Effective bioconversion of farmed chicken products by black soldier fly larvae at commercially relevant growth temperatures

Abstract

AbstractGlobal population growth and an increasing demand for meat has driven the intensification of livestock production. On poultry farms, the accumulation of waste such as faeces, carcasses and unsellable eggs creates environmental and health hazards that need to be mitigated. The larvae of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens; BSFL) offer a potential solution to the problems of waste management on poultry farms. BSFL consume large quantities of organic waste and convert it into larval biomass, which can then be processed for use as livestock feeds or biofuels. This makes BSFL an ideal candidate for value‐added waste management on chicken farms. Here, we examined the development and nutrient profile of BSFL given five different diet treatments: poultry feed (control), chicken meat, chicken egg, chicken manure and a mixture of equal parts chicken meat, egg and manure. Chicken meat, egg and mixed diets were all found to be suitable feedstocks for BSFL, but the manure‐only treatment was associated with a high failure rate of larval development. Mixing manure with other poultry waste streams ameliorated the negative impacts of manure on BSFL. Larvae reared on chicken meat, egg and the mixed diet had equal or higher mean crude protein (CP) (39.9%, 33.8% and 31.5%, respectively) and crude lipid (CL) contents (30.1%, 29.00% and 28.7%, respectively), compared with BSFL reared exclusively on chicken feed (CP: 30.9%, CL: 23.8%), demonstrating the suitability of these waste‐stream diets for the potential animal feed quality of the BSFL. We discuss how BSFL bioconversion could be implemented to address environment management issues on poultry farms.