Codling moth larvae as livefood

[Tiaris]

I recently bought some pollard for my mealworms & the bag was clodded up with coddling moth. So, I have been sieving it out & freezing the fines to kill off the larvae/eggs so I can use this for new mealworm colonies (tried zapping them in the microwave but this doesn't kill them all for some reason). I tipped the clods into a kitty litter tray & left it in the sun in my birdroom for a few minutes while I took the containers of sieved pollard to the freezer. When I returned the heat of the sun had the larvae trying to escape their medium & crawl out so I've been putting the kitty litter tray of infested clods on the floor of an aviary in the sun where my Wrens have young & they work it over every few minutes for a beakful of larvae which are fed straight to the young'ns.
Also had a heavily infested bit of pollard in the bottom of a feed bag a couple of weeks ago which I put on the aviary floor & opened it right up & the wrens busily caught the emerging moths. This same part-bag was opened up each day over 5 days for half an hour or so at a time with a similar amount of moths released each time until it was found by black ants & the supply was killed.

[spanna]

I've always wondered if there was some use for them besides target practice and increasing blood pressure. I only buy small amounts (4kg ie one months supply) of red panicum at a time, and as this is stored in open bins at the shop it has a fair number of larvae in the small remains at the end of a month. May have to pop it in for the jacarinis when they're released after quarantine...

[Danny]

They ae pretty simple to 'purposely' breed and the yield can be quite good. I have the breeding technique in the text of my upcoming lizard book if anybody wants to pm me for a snippet.

[Mortisha]

Codling moths are a pest of apples and pears growing on trees, they don’t get into stored products or storage containers.

What you most probably have is Indian meal moth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianmeal_Moth

Sticking a bag of seed in the freezer is the best way to get rid of them.

Both are nontoxic and OK to feed to birds.

[Tiaris]

Given the lower mothtrap yields in cooler weather a regular culture of these ones makes an ideal cool weather alternative moth source (plus the larvae). And yes, Jacarinis love them too Spanna.

[finchbreeder]

Sounds like someone should talk real nice to Danny about an article for the Newsletter. Just the bit about moth culture. Wouldn't want to take too much of the book. With the promise of a free add as a sweetener.
LML

[E Orix]

You may be referring to Flour Moths,there are two or three different moths as well.
Flour moth as far as I am aware is the one that weaves sticky tubes that the bran or such sticks to and if there is enough
then they will create a silken mat.If you squeeze a grub out it should be a dirty white colour with a brown cap from memory.
These grubs are excellent type of live food.
In the old days when we bred Mealworms in colonies(beetles and worms together)flour moth was the enemy but sifting the eggs
away from the beetles the problem has dimminished greatly.

[Tiaris]

Yes thats them - flour moth, Indian or lesser Waxmoth. Most people call them codling moth even though the aren't the apple infesting variety.

[E Orix]

Don't get mixed up with Waxmoth and Waxworm.Totally different insects.