The Odor-Free Homestead: Managing Smells in Your Feeder Insect Colonies
If you consider yourself a homesteader or hobby farmer, bugs are a must to have around. They can aid composting and make great feed for your chickens or other animals. But a lot of people get hung up on the smells that bugs can produce, not realizing that the smell is totally optional.
In this article, we’ll be talking about managing one of the tricky logistics of farming bugs- managing odors. Let’s dive in and figure out how to make a smell-free insect colony.
Where Insect Smell Comes From
First of all, let’s tackle the question of why bugs smell “like that”. Insect smell comes from three major things. The first is ammonia, which insects produce as part of their bodily waste. As we’ll see, this is more intense with some bugs.
The next cause is wet substrate, which can be a product of too much moisture in the air or a dirty environment (meaning too much ammonia from waste). This mostly comes down to not cleaning enough.
And go figure, if you keep your insects in a dirty environment, it’s going to produce some odor.
The last one is a buildup of uneaten food and frass. This mostly matters with composting species, but can be an issue with just about any bugs you might raise. The key here is more daily maintenance; just making sure you chuck old food as it accumulates.
Insects to Avoid
As we mentioned, not all bugs are created equal in terms of odor. Many feeder insects are relatively odorless, and others do best outside, where any smell isn’t noticeable in the first place.
When people think of “stinky bugs,” they’re almost always thinking about crickets. Crickets produce a ton of ammonia in their bodily waste, to the extent that it can cause widespread disease in a colony.
So if you want a simple solution that will solve most of the odor issues you might be worried about, just pick a different bug than crickets. Crickets are the most common feeder insect out there, but they’re not the most nutritious and can actually be one of the more difficult bugs to raise at home.
Least Smelly Feeder Insects
On the flipside, a few insects stand out as being very smell-free and easy to manage. Top of the list here is the humble dubia roach. Dubia roaches are very low-maintenance and easy to keep in general. For substrate, they do fine with egg flats, which are super easy to clean. They also don’t produce ammonia nearly as much as other species.
Worms are also great for smell, as they spend all their time in soil. They can be a little harder to keep, depending on how you set them up, but as they don’t really live in the open air, they don’t accumulate much funk.
Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) are also pretty solid on their own. They are a composting insect, so you need to be sure to change out their food and sift their frass regularly. But people normally keep them outdoors, which dissipates odors very easily.
Picking the Right Substrate
As we mentioned, substrate can be a major source of stink in your insects’ habitat. And different substrates might absorb moisture more or less, so it’s important to choose wisely. This is another reason you might choose one insect over another.
Mealworms and superworms, for example, are substrate feeders. They basically live on a bed of food, like oats or bran, which they will munch on as they grow. But this has a high potential for soaking up moisture, and if you’re not careful, it can get moldy and gross.
If you’re picking a substrate to provide bedding and mop up smells, things like vermiculite and coco coir can do a good job. But they can also be a pain to clean and might increase the humidity. Paper towels are a great simple solution in most cases as you can just remove and replace them when they’re soiled.
Moisture Control
Beyond substrate, there are a few things you can add to the colony to control humidity. One is gel water crystals. This works well with species like crickets that need drinking water, so you can keep them hydrated without an open container of water in the colony.
Other options include moisture absorbers like charcoal and desiccant packets. You should add these near the openings of the enclosure, but not inside, as they can pass from your insects to your pets or animals.
Ventilating to Solve 80% of Odor Problems
The first thing you should think about when setting up your insect colony is how to balance the humidity in the habitat with air flow. If your colony is too humid, add air holes or create a window in the lid. You can fill in large gaps with mesh to prevent escape attempts.
If your colony is a large-scale operation, you may need to add some active ventilation. Consider adding a small fan attached to a mesh window on the habitat, or constructing a shade structure so you can move the whole operation outside.
Cleaning to Reduce Odors
The other major key to keeping smells down is diligent cleaning. That means spot cleaning every day, major cleaning every couple of weeks, and flipping your colony every month or so.
Daily cleaning means checking for any damp spots in the substrate, removing dead insects (especially if you keep crickets), and getting rid of unwanted food scraps.
Every couple weeks, you should go a little further. Flip the substrate by stirring it and removing any damp material. Then add some fresh substrate to replace any you removed. Wipe down the walls and replace your insects’ food and water sources. Check for dead insects, as always.
Every month or so, it’s wise to do a deep clean. This means moving your insects into a clean, fresh habitat with new substrate and food while you dump everything out of the old one and clean it with bleach. If you keep crickets, this is necessary to prevent disease.