Dog waste ok in Biopod?

[Jaimie Denner]

The thought of putting Dog waste in the Biopod (a remarkable compost bin that self harvests Black Soldier fly larvae) got me excited. Dog poop is not good for anything, but, in this case, is it "good" for growing larvae and then later feeding my fish the larvae? Animal manure is encouraged, Dog poop is not manure but we catch alot of gofers and the larvae love decomposing them so I need some thoughts! Am I crazy?

[George]

Man, you've just got to love BSF.  My fish do too.  They self harvest, which is great.  They really go for coffee grounds.

[Carey Ma]

Like Jon Parr, I am one of the few that are not sob squeamish about using urine or manure. I too like Jon’s idea about releasing BSF into the wild, however in my situation, I cannot let all that wonderful nutrient go to waste. In my farm my chicken are moved into sections of pasture that either swine or cattle have previously been. They love to scratch through the files looking for grubs. Dog and cat poo however are placed in pet poo only/ dedicated compost bins and/ or worm bins, not so much because of pathogens but because if parasites and medication. These bins are moved a meter away once a week or so to fertilize trees and let nature bioremediate.

I personally believe that most of American society has been duped by the powers that be; to scare us into believing that any and all threats can and will be "handled" by government policy. I believe it is the production system itself that is at fault and if we can somehow get away from centralized feeding (CAFOs) operations and centralized processing (the real culprits of this bio-security scare then dramatized by mass media) we will be a lot happier and safer.

There are over a billion people here eating food grown with raw manure every day. Yet there are very few cases of large scale contamination. E-coli is everywhere: on your hands, in the air. It’s more a matter of allowing these bad bugs to propagate to the point of causing harm or provide an inhospitable environment for them so they cannot do harm.

[Tim Day]

I wonder what other handy insects are out there that we haven't discovered yet...

[Alex Veidel]

Sorry Jon, I meant to follow up on this. I got that number from Biopod's figures. Sort of. I revisited my material and realized I misinterpreted. The example that was listed was that if you feed bsf larva 100lb of food scraps, you will end up with 5lb of bsf castings. Which is where I got: 95% of what they eat goes to weight. However, I never thought to include the variable of them actually using food as energy :/ Must've thought they just sat idly, never moving, completely lethargic.

However wrong the thinking behind my statement was, what I said, taken at face value, I believe to be true. 95% of what they eat DOES go to weight, it just may not stay that way, as some of the calories get burned up to fuel the larva's active lifestyle, resulting in your figure of a 20% food to weight conversion ratio. Being on the subject of potentially dangerous chemicals and other things, the point was that the vast majority of what they eat stays inside of them, as compared to, say, the redworm, which expels most of what it eats as castings, so you may want to be careful what you feed them if you are using them in a food production cycle, especially one you are using to sell to other people.

Thanks for saying something; it made me rethink everything and that was a lot of fun. I can't believe I had concocted a 95% food to weight ratio...

Jon Parr said:

By the way, Alex, the figure I saw from Dr Olivier was that BSFL convert about 20% waste to biomass, not 95%. And...each step along the way of waste breakdown gives more opportunity for pathogens to be out-competed.

[Jon Paul]

@Tim Day.  I bet there are tons of beneficial bugs that we have not discovered.  Two months ago out of nowhere my sump tank became populated with a 1000+ tinny snails.  At first i was a little worried but after doing some research i found that they only help the system by breaking down the solids more.  It nice having more than just fish living in the system.

One day When i was staring at my tinny snails I noticed a much smaller creature that was swimming in the water.  It was the size of a peace of sand.  I figured that it does not harm anything and only adds to the biodiversity of the system.