Maggots (BSF - Black Soldier Fly) Fed Chicken VS Grass Fed Chicken

Is there any different in terms of taste of the chicken? Because whatever that we feed the chicken will influence the taste of the chicken.
I really want to know which feed gives the best taste?

Tagging to follow.

Nice question,I have wondered the same about feeding them fish.
Would feeding them fish effect the taste of the eggs for example?

Very Interesting question han aj,

I know our chickens eat a variety, bugs, grasses and other plants along with vegetables.
This causes our eggs to have darker yellow, richer tasting yolks and egg whites as well as the meat having stronger flavonoids (taste more like chicken than the "Tyson" and other commercially available chickens).

William, I would think that a fish diet would indeed flavor the eggs and meat, it does in ducks that are fish eaters so it probably would in chicken too.

Great question. I would love a definitive answer.

I am speculating, but I would guess that the Black Soldier Fly larvae would have to have a pretty pungent scent and taste, like some fish, to impart much of a taste, and that even with a fish diet, chickens would need to be eating only that range of goods to get the specific taste. Would these chooks get only BSFLs?

Also, does the taste of the BSFLs change depending on what they're being fed?

As a point of clarification, grass-fed chickens will also eat any soil life large enough and slow enough to be edible as they eat the grass, so I would guess that there's already a fair amount of analogous insect larvae present in the diet of the typical grass-fed chicken anyways.

-CK

I have read (sorry, can't remember where) that the nutritional content of Black Soldier Flies is affected by their feed. A big part of what originally focused interest in BSF was that they could be fed post consumer food wastes and you'd get "something for nothing". Recent readings I've done suggest a shift to BSF being fed products that could in fact be eaten directly by people or chickens which is exactly the "Big Business" approach that ruins so many good ideas. That said, Joel Salatin stopped feeding his pigs "past its best before date" food from the food bank because his pigs health was declining. That suggests to me, that if one is planning to feed BSF post consumer food waste, it would be good to supplement that feed source with some organic weeds and food forest leftovers to improve the micro-nutrients available to the BSF and subsequently to the chickens.

In case anyone missed the other key issue - do *not* feed chicken waste of any sort to BSF which are going to be fed to chickens. If you have chicken waste that would benefit from BSF pre-treatment (waste from processing or dead birds from losses) that needs to be kept separate and used to feed something like fish (some fish are omnivores and some are carnivores - I'm no expert, but I suspect fish that are vegetarian would not appreciate BSF).

I also support Chris Kott's question about the over-all planned diet. Chickens are omnivores with a fairly high need for protein. Our chickens *love* fresh grass, but it does not have anywhere near enough nutritional value to be considered a healthy diet on its own. Their 'scratch and peck' behavior (which is hard-wired in as I've seen it in day-old incubator hatched chicks) is all about looking for high protein seeds and bugs. In fact, I've offered fresh greens to those same day-old chicks and they've expressed no interest yet have made great efforts to catch bugs. Their interest in plants seems to take a week or two to kick in. Has anyone else observed this?