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| I was between piles recently so my buckets of kitchen scraps sat under a tree for a couple weeks, in recent 100 degree heat. When I opened a couple of them, the food was completely broken down and crawling with maggots. It was a bit disgusting, naturally, since I have been conditioned to prefer things like red wigglers or beetles over maggots, yuch.
In any case, I poured them into the pile, covered loosely with a mix of shredded leaves, dry garden trash mixed with grass clippings. I then double-rinsed the buckets and poured the rinsate (so to speak) onto the pile. I haven't been tarping lately, but since I had so many creepy-crawly maggots, I tarped it, thinking that if the maggots do make it to the surface before they become flies, they will die for the most part under the tarp and become rot. Not really a question here, just wondering how much experience others have with maggots. I know the best time my pile cooked down was when my boss gave me some llama manure and it was full of maggots. I guess what surprised me was how many maggots were in those buckets. The buckets weren't sealed, but had a loose lid on them. I guess it doesn't take many flies to make a hundred maggots, though. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| .. Not something I've done myself but people have reported drilling holes about a half inch above the bottom of a bucket and throwing in some road kill in the bucket. They would suspend the bucket over a chicken coop or a pond and as the maggots leaked out the chickens or the fish in the pond would eat them up. High protein diet. Up in Oregon or Washington there was some university experimenting with black soldier fly larvae (big maggots). The larvae would consume cow manure and the larvae would then be fed to farmed salmon. I've had black soldier fly larvae in my compost bins and they do seem to eat a lot. There were times I would come out in the morning and find them crawling away from the bins in all directions. Hundreds of them. I think the birds got most of them. Black soldier flies themselves seem to be rather unobtrusive and not a bother at all. Flies are part of the process. |
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| Maggots, the larva of many species of flies, need a fairly moist environment with decaying organic matter to feed on. Their presence in a compost pile indicates that the material in the compost pile is too moist. There are thousands of species of flies, of which a few might be considered somewhat beneficial, but most of which spread disease pathogens. Some people think the presence of maggots in compost is okay while others will tell you that the presence of maggots is an indication of poor management of the process, ie. too much moisture in the mix. |
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| Kimmsr, I don't think you read my original email. The maggots have only been in my pile on two occasions: directly from llama manure and now from my "slop" buckets that I left in the heat a few weeks because I hadn't built up my new working pile. But well, it seems like one has to come to expect the bloody Spanish Inquisition on this forum ;-) And the reason I tarped to try to kill the flies was because I have an "urban" pile with close neighbors parking nearby my pile, and intrusive city building department quick to send out letters. Anyway, this forum used to be more fun, I wish folks would lighten up. |
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- Posted by tropical_thought San Francisco (My Page) on Mon, Aug 20, 12 at 8:42
| I got the idea that you wanted advice on how to get rid of the maggots. I was going to suggest, but then I knew all the pro maggot people would jump all over me. They would say how lovely and wonderful maggots are. I can see you don't want advice on how to get rid of them, but you wish to discuss them? |
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| One fly can lay hundreds of eggs. |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr (My Page) on Mon, Aug 20, 12 at 10:43
| I was going to say the same thing rhizo. I know fruit flies reproduce in about 48 hours, maybe house flies do as well, so it only takes a couple days for the next generation to increase the population exponentially. Or is that geometrically? And to quote Monty Python, "NO-body expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise!" hahaha :-D |
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| Just having fun with the idea. I usually come to this forum to fill my compost porn jones and it usually does the trick! I guess my post was yes, anecdotal, more than anything. But I was impressed by the overwhelming number of maggots from just a few weeks of bucket cooking! |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr (My Page) on Mon, Aug 20, 12 at 15:42
| If only you were a fly fisherman. I read that the Brits would use a maggot on a tiny hook, and keep the spares in their bottom lip. |
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| Suprise and fear! |
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| Oh yes, tox, we do that all the time. They fit really well between our awful teeth. I would not want maggots in my compost if they were house fly maggots. Fruit flies - no problem - but I really don't want extra flies of the type which come into the kitchen looking for meat and spread disease. They spend their lives paddling about in carrion and s**t and eat by injecting their saliva into their food. No thanks. I find that if scraps are well cover with drier material and the pile is not too wet you don't get maggots. |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr (My Page) on Tue, Aug 21, 12 at 10:32
| Surprise, fear and ruthless efficiency! |
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| In the UK, they use maggots for fishing, so there are videos showing how to raise maggots. i know of one company in the US that raises maggots for sale. You need a lot of land for that - to keep the smell away from neighbors. |
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