If you want to feed insects to your chickens, black soldier fly larvae are probably the easiest and cheapest option.  Unlike mealworms, you won’t need to buy storebought food for the insects, and you won’t need to buy pheremones every year like you would for Japanese beetles.

What are black soldier fly larvae?  The little grubs are the larval stage of a flying insect that is naturally found in U.S. zones 7 to 10 (and maybe a little beyond that — we’re in zone 6 and I’ve found them in my garden.)  The adults look a bit like minuscule wasps, but they don’t sting.  The larvae look like dark, flat grubs.

I first saw black soldier fly larvae in my outdoors worm bin when I added too much wet, high nitrogen waste at once.  The adult black soldier fly lays its eggs in rotting fruits and vegetables, manure, or meat scraps, and within two weeks the eggs have hatched and turned into mature larvae.  Then the larvae crawl out of the feed so that they can pupate in the ground.

If you want to go the easy route, you can buy a special bin (the Bio-Pod) for $180 which will make your black soldier fly operation completely painless.  The bin is just a spot to put your rotting fruits and vegetables, with a ramp that allows the larvae to crawl out into a collection container.  All you have to do is add food waste then take the larvae to the chickens once a day.

We don’t want to pony up that much cash, so we plan to try to build our own bin this summer.  Check out this article for information on what a good bin looks like.  

Japanese
beetles are invasive insects that defoliate roses, grapes, cherries,
and many other garden plants.  Although they’re terrible in the
garden, the beetles are one of our chickens’ favorite foods.

I go into the garden on cool summer mornings when the Japanese beetles
are slow-moving, place a cup of water below the bottom edge of a leaf,
and give the plant a sharp tap.  When startled, cold Japanese
Beetles let go of the plant they are eating and drop to the ground …
or into my cup if I’ve placed it correctly.  After my cup is full,
I toss the contents, water and all, into a chicken tractor and watch my hens go crazy.



Of course, this method
of catching Japanese Beetles isn’t going to cut it for large scale
feeding operations.  If you’re willing to buy some Japanese Beetle
pheremones, you can create a trap like the one shown below which will
capture these protein-rich insects for you.  The pheremones are
sold in many garden stores to bait Japanese beetle traps in a misguided
attempt to lure Japanese beetles out of folks’ gardens.  (In
practice, the traps more often lure the beetles right into your
favorite rose bush.)



I’d love to find a
method of capturing Japanese beetles that didn’t depend on storebought
scents — if you’ve got any thoughts, please leave a comment! 
Last summer, we had great (if accidental) luck capturing June bugs by
hanging some of our automatic chicken waterers up in the garden, partly
full of water and with the lids off.  The June bugs tried to land
on the slippery sides, but soon descended into the liquid at the bottom
of the containers, where they drowned.  If anything, our chickens
considered the June bugs even tastier than the Japanese beetles, so we
may have to work on developing a real June bug trap this summer.