Common Housefly is Superior Cultivar to BSF

Common Housefly is Superior Cultivar to BSF

My insect husbandry origin story.? August 20, 1975, Salem, Oregon USA

While I was a student at Willamette University in Salem in the mid-1970s, I was having a housekeeping dispute with my housemate at our several persons off campus home. It was summer and Steve W. and I were the only two residents at that time of year. The days were hot, money was scarce and neither of us wanted to clean the house. That Wednesday afternoon a friend stopped by and gave me a marijuana joint, the first I’d enjoyed for a couple of weeks. I felt relaxed and decided to clean the kitchen starting with taking the trash basket out to the barrel in the alley. As I was dumping out the refuse, I noticed several housefly maggots. Interested, I tipped them out onto the slab and examined them, rolling them around with a straw.? Musing out aloud to myself I said, “These are meaty looking little guys.” Next, I smacked myself across my mouth and said, “You don’t call garbage maggots meat.”?

I was immediately struck with my error of my reaction. The animals were clearly meaty. Not only did verbally deny this fact, but I had also physically chastised myself for recognizing a basic truth. My next chatty comment was, “Boy, you just wasted an expensive education. Your penance is to go to the library and find out how meaty they are.”

Without closing the door, I strolled the few blocks to campus and entered the university library and looked up houseflies in an encyclopedia. I learned that in just a few days the larvae increased their body size by ninety times with a resulting protein content half again as great as beef and greater than fowl or fish. I checked out a couple more references, primarily Luther West, and discovered that in laboratory setting the rate of successfully rearing the larvae to a useful state was about 2%. Having grown up in farm country I knew that no farmer could succeed with husbandry at that level of fecundity.

I bought some equipment and supplies I thought would be useful and set to learning to solve the problem. Since that day I have applied myself to the understanding, husbandry, and applications of Musca domestica as a commodity.

Now I am letting it go. Over the next few months, I will be publishing all that I learned onto a new website, www.insecta.biz. My information will be published into the public domain for all to use and improve upon.

Unlike most of the people I see in the insect business these days I am not in favor of big business monopolizing the industry. The oligarchs have controlled the fish oil and meal commodities for about a hundred and fifty years too long. Insect culture is less than fifty years old and there is no earthly reason that the same old interests that had nothing to do with inventing it should garner the lion's share of the control and profits.

BSF is an inferior cultivar. The European Union made a mistake in favoring that insect over Musca domestica. BSF, due to its difficulty in husbandry and low productivity, is more appealing to the monied interests who have the ability to throw money at its shortcomings.

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Musca domestica, on the other hand, is well suited for production on a more democratic path with its ease suitable for smaller operations. It is the most widely distributed organism that is visible to the naked eye, reproduces at a wide range of temperatures, grows on many substrates, and grows in very hi density in a short amount of time. without fancy controls or procedures. It is also self-harvesting. The resulting effluent can be used as excellent liquid fertilizers and soil solid amendment.?

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By way of analytical assay Musca domestica and BSF are nearly identical in nutritional value. And dried Musca domestica smells so much better!

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When this industry develops past the point where people are blending crickets into confections and calling it insect nutrition and peddling the bodies of whole insects as animal food there will be a need for huge volumes of insect material for processing: "cracking" it like soybeans or even petroleum. BSF will not be able to satisfy the volume requirements whereas Musca domestica can do it with ease. My standard yield of finished harvested larvae is one pound per square foot of grow bed per five-day husbandry cycle.

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My preferred contact method is via email. Please send correspondence to [email protected]

Skip Cockerum, Post Office Box 52, Vale, Oregon 97918. USA