Aussie Finch Forum

My maggots arrived last Wednesday, and my long-suffering wife put them in the fridge,where I found them on returning home on Thursday night.
The postpak-tube style packaging was simple and effective. The local postie approved.
Mine smelled a little of something, but definitely not like dead meat or rancidity, more like the smell of flood mud or a two week old salad.
I have dripped them out over the week since (250g between two aviaries), in which time I have had them at ambient temperature (-3 to 17 degrees).
Some of the mags pupated after about day 4, and one fly hatched before the pupae were fed out, but generally mine seem to have matured less quickly than other peoples' (perhaps the proximity of Canberra is a clue: it seems to induce a geographically-induced kind of juvenile stupidity).
The canaries were first in for a feed and the only ones I saw eating maggies on day 1, with the birds in my holding aviary being interested but not eating any.
On day 2, a pair of stray canaries was added to the holding aviary before mags went in: they went straight for them, and their example was followed (in that aviary) by redface parrot finches and zebbies, who now wait for the mags and seem to prefer them to termites.
In the big aviary, Stars, Emblemas and OBs were big takers after day 2, when they got the idea, and seemed to prefer them to termites.
Parrotfinches and Cordons seem to prefer the termites.

I haven't tried freezing them yet.

Thank you Gerry, for exciting experiments in live food.
I will be a future customer, and I hope you have many other new customers through this exercise.

Yours,
mm.

My second parcel of Mags arrived yesterday, I emptied them straight out of the cylinder into a covered tray and added
some pollard into the medium they came in. Some have been frozen and the others have gone into the fridge.
My first lot did have an issue with a bad smell and after talking with Gerry he worked out the problem and this lot are fine,
no smell and most of the birds are now eating them, I mix them with some mealworms so will be ordering both in the future.

Cheers Greg

Thanks all for the continued feedback and good to see we are making progress together.

Thanks also to those of you who have now purchased insects from our website. I have noticed a few new people only buying finch food (maggots and mealworms) and one or two of you are people who never got a free pack - so if you are from this forum and you have become a customer without receiving a free pack please let me know and i will give you extra with your next order. I would like to honor my commitment to sending something free to anyone new who may -or in this case has - become a customer.

I want you all to know that I am very grateful for your feedback as it is helping us improve the product. I also appreciate the sales (so do the endangered frogs who benefit from the money we raise). Over the years I have made several "free" offers of various kinds in other places (online , magazines, trade shows etc) and you have been easily the most pleasant and responsive group to deal with.

my thanks to all of you who have contibuted.

Received the maggots and Crickets Thursday.The crickets traveled excellent this time with 0 casualties and it was an awful day weather wise.Have put most of the maggots in the freezer as a trial,as this is what I have not tried and will feed out a few on the weekend to see how they go.There was a few more pupa then I expected so as you are already aware this may need fine tuning.The other thing that could be looked at is the medium that they came in for my purposes could be improved.It looked like bran or a course grade of pollard ? I use a fine pollard to clean them out myself,These ones that came appeared as if they had been in a wet mix posibly with dry bran added. I like to sieve the medium out to eliminate any potential ammonia being eaten in any contaminated medium,With the size of the bran ? the whole lot would go through the sieve.

Perhaps also I am cleaning out my maggots more thoroughly then needed to insure no chance of bacteria ammonia contamination ????

Hi Gerry. Recieved my free maggots 10 days ago, on a Thursday so took 2 days to get here. All in good condition all be it a bit smelly. Quite a few pupae in with the maggots but after a couple of days the finches were happiliy tucking into them as well as the maggots.I put the container of pupae and half the maggots in the freezer to see how they went. I found that although the maggots appeared to freeze well, looked plump and normal, after defrosting them most turned a grey/black colour and the birds refused to eat them. I am wondering if i did something wrong.The maggots were frozen in a small plastic container with very little air. I havent fed the frozen pupae out yet as i'm trying to get the refridgerated maggots/pupae out before they hatch. Canyou tell me Gerry how long you would expect maggots to last in the fridge, and is there something i should be doing re freezing.
Thanks for your help and I appreciate the free sample. If I could get the maggots to survive a reasonable time in the fridge then i will gladly buy from you on a regular basis.
Tony

I think that second day in transit may be the turning point . I have been reading peoples replies and everyone who got theres the next day had no comments of odour or flies .

Mine was a two day trip and mine smelt a bit off , about a dozen flies in the pupae and quite some pupae in the maggots , quite a few more the next day . Although I did refrigerate perhaps I needed to put them in a colder part of the fridge .

The maggots and pupae though were still healthy and wriggling and the pupae were eaten readily by my Princess's while the maggots were ignored /

I saw no need to improve the packaging , it all arrived in good order ....

Would the weather while in transit have an effect on the bugs ?

Also would mini mealworms travel better over the 2 days ? These may be a better option for me .

remeber once frozen the maggots are dead. once you thaw them they are dead and they will go black after a few hours as that is what dead maggots do. Frozen insects of any kind should be used fresh immediately to be fed out, not left all day in a feed bowl as they will begin to decompose. think of it like any meat - you would not eat it if it was left out too long - probably not a good idea for the birds either.

we are still experimenting with fridging maggots but i think 2 weeks is easily achieved. obviously when they come out they are alive and can stay longer in the feed bowl so fridging has a distinct advantage.

Hi Gerry,

Have been reading these posts with interest (and not yet a buyer or sampler though) and was wondering if you could provide a listing to show the areas where the samples went to (town / state) and the time frame of postage to each.

Were the samples sent out in a medium and then in say overnight post??

I have found most items coming from anywhere to where I live (neat Toowoomba QLD) generally takes at least 2 days minimum to arrive from anywhere except Brisbane and would expect that the warmer days approaching would have an effect on samples in transit. Have you looked at packing in a dry ice type cooler for posting in say a small esky for those further afield??

Sorry for all the questions and hope you can iron out all the bugs (no pun intended LOL) to suit all of us as much as possible as it looks like you are onto a winner.

Darryl

My free maggots are now almost two weeks old and still alive in he fridge, with almost none having pupaed and most "waking up" on demand. However they have not been taken nearly so readily by the birds, not sure why. I'm away for work for the next couple of days and have left containers of mixed feed that do not contain maggots just in case there is some issue the birds know I'm not there to check. A new shipment arrived last week, I'll use them this week to see if there is a difference between the fridged for 1 week vs 2 weeks. One thing I did note, even though fridged the whole time the 2 week tube was a whole lot smellier than when it arrived.

If its smelling not right there is no way i would be feeding it to the birds.