VelaCreations Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I am currently working on an integrated food production system in Northern Mexico. We breed rabbits for meat, and then use their byproducts to feed other animals. Currently, we use rabbit manure to feed to earthworms, and then we harvest the earthworms to feed poultry. Poultry manure and butcher waste from the poultry and rabbits go to Black Soldier Fly larvae, which we harvest to feed the poultry. I am wondering if we could incorporate feeder roaches into our system. The BSFL have a feed conversion of about 5:1 (5 lbs of manure/offal to produce 1 lb of larvae). They produce well in the summer, but for winter months, they are dormant. We must keep their container outside to allow for adults to deposit eggs, so we are limited by local climate conditions. We are considering roaches, because we could keep their housing indoors in a controlled environment year round. What is the general feed conversion ratios of popular feeder roaches? Are there species that would be able to consume poultry manure and/or butcher wastes? We are constantly looking for more species to incorporate into this model to increase productivity and sustainability. I hope people here will have some ideas on how to incorporate roaches using waste materials. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephyr Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I'm not sure if any work has been done on feed conversion ratios for cockroaches, however, I think one of the Eublaberus species would probably work best. In the wild they often cover the floors of caves so the nymphs don't mind being excessively crowded (moreso for E. distanti and E. sp. "Ivory" than E. posticus or E. sp. "Pantanal", though.) Normally they consume mostly guano but given their voracious feeding responses I doubt any unfortunate bats that fall to the floor of the cave would ever make it back to the top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VelaCreations Posted January 21, 2012 Author Share Posted January 21, 2012 interesting, I will do some research on them and see what I can find. If I could find a species that could consume poultry, rabbit, and/or fish manure at a reasonable efficiency (5:1 or better) it would be a big asset for us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.