For a long while now I've been obsessed with black soldier fly larvae production and its potential to cheaply and completely replace soyabean as a protein source. The larvae when dried, has about 45%cp and 33%fat, more lysine and methionine than soyabean. The black soldier fly adult lays about 400-900eggs. The larvae take about 16days to reach prepupae where they are harvested. 1g of eggs gives about 4kg of mature larvae they say, I'll have to check that.



I got 10grams of egg for 5000#, the egg
eggs arrived late at night with some already hatching, I had to quickly set up their substrate

This is day 2 of hatching the eggs, the hatched eggs fall into their substrate and begin to feed. I place them in my poultry brooder house so they hatch fast cause the temperature is around 28°c. Some hatched ones are already falling into the substrate.

My substrate was too wet and the larvae began to craw out, I had to fill the corners with dry wheat offal so they don't craw out.

U see, when the eggs came, it came with a foam placed on top as seen on the first pic, some hatched eggs found their way in. At first I wanted to just discard it, but later prepared another substrate and placed the foam on top so they can crawl into. The next morning I took out the foam and kept that substrate in another location in thesame room,covered with sack.


I checked it today being their day 6 post hatch and these are the only larvae doing fine and in their right size, something I wanted to discard before.

These are the larvae from the hanging hatch. It was there for 2 days, so the larvae are of 2 different age, 6 and 5. Some are very okay for their age, some are sub-par

So after 2 days of eggs hanging from the hatch, I decided to bring it down cause I was expecting close to 90% hatch but about 70% was still hanging. I opened It and surprisingly, all have hatched in the egg cluster, and were wiggling inside. I suspected they were too packed closely, hence they couldn't breakthrough from it the inside and fall, or because I didn't keep them in a dark room, they decided to remain deep within their cluster cause BSF larvae hate light. Anyways I took these and place in a separate substrate in another location, outside and under a zinc shade.


Today is their day 4 and menh, their growth is so poor. I don't know what I am doing wrong with these. To think they're about 70% of the total larvae I brought. Is it that we're I placed them was so cold hence their slow growth?