Finch cake

[Gerry Marantelli]

anyone tried adding insects to these bird cakes?

I once investigated drying and powdering crickets to sell as cricket flour. When you breed millions of insects you sometimes have too many of some species and you can't sell them (or keep them as they will die...) so you look for ways to store or use them later etc. Cricket flour could be a way to get longer life out of crickets - if bird people would use it in cake i may look into it again. we could even do fly pupae flour or maggot flour. Mealworm flour sells overseas for human consumption -yum.

any takers?

[jusdeb]

I have not thought about but I am now ...
Would cooking make the bugs less nutritious?

[Diane]

There probably would be a slight trade off but the convenience of the dried powdered ones could outweigh any trade off, less opposition from other family members over "livestock" being kept in fridges and freezers, length of time this could be stored.
Now that I know the maggots can be frozen that's where mine will be going. Will be filling some old ice cube trays and putting them in the freezer, ideal for daily deliveries.

[Tiaris]

There's a guy in Newcastle who sells termite cakes, fly pupae cakes & termite & pupae cakes. I reckon they would be an excellent addition. I haven't tried it myself but I imagine pupae would be easiest to use as they can be sieved clean & have a slightly more robust "shell" which would probably soften once cooked into a cake to make them more palatable than they sometimes can be if offered on their own. Definitely worth some serious experimentation.

[Tiaris]

I think the insect flours would sell very well in Australia for people to include in softfood/eggfood (or even cake) type mixtures. Perfect for the urban aviculturist who doesn't want to breed or collect their own and for others to add to the existing smorgasboard. I'd certainly give some a go & I'm a termite purist.

[Redwing]

Think there are a lot of us out there with small numbers of birds and not able to breed live food apart from mealworms who would be very interested if any bug mixes became available. Does anyone know what the contents of insectivore mix are?

[Tiaris]

I don't know for certain exactly what's in it but i think most of the protein in it is soy & meat-based powders.

[Redwing]

And here was I thinking it was crushed bugs!