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Poultry poop and fly larva, what do do?

 
Rocket Scientist
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My Guinea fowl decided they were chickens, and with no prompting from me, started roosting in the chicken coop. The only problem is their poop. I have a poo board that I was scraping into a bucket for compost once a week or so. But Guinea poop is different from chicken. I NEVER saw fly larva in my chicken droppings, but the Guinea poop is FULL of crawling larva in no time.

So now I feel like I have to do something different, but not sure what. Larva will hatch in 5 days from what I read, and I would prefer to kill or use them in that stage before they take flight.

Some potential ideas:
- Scrape more often, put a lid on my bucket and leave it in the sun to hopefully heat kill the larvae
-  Sprinkle a bit of lime or diatomaceous earth on the board every few days (not sure how this would affect my compost)
- Utilize the live larvae somehow, just not sure how good it is to encourage my birds to peck through their own waste
- ANY other ideas welcome!
 
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Are they "bad" fly maggots or could they be Black Soldier Fly larvae?  If BSF you don't need to do anything because they are benign, don't transmit disease, and will actually eat the eggs and larvae of other flies.  And poultry love to eat them!

 
Matt Todd
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Tyler Ludens wrote:Are they "bad" fly maggots or could they be Black Soldier Fly larvae?  If BSF you don't need to do anything because they are benign, don't transmit disease, and will actually eat the eggs and larvae of other flies.  And poultry love to eat them!



I looked closely at the flies I had caught on the fly strips. Definitely not Black Soldier Fly, unfortunately. I'm know the birds would love to eat any larva, just not sure if I should encourage them to peck through their own waste.
 
I agree. Here's the link: http://stoves2.com
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