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The Smallest Small Livestock

6K views 18 replies 14 participants last post by  velacreations 
#1 ·
The Smallest Small Livestock
Think about this post seriously, especially those who do not have the space for other protein rich livestock. If you ever need to do this food source, you may need it badly. It doesn’t hurt to know how.
Rising Insect food
The thought of eating insects may be very unsettling to most Americans, however, in many cultures insects and other arthropods have been eaten as a staple. Arthropods and other invertebrates that are commonly eaten, such as crab, lobster, shrimp, and escargot (snails) are accepted. Why wouldn't arthropods like insects or even worms be just as good? They are a good source of protein, easy to find, take up less space than even rabbits. Their nutritional value is equal to if not better than our traditional meat choices. Which insect is the most nutritious? Which would be the easiest to rear? In a true survival situation the time and costs in rearing insects or labor to catch insects must be considered. One thing to keep in mind in hunting any animal you are going to eat is to never expend more energy in capturing it than it is going to give back to you upon consumption.
First of all, are they nutritious enough to bother eating in the first place? Well, they don’t stack up too badly. Earthworms are an excellent source of protein, reportedly 82% protein and the essential oil of Earthworms is an Omega 3. Most insects, like grasshoppers, are high in nutritional content. Grubs are high in fat and nutrition.
Nutritional Value of Various Insects per 100 grams
Insect……………. Protein (g) Fat (g) Carbs Calcium (mg) Iron (mg)
Water Beetle……. 19.8 8.3 2.1 43.5 13.6
Red Ant…………. 13.9 3.5 2.9 47.8 5.7
Silk Worm Pupae 9.6 5.6 2.3 41.7 1.8
Dung Beetle…….. 17.2 4.3 .2 30.9 7.7
Cricket…………. 12.9 5.5 5.1 75.8 9.5
Small Grasshopper 20.6 6.1 3.9 35.2 5.0
Large Grasshopper 14.3 3.3 2.2 27.5 3.0
June Beetle……… 13.4 1.4 2.9 22.6 6.0
Caterpillar……… 6.7 N/A N/A N/A 13.1
Termite………….. 14.2 N/A N/A N/A 35.5
Weevil………….. 6.7 N/A N/A N/A 13.1
Beef (Lean)……... 27.4 N/A N/A N/A 3.5
Fish (Broiled Cod) 28.5 N/A N/A N/A 1.0
What types of critters do people eat?
The Japanese still eat insects such as: boiled wasp larvae, aquatic insect larvae, fried rice-field grasshoppers & fried cicada. American Indians known to feast on ants, crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, weevil larvae, and beetle larvae. Many tropical peoples eat termites in quantity. I was surprised to find how many insects are being studied as direct human food. We will can cover only a few.
First, how do we catch these little chunks of squirming protein anyway?
Observe when insects are least active, especially if they are a type of insect that is particularly active, like a grasshopper. Or when they become active and visible like earthworms on a warm, wet summer night.
1. Termites are collected by placing a bowl of water under a light source. The termites are attracted to the light and will then fall into the water. The queen termites are considered a delicacy.
2. Crickets can be collected from soil tunnels which they build. A line of Indians would drive crickets across a field into trench with lightly covered with dry grass stocks. Then they would ignite the grass and roast them on the spot.
3. Grasshoppers crawl to the top of tall grass blades during the night and become very dormant and still. They are most easily captured in the early morning, while still dormant, and can be plucked by hand or swatted with a twig and gathered into a basket.
4. June beetles are strongly attracted to night lights and can be caught by hand when land near it.
5. Grubs are found underground near compost piles, rotting logs or stump roots. They are easily dug.
6. Methods of "calling up" worms out of the ground, a process also known as Grunting. Take a seasoned piece of wood, about four feet long. It should be in the shape of a wedge, about two inches wide at the top and ½ inch wide at the bottom. Pound this wedge three feet into the ground. To create vibrations down the wedge and into the ground, rub a piece of tapered steel across the wood, just like you’re playing a violin. Some people make their “grunting bows” out of wood. These bows have lots of raised notches that vibrate when gently rubbed across the surface of the wedge.
7. An other method is to drive two metal rods into the ground, about two feet apart. To each rod, hook up jumper cables connected to a car battery. Worms are said to just jump out of the ground.

What do you need to raise them yourself?
The only equipment you'll need is a rearing container, a tight-fitting cover, and the insect's food. Some insects need one or two other items, but they are easy to make or inexpensive to buy. Good rearing containers are wide-mouth jars, gallon jugs, or terrariums Glass is best because you can easily watch the activity inside and it is easy to clean.
Cover the container with a small sheet of glass or a piece of old bed sheet held down by a rubber band. Nylon window screen works well also. Choose your cover by the amount of humidity the insects need: glass holds moisture in; a screen or cloth lets it out. Most insects need a little drinking water. Fill a small vial with water and plug it with a cotton wick; then lay the vial on its side and the in sects will drink from the wet cotton. Incidentally, a ring of Vaseline around the inside top of the container deters climbing insects from scaling the walls when the cover is off.
Most insects raised indoors grow best if the temperature is 75-80°F, some like it even warmer. You can place a lamp near for warmth or move the container itself near a bright window during the day. Because of the possibilities of diseases or cannibalism, do not crowd your colony. Remove excess insects or divide colonies that get too large. Periodically you will want to start a new colony to give it a fresh habitat and retain its vigor.
Meal Worms
The yellow meal worm, Tenebrio molitor, is quite easy raised and recommended for the beginner . The adults are a hard-shelled beetle, and the female lays about 275 eggs in her life time. Small tough-skinned larvae hatch from the eggs and grow to about l-inch long. These worms molt 9 to 20 times (which is a lot for insects) before they are fully grown. Larvae grow up in 4-6 months if the temperature is near 80°F. The quiescent pupal stage comes next, and later, the adult beetle. The adult lives about 2-3 months. After your colony gets going, you'll have all four insect stages at the same time. The large larval stage, before they mature into beetles, is the choice eating stage. If you wish to make insect protein a regular part of your diet, you can grow enough mealworms by start a large colony of 5000 or more.
Simply take a flat plastic tub with a lid, fill it with an inch or so of oats or other grain, put in a slice of potato, carrot or other hard vegetable as a source of water, and then deposit your mealworms!
Make sure to replace the slice of potato fairly frequently, otherwise you will be growing mold instead of mealworms. Meal worms eat many foods, but wheat bran with a little dry brewer's yeast added makes a staple diet. They will grow on wheat bran alone, but the yeast makes bigger larvae. Put 3-6 inches of food in the bottom of the rearing container.
Humidity is important, so put a few slices of potato or carrot on top of the food, and replace them when dried up. Be sure to maintain the right humidity because too little will prevent growth and too much will make the food moldy. Also add a piece or two of crumpled paper toweling for the insects to crawl on and for the larvae to pupate. Thin the colony when crowded or the adults will eat the eggs. However, unlike crickets, mealworms are unlikely to escape unless you are hideously careless.
Raising Crickets
Many kinds of crickets can be reared indoors. The black field cricket and the straw-colored house cricket are excellent subjects and easy to collect. The male cricket makes the familiar chirping sound. You can tell the female by her long, sword like egg laying apparatus. The female lays her eggs in sand and the nymphs appear 3-4 weeks later. At 80°F the nymphs become adults in about 2 months; at 90°F they grow twice as fast.
Crickets are quite easy to raise and prepare, and the main problem is making sure that they don't escape. Crickets can be kept in any fairly large container with high sides and a tight fitting lid. An aquarium or large glass container with a screen cover is a good choice. Place 3-4 inches of dry sand or potting soil in the bottom of the container and put three small shallow cups (about 1/2 in. high) on the sand. To one cup, add water and a cotton ball so the crickets won't drown. Keep it wet. To the second, add slightly moist (not wet) sand this will be where the crickets deposit their eggs. Place small bits of food in the third cup, not on the sand. Crickets eat almost anything edible, but very small nymphs prefer soft food such as vegetable scraps fruits, apples, or lettuce. Grains are good food for the larger crickets. Discard moldy food and clean the jar occasionally. Put several egg cartons or some crumpled paper in the aquarium for the crickets to roost on and for hiding places. Add 50-100 crickets. Mist the potting soil lightly every few days, and make sure that the crickets always have fresh food. You can probably start harvesting the crickets within a few months. Crickets are escape artists! It is a good idea to put a rock on top of the lid to ensure that you don't accidentally knock it off.
Flour Beetles
The flour beetle, Tribolium confusum is one of the easiest insects to rear indoors. However, they are small and may require a hand lens for close-up study. All the four stages of the insect live in flour or other grains. The female beetles lay their eggs in the flour and the small whitish larvae emerge and shed their skins 6-11 times before growing up fully. In time the small white pupae slowly turn to brownish beetles less than 1/8-inch long. The adults live long; some last from 6 months to 3 years. Their life cycle is about 40 days long when grown at 80°F and 75 percent relative humidity.
Rearing simply requires putting some white flour in the rearing vessel and adding the insects. Whole wheat flour and cornmeal are also suitable foods. Place 2-6 inches of flour in the container and add the insects. Disturb them as little as possible because they emit a slightly disagree able odor when stirred up. Be sure to thin the colony if it gets too crowded.
Earthworms
The small red worms (Rumbricus Rubellus) are ideal for composting, giving you with vermiculite in exchange for your kitchen and garden trash. The red worms multiply in such a rate that a healthy colony will double it's numbers every month. Grass and leaves could be used as bedding, but food either in the form of table scarps or manure was also needed. Worms can live off of just cardboard or compost but natural material like leaves, very wet, is better than the shredded newspaper, wet, wrung out, and fluffed up. The rule for feeding is only use the freshest of manure and organic waste, feed again when approx two thirds of the last feed has been converted to vermi-compost (the stage just prior to the darker and finer vermi-cast). Also if you are using other than manures, then everything should be ground to the smallest particle size to allow the bacteria to access all the material. Take a pumpkin and grind it and in a weeks time it will have been consumed big pieces will not.
When you harvest the worms rapidly replicate themselves but, when you leave too much cast behind, the mechanism for cocoon burst and egg creation is switched off. So harvest when approx two thirds of the last feed has been converted to vermi-compost and replication will be doubling every thirty days. Strip stock when cast appears, resets the pits and the growth rate remains near maximum..
No mating signs means the food is insufficient or the pH is wrong, as pH is the next biggest thing that goes wrong after too much cast. Pay attention to pH first or the wrong bacteria will grow and the worms can not use them to break down the food first, next keep moisture levels high and constant, So add large quantities of AG lime to keep the pH up to around 6.5 to 7.5 ideally. See Mother Earth articles for more information

Preparing the Insects
Mealworms
They need to be starved for 24 hours, to purge their guts. To separate mealworms from any attached food, place a handful of them in a colander and gently toss then remove any dead worms. Store 24hrs then wash the remaining live insects under cool water. Place the worms on paper towels and pat dry. The mealworms are ready to be cooked or frozen for later use. You don't really have to clean mealworms, though if you want, you can chop off their heads.
Crickets
Crickets can be placed in a refrigerator or other cold place, to slow them down before attempting to wash them. To do so with crickets, pour them all into a colander and cover it quickly with a piece of wire screening or cheesecloth. Rinse them, then dry them by shaking the colander until all the water drains.
The Montegnards would catch crickets put them in a container which had a 2 inch strip of oil painted on the inside. The oil kept the little buggers inside the jar. The little guys would hang out inside the jar for about 24 hours. This gave the crickets a chance to empty their intestinal tracts (the cause of some bitterness in the flavor). After they were "clean" they were dumped into a cloth bag. Cricket's heads, hind legs, and wing cases can be removed according to personal preference since cricket legs tend to get stuck in your teeth
Grass hoppers
Grass hoppers are prepared in the same way as crickets but it is best to pull the legs off before the cooking.
June beetle larvae
June beetle larvae are quite large and live in compost piles or rotting logs & stumps. The end of the abdomen, which contains the guts, is removed before the larvae are washed and fried. The Chinese simply feed them rice for a day or so until purge their guts.
June beetle
Beetles may be rinsed in water and have their wings removed before cooking.
Flour Beetles
The beetles and large stage larvae are less than 1/8-inch long and live in flour. You can sift them out with a fine sieve or simply use flower and all in your cooking.
Earthworms
Earthworms can be given a Water Purge, but Cleaning and Rinsing are necessary. After capturing them, drop them into clean, potable water for a few minutes. The worms will naturally purge or wash themselves out, after which you can eat them raw. Cutting small worms, Pressing worm pieces to remove dirt and sand, Further vigorous pressing of worm segments, Many times during the above processes the worm segments must be rinsed thoroughly in running water.

How would you cook them?
Simple to fancy apparently. Here are some.
Crickets
Crickets are roasted over a fire or hot coals. You may want to remove the legs, wings, and ovipositor of crickets after dry roasting them. If they have not been purged, the guts should be removed before eating.
The Montegnards dumped them into a cloth bag which was then hung by a fire to dry (cook slowly) or left in the pot and heated in situ on a slow fire. When dried they were munched as a tasty snack or used in rice meals.
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers are prepared and eaten in a manner similar to that for crickets, but there are more crunchy.
Termites
Termites are roasted over a fire or hot coals or fried in a pot. After cooking, the wings are removed and salt is added to taste.
June Beetle and Larvae
The Hochung and other Wisconsin tribes especially prized these insects for nourishing the sick. They where slow roasted at low temperatures, mashed and made into broth. The Chinese battered and deep fried the grubs and called them “Grass Shrimp”.
Flour Beetles
The beetles and large stage larvae can sift them out and dry roasted or added to soup or simply use flower they live in and all in your bread. I have read where the old time sailors often considered them tastier than the hard tack they infested.

PREPARING DRY-ROASTED INSECTS (applies to crickets, grasshoppers, mealworms and most insects).
Take cleaned insects out of the freezer. Spread them out on a paper-towel covered baking sheet. Bake at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 1-2 hours, until the insects the insects are fairly brittle and crush easily can be easily crushed with a spoon or ground them till they are about consistency of wheat germ. Dry-roasted insect flour can be included in most any recipe such as cookies, your favorite bread recipe or added to a stew with other edibles or soups. You can even strain out the solids and drink the broth for nutritional value.
Earthworms
Generally they are fried up crispy or chopped fine for soup.
 
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#4 ·
ones you have tried are?
about 3 ounces of protein a day....a lot of insects....doable?
They where taken from Food insects that are actually eaten. I have recipes (mostly Japanese and English) and there are restaurants in the US where you can get them.

I have eaten several types and, cooked crunchy, you would not know they where even there. As to 3 oz, that would depend on the scale of production. Earth worms are raised in quantity to feed fish ponds basically the turn vegetable scraps, grass, leaves (even fish scraps) in high quality protein and leave a high quality fertilizer. Pretty much a win win.

Think of a situation where you are in an apartment and can't rise even rabbits. Grain weevils and meal worms will even come to if you have food stores. At the very least they could be a protein supplement which is the way most cultures view them.
 
#6 ·
i don't think you need that much protien, im no expert, but from what i've heard you need 26 grams of protien, more can be too much... i don't remember exactly where i heard it, but i don't eat much meat, and have been living energeticly for years... doesn't go to say that i don't have some underlying problem that remains unoticed, like many vegitarians do, but in a survival situation, we do what we can, and realy don't need as much as we are used to eating, unless we work hard every day, but there is no need.

Ration your energy as well as your food, work slower and eat less at a time more often so as to get the most out of your food.
 
#18 ·
The other issue is that insects are not primary (producer) food; they are secondary (consumer) food. They eat more than you get from them. Granted, they often eat things that we can not, but whereas plants make food, insects do not. They have to get their nutrients and calories from something already alive.

There are plenty of plants and plant combinations that provide whole protein (all of the essential amino acids [those that the body does not make for itself]). Garlic and tomato are such a combination, and goji leaves and berries are whole single sources.
 
#15 ·
Cleaning Snails for eating:
I got this idea from watching a Gordon Ramsey cooking show, here's the clip:
http://youtu.be/-ju7_ZORsZw?t=2m
I'll sum up his method to clean the snails (cleaning is a neccessity because they may have toxins in them).
First, give them no food for three days and wash them regularly.
On the third day, give them a carrot and leave them until you see their droppings turn orange.
Rinse them and put them in a sealed container in the fridge to make them go dormant.
When you're ready, plop them in boiling water and cook (he doesn't say how long, but I would guess 5 minutes). After that, drain them, and then sautee them in a pan.

I like the idea of eating snails because during the rainy season they're all over the place, and this method of cleaning seems fairly intuitive and straight forward.
 
#17 ·
[ I'll sum up his method to clean the snails (cleaning is a neccessity because they may have toxins in them).
First, give them no food for three days and wash them regularly.
On the third day, give them a carrot and leave them until you see their droppings turn orange..
Been raising Apple snails ( shells shape of apples)for years( in 55 gal drum). IF you collect them wild( down here, look around lakes, they lay their eggs on the stalks of Cattails and concrete walls, etc, at night, you'll see them all along concrete walls[they come out of the water], just pluck 'em). To clean, put them in a bucket of water(exchange for clean every day) for 3 days with no food, they'll be ready. Sautéed in butter and scallions with a splash of lemon is heavenly delicious.
 
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