them.
We used plastic tubs with a 6-7 inch lip without the lid on. Then we mixed one gallon of wheat bran with 1/2 cup of powered milk. We added enough water so that the mixture was moist but not wet enough that water settled out of the mixture. The flies would lay their eggs in this mixture.
It took 7 days to produce a crop so we had 7 tubs and kept a rotation going. A gallon of bran would produce about a pint of very clean, disease free maggots. We used a household seeve to harvest the maggots. The must be harvested at the end of 7-8 days or they will become adult flies.
Maggots are the larvae of the common house fly. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need rotten meat to raise them.
We used plastic tubs with a 6-7 inch lip without the lid on. Then we mixed one gallon of wheat bran with 1/2 cup of powered milk. We added enough water so that the mixture was moist but not wet enough that water settled out of the mixture. The flies would lay their eggs in this mixture.
It took 7 days to produce a crop so we had 7 tubs and kept a rotation going. A gallon of bran would produce about a pint of very clean, disease free maggots. We used a household seeve to harvest the maggots. The must be harvested at the end of 7-8 days or they will become adult flies.