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Feeder Flies

We chose flies as the primary source of food for our spiders more than 25 years because they are incredibly prolific, have short generation times and one of the highest acceptance rate by a wide range of spiders and other predators. Unlike many other types of insects, they do not have defensive secretions that can be annoying or toxic to spiders and they feed on a wide range of substrates, so they can raised on diverse media and will grow well on diets supplemented with almost any kind of nutrient.

Many studies have shown that nutrition is very important to the predators like spiders and, in nature, they get everything they need by taking by taking a wide variety of prey. This was not very practical for us, so we chose to enhance the diet of the flies and developed some very simple media that gave us much better spider growth and fertility and much less cannibalism than conventional formulae.

Fruit Flies

Fruit flies are small flies, which feed on fermenting fruit and other plant materials in nature. Early to late instar maggots and flies are used to small, early instars spiderlings, scorpions and centipedes and others have been using them for small mantids, herps, fish and even to prepare mashes for rescued hummingbird hatchlings.

Houseflies

This is the common non-biting, but often annoying housefly, which typically feeds on rotting waste materials in nature. Fortunately, they do not have to reared on smelly diets and will not transmit disease if not exposed. Some have even raised sterile flies for use in medicine.

Early to late instar housefly maggots, pupae and adults are used to feed most most of our animals and are even used as a supplement for large tarantulas. They are favorites for many mantids, chameleons, frogs and birds, some chickens we were raising and the wrens raiding our fly rearing trailer during nesting season.

Maggots may even be able to improve human nutrition. A number of studies have shown that maggots can be valuable but inexpensive, protein-rich supplement for chickens in impoverished regions.

Documents

Fruit Fly Culture Techniques

This describes a simple method for raising fruit flies and harvesting maggots and pupae for use as feeders.

Housefly Kit

This is our instruction sheet for our housefly kit, a starter kit for feeding and breeding houseflies.