Alberta insects destined for chicken feed

Apr 27, 2018

A black soldier fly farm set to open in Balzac

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A 170,000 square-foot facility in Balzac, Alta. will be the breeding ground for insects that can be used as chicken feed.

B.C.’s Enterra Feed Corporation plans to open its Alberta facility by the end of the year, where it will produce billions of individual black soldier flies.

The microscopic larvae eat pre-consumer food waste for about three weeks until they’re full grown. The insects are then screened, harvested, dried and shipped whole.

Black soldier flies are “full of protein and fat and that makes them a super ideal feed ingredient for animals,” Victoria Leung, operations and marketing manager with Enterra, told the Calgary Eyeopener yesterday. “If you think about what a free-range chicken is searching for, … they’re searching for insects.”

Fish and pets could also eat the insects, she said.

Farmers that feed their animals black soldier flies appear to benefit, a 2017 study on the use of the insect as animal and human food found.

The study examined black solider fly digestion in pigs and poultry.

The insects can “reduce the mass and nutrient content of swine manure at efficiencies similar to poultry manure, with benefits for improved farm hygiene, reduced pest fly populations, and reduced nutrient pollution in runoff,” the study said.

A black soldier fly larva is about 42 per cent protein and 29 per cent fat, the study said.

Enterra’s product line includes an insect meal that can be used a soybean meal replacement, an insect oil and a horticulture fertilizer from the fly’s manure.

The company also wants to be part of a world where human insect consumption is normal.

“We would love to be able to feed our insects directly to people,” Leung told the Calgary Eyeopener. “We don’t think it’s that far-fetched, but for now we’re sticking to animal feed in North America.”

And if an Ontario farm is any example, people are already eating insects.

Entomo Farms in Norwood, Ont. provides Loblaws with cricket powder that’s sold under the President’s Choice brand.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.