Housefly (Musca Domestica) rearing

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Jay

Jay

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Location
Fairfield, CA, U.S.A.
In the past I have raised house flies (Musca Domestica). I was able to raise them on the Gainesville Housefly diet (basically rabbit food and a little bit of cornmeal mixed with water). It turned out to be a much more difficult process than I had originally anticipated. The adults and the larvae had to be kept in separate containers and it stunk. Has anyone had luck with raising house flies? Has anyone been able to keep both the adults and larvae in the same container? If so, what do you use for the medium and what kind of container do you use to keep them going?

In the mean time I am trying to establish a culture of meal moths until I can figure out this housefly thing.

Thanks for any help or advice you might give.

 
I would be very, very, very, very,very,very,very,very cautious about starting a mealmoth culture. The things found their way into my house on their own, and infested. I would put little traps near the culture to try and keep escapees under control.

Once they get out, there will be no getting rid of them completely.

Just thought I should warn you, even though you probably already know.

Thanks,

Andrew

 
Hey Andrew,

I grew up in Northern California (Cupertino- Near San Jose). I know that in California meal moths are very difficult to get rid of. They get into everything (Jiffy muffin mix, cereal, pancake mix, nuts, etc.). Here in Northern Colorado everything dies off in the winter and I am sure that my mantids get tired of fruit flies and spiders (the only thing that lives through the winter). I am keeping them very well contained until I can find a better alternative. I just don't like to give my midsized mantids crickets if they are close to moulting. I have had crickets attack mantids and chew on oothecas in the past (when I was a kid).

Anyone else know about raising houseflies?

 
-Infinity

Yes- the larger curly winged flies are genetically altered musca domestica (house flies) and they will smell. There is a gentleman in Bristol who raises musca domestica (the curly winged variety). I have raised them before and you may find that they take more work to raise than your mantids. The man I mentioned who lives in Bristol has an online shop and he has an informative website on raising them at http://www.jangala.co.uk/Curly%20winged%20...e%20webpage.htm

He sells his own food for them at http://www.jangala.co.uk/livefoods_home.htm

I raised mine by using a rabbit food and cornmeal diet (4 to 1 ratio). You wet the rabbit food and corn meal until it is just moist- musca domestica do not need as much moisture as fruit flies! In the container with the adult flies I put a little bit of milk on a tissue in a milk cap. The flies lay their eggs around the tissue then you put the eggs, covered by the tissue in the container with the rabbit food-corn meal mixture and watch those maggots grow! The problem I had was getting the humidity for the container with the larva just right. Sometimes the medium would mold and sometimes it would dry out. If the tissue that you put in with the maggots starts to smell rotten try using milk-water instead of pure milk. PM me if you have any other questions or just contact the guy who owns the Jangala website. His website is quite informative.

By the way- those of you in the U.S. wishing to start up this species should know that the FDA has no regulations restricting Musca Domestica import because they are a native species. However when I got mine I had a letter enclosed from the FDA explaining this and it took almost a month to get to me- yuck!

I have found it MUCH easier to raise mealmoths than curly winged flies though mealmoths cannot be allowed to escape their enclosure; they can live off of almost any food substance and are considered a pest in most locales! Now if only someone could genetically alter a mealmoth to make a curly winged mealmoth- that would be great!

 
Thanks for the info Jay. Please let me know when you have some pupae for sale! What a relief for me not to chase after those escape flies again and more important my wife's unfailing complaints everytime a fly escape!!

 
Oh- I used to sell them Yen- but they were WAY too much maintenance for their worth. On another topic- I am married too- and I know what you mean about escaping flies. Staying married is one reason I don't raise the curly winged musca domestica anymore. (=

By the way- you have a good looking family. I will have to add a picture of my family sometime to the “other discussions”. For now, there is a picture of my family on my website's main page.

 
Here's something I did recently that seemed to work. A while ago I had some rotten potatoes so I threw them in my back yard. Well, I happened to see one the other day and I could smell it from a distance. I opened it up with a stick and found that it was completely brown, stinky and wet inside. I left it for a while and came back to discover the flies were attracted to it. So I decided to cut a 2 liter plastic soda container in half and invert the upper half to make a fly trap. I put some corn bread at the very bottom (My family happened to have a ton of it that was in danger of going bad) and put the rotten potato on top of the corn bread in the trap. I caught about 6 flies in one day and the next day I noticed ovioposting. Now I have a whole bunch of maggots of different flies as well as the original flies in the container. No molding has occurred (yet) and everyone is happy (well, at least I am). When it is warm outside I leave the trap out there but I bring it in at nights. Anyway- if this continues to work I may have found a viable way to raise houseflies (wish me luck).

-Jay

 
i hadnt seen this thread before, thank you for posting that link, it's fascinating.

 
You're welcome Julian.

Another update: Here's another thing I have done recently to breed houseflies. I have been noticing that the fruit fly cultures that are no longer usable smell really bad. After thinking about it for a while I decided to put it outside. That day I had quite a few house flies climbing into the container and laying eggs inside my culturing container. I then put the cover back on the container and put it close to some heat and the next day there were larvae all over. So if you culture your own fruit flies don't throw those containers away! :p

I use an oatmeal, applesauce, banana & vinegar recipe with vitamins & sometimes include baby cereal. However, I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the recipe as much as the offensive odor that attracts the flies.

 
Jay Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 11:07 pm Post subject: Oh- I used to sell them Yen- but they were WAY too much maintenance for their worth. On another topic- I am married too- and I know what you mean about escaping flies. Staying married is one reason I don't raise the curly winged musca domestica anymore. (=

By the way- you have a good looking family. I will have to add a picture of my family sometime to the “other discussions”. For now, there is a picture of my family on my website's main page.
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Thanks Jay, you have a nice looking family yourself too! I am way behind you in head count that's for sure!

Anyway, i still couldn't find anyone selling flightless housefly pupae. I contacted http://www.azdr.com and get a reply from them that they are way behind the order. Let me know when you find one or if you decided to get back into flightless housefly business again. I don't mind paying you a visit in Colorado!

 
Thanks Yen,

I am actually going to be moving to Tucson this summer to get ready for my student teaching this fall. Colorado is really nice in the summers and unfortunately we will be moving to Tucson around July/August. Thanks for the thought though. I want to visit someone else who raises mantids too. That would be really enjoyable!

As for the houseflies- it sounds like Ian is trying to get them too. Perhaps if the two of you don't find any in the UK someone else in Europe will have them. I really doubt that lab scientists would have gone through all the work to make those things and then just let them all die out.

-Jay

 
Another update: Here's another thing I have done recently to breed houseflies. I have been noticing that the fruit fly cultures that are no longer usable smell really bad. After thinking about it for a while I decided to put it outside. That day I had quite a few house flies climbing into the container and laying eggs inside my culturing container. I then put the cover back on the container and put it close to some heat and the next day there were larvae all over. So if you culture your own fruit flies don't throw those containers away! :p
Click to expand...
I know this is a really old topic, but I think I'm going to try that!

 
I have since tried the fruitfly container method and it does not seem to do much- perhaps if you added some ground up dog food to it?

Here are a few more links that you might find interesting.

This first one is an informative page with a rearing technique I would not recommend- I just would not use any raw meat in rearing flies.

http://www.adcham.com/html/insects/insects-fly-rearing.html

And here is the method by which those of us who are too cheap to buy flies can obtain them, and their eggs, on a warm day.

http://insected.arl.arizona.edu/flyrear.htm

In order to have the fly trap work well I would recommend tuna juice (from canned tuna) and a milk cap full of milk added to several tissue papers and put in a pop bottle as recommended in the above webpage. Then I would spray it with water every couple of days. Of course- this does not work very well unless it is warm enough for flies to be out and about. The nice thing about this also is that by trapping flies you get a variety of sizes of pupaes and flies in the end.

Here are only a few of the things about breeding houseflies that make it different from breeding fruitflies:

1. They NEED to be kept around 80 degrees or above. If they are not the larvae will not thrive and die off and stench will soon occur.

2. They NEED good ventilation soon after the larvae hatch. (But kept somewhat moist before hatching)

3. They DO NOT need to be kept very moist throughout their life. If it is too moist it will smell like fresh dog poop.

4. They SHOULD NOT have an excess of medium in their container- if there is too much extra medium for the population of larvaes it will stink.

5. They DO need some sort of fiber (wood chips, ground up rabbit food, etc.) on top of their medium to mix with the medium. If there is no fiber the larvae tend to suffocate.

I found that the method for breeding suggested by Spider Pharm (link is on this thread), with some alterations, works well for me in breeding more than enough flies for my mantises. If I ever get down to only spending 2 hours a week on the whole thing I will definitely tell everyone how I do it! :)

 
Perhaps something that we should have added to our housfly rearing instructions:

We use "Blue Streak Fly Bait" to control escaped flies. This is available at many feed stores for controlling flies in and around horse stables and etc.

This product smells much worse than soured fly culture, but you only few crystals in a small disposable dish are needed for a typical room. We usually cover the cystals with water and place the dishes in well-lit locations.

Read this instructions carefully. This stuff is not not intended for residential use and should be kept away from food and out of reach of children and pets.

Other types of baits and bait stations are available at feed stores and the non-toxic sticky fly strips can also work well in some situations. Just remember to keep them out of walk-ways, to keep them out of your hair.

Chuck

Spider Pharm

 
All of you will have to excuse me for continuing to add things to this thread, but I feel that it is a way in which I can keep a log of information about what can be done with houseflies. If you are to raise houseflies and desire to have flies that do not "fly" then here is a technique I have used. I have a cubic 10" by 10" plastic container. I put pantyhose on top and put all of the fly materials in the container. I tie one of the legs up and cut the other leg out to put my hand through. Every couple of days I stretch out the pantyhose and let the flies that can "fly" out. Over time I have bred my flies so that when they hatch roughly 1/3-1/2 cannot fly. Some have VERY SMALL wings while others have fully grown wings but just do not fly. If I kept this up I could probably breed them until the majority that hatched would not fly. The trick to it is that I don't know which flies are not able to fly because of a bad hatch from the pupae or because they just can't fly. It makes me think that I would have more promise from the flies that have fully formed wings then the ones whose wings did not fully unravel.

However, until someone comes up with a way to have the whole housefly lifecycle take place with one container with one medium source and a constant humidity I will probably take an extended break from my housefly rearing.

 
I know this is resurecting an old thread, but I have been reading and thinking and trying to come up with a descent housefly culture... since it is already in the mid 70's outside during the day, the garage is once again a suitable place for maintaining feeder insects.

Anyway, even though the flies themselves are pretty cheap, with shipping charges the cost for fly pupae is rather much for how long they last, I need a practical way to produce my own. While Dr. Brown at www.jangala.co.uk certainly has a wonderful article about how to go about it, he also keeps the most important secret the one that he sells. Since shipping his culture medium from the UK is kinda defeating the whole purpose, my other option would be to follow in his steps and those of Jay and come up with a suitable meduim of my own. I have gone down the road of dogfood, and it worked, but was nausiating to even get near. I have given alot of though to Jay's comments about rotten potatoes, old FF cultures, and sour milk soaked paper towels, and I came to the conclusion that a large potato mix FF culture made with a high concentration of powdered milk and yeast should provide the protein needed to sustain the maggots. I'll be acting on my conclusions very soon and I will provide my results accordingly.

Any input form you guys would certainly be helpfull.

 

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