Sustainability

Fly problem? No problem, just harvest them!

For around 350 million years flies have been evolving to make our lives hell, and forever we have been trying to outsmart, outwit and downright kill the little nuisance’s. As most of us know, if not for these little flying insects earth would be covered kilometers deep in waste – predominantly rotting carcasses and feces.

Flies, Mosquitos, Fleas, Moths and more evolved from one ancient granddaddy – the Mecoptera – so I suppose you could say they are cousins of sorts. The advantages flies bring to the party is vast actually, some examples would be:

  • Great pollinators
  • They are the food source of many other animals
  • Clean the earth by eating feces and rotten material
  • Medical treatment for humans as maggots are used to clear septic wounds
  • Help forensic detectives estimate time of death

One female fly lies around 600 eggs in her 15 to 25 day lifespan – eggs take 8 to 20 hours to hatch – these live as maggots for 3 to 4 weeks and then onto being a fly. So o/k, they’re great, but how do I tap into this greatness without harming the environment and sustainably use them – yet stil get them out of my face?

I have been testing many different version of the same basic principle to catch flies over a period of two weeks and here is my findings. The basic principle is to take a plastic bottle, cut the top of the bottle off, put any pieces of meat or feces (testing various things I found using fresh dog poop and adding a small piece of meat works great) in the bottom, turn the top upside down to act as a downward funnel and stick back into the bottom.

Make sure where you cut the funnel so it sit’s tight on the inside of the bottle when inserted. I have tested using tape to secure the two halves, but found it cumbersome when harvesting the flies and reloading the bait. If you cut the bottle correctly tape is not necessary – now just add a bit of water to keep things moist, about half way up your bait, and you are ready to go.

Flies smell the bait, go down the funnel and having a small brain cannot find their way out again. Testing many different containers I found a 2l clear cooldrink bottle works best, flies would go into those at a much higher rate than milk/juice bottles.

In pictures Simple 1 and 2, I found that just using it as is works “o/k-ish”, but adding a small mesh funnel into the lid portion works twice as well if not more, it seemed some flies got some brain and actually escaped through the opening. With pictures “Milk furrow” and “The Whopper” I created a small funnel from an old flysheet and you will also see the difference between the milk bottle and 2l cooldrink bottle.

Testing was done the same across all the fly-catchers: same place, same time, same bait, same timeframes. and the clear winner was “The Whopper”. (I blogged about my first comical experience with a real Whopper, read it here)

Once full, or full enough, fill bottle with water to help the flies out of their misery, and pour into your chicken pen. The chickens will love you for the added protein to their diet and scratching around for the maggots.

If you are going to add the bait to your compost heap/around your plants as it is, remember to use boiling water to kill off the maggots as they can live in normal water for a prolonged period of time. Cover bait with boiling water, let it cool and add.

Many companies today are researching these methods on a commercial scale, with Bioconval a leader in sustainable transformation of insect-based protein production. They breed, rear, and process flies, crickets, mealworms, cockroaches and grasshoppers to be used as feed, food and fertilizer. If you think of it, they feed these critters with rubbish that would have landed on the rubbish dump – which makes me think of something I heard when doing research for one of my books:

“You cannot throw anything away, nothing goes away – it just goes somewhere else”

3 Easy steps: Build your own sustainable Fly catcher – for free!

PS: In developing the material to create the step-by-step guide – I learnt more. Using Seagro as a topical organic fertilizer which I mix with my worm tea, I saw the flies bypassing the bait and coming to this stinky stuff. I added couple of drops into the fly catcher with poop and meat, and within minutes flies flies were attracted to it. So another good bait.

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