Birds seek insects. Insects hold birds.
Whole dried black soldier fly larvae, scattered through cover crops, straw bales and along the feed rides. Around 40% protein, naturally rich in highly digestible calcium, and instinctively palatable to pheasants, red-leg partridges and English partridges. Sold by the million larvae, delivered by the pallet.
"I thought it was another gimmick. The difference is where the birds are."
Dickie C · Wiltshire
Free trial bag on request · 07707 315 943
Birds wander. Then they don't come back.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has run a beat. The poults go out, and for two or three weeks they are either settling or they are leaving. The ones that push beyond the wood are picked up. The ones that cross the boundary belong to somebody else.
Wheat holds a bird at the feeder for as long as it takes to feel full, and then it is done. It answers hunger without giving the bird any reason to stay in the place it was fed.
Pheasants and partridges are insectivorous by design. A poult spends its first weeks hunting invertebrates, not grain, and the instinct does not switch off at release. Scatter whole dried larvae through the cover and along the rides and the bird is doing what it is built to do: working the ground, finding something worth finding, and returning to the place it found it.
Protein for feather. Calcium for frame. Healthy oils for condition.
Instinctively palatable
Whole larvae at 18 to 22mm, golden, with a nutty smell birds find from yards away. The bird works the ground for them and returns to where it found them.
Feather, frame and flight
Around 40% crude protein with a complete amino acid profile, high in lysine and methionine. Feather is keratin, and keratin is protein.
Bone and egg
2.5 to 3% calcium in a highly digestible form and over thirty times the level found in mealworms, and among the highest of any farmed insect.
Condition through hard weather
28 to 32% crude fat, of which 35 to 45% is lauric acid, a fatty acid with recognised antimicrobial properties.
Published work feeding black soldier fly larvae to laying pheasants recorded a higher number of eggs, better albumen quality, and a tendency toward improved chick survival through the first fortnight after hatch. That study used larvae meal within a compound ration rather than whole larvae scattered on the ground, so it is indicative rather than directly comparable — but it is independent, and it points the same way.
There was always a reason keepers hung a rabbit.
Ask an older keeper why a rabbit was sometimes left hanging in the barns and he will tell you it was for the maggots. They dropped, and the birds were insatiable for them. It was not waste and it was not sentiment. It was the most concentrated insect protein anyone could put in front of a growing bird, and it held them where it hung.
The practice fell away for sound reasons. A carcass draws flies in numbers, and a heavy fly population around a pen risks strike on any bird already carrying an injury. Most keepers stopped. What stopped with it was the only reliable insect source on a great many beats, at precisely the point in the year a growing bird needs one most.
These are dried. They do not move.
Maggots under a carcass were alive and wriggling. Ours are not. They are gently dried whole, so they hold their shape and size but they do not move, they will not hatch, and they bring no flies to your pens.
What draws the bird is the insect itself — the size, the shape, the smell and the fact that it is worth eating. Movement is one trigger among several, and it is not the one that matters most to a bird that has already learned where the ground is worth working.
The practical gain is everything the old practice was for, in a material you can store for eighteen months and scatter exactly where you want the birds to be, rather than where a carcass happens to hang.
Anywhere you already feed
The largest gains are on fully released birds, holding them on your ground once they have the run of it.
- Cover crops — maize, kale, canary grass etc. Scattered through the standing crop it gives birds a reason to remain in the drive rather than walking out of the back of it.
- Straw bales and bale feeders — scattered around and into the bale, so the birds work the straw for it.
- Feeders and hoppers — mixed into the hopper at roughly 5 to 10%, or scattered on the ground beneath.
- Feed rides and flushing points — a light scatter along the ride holds birds on the line and takes them where you want them on the day.
- Release pens, before and after — begin a few days before the pop-holes open, so birds associate the ground with foraging before they are loose on it.
- Rearing field — condition, feather cover and calmer poults before they go out at all.
Scattered from the bag
- 8 to 20 larvae per bird per day as a guide, varying across the weeks of the season: 8 once birds are settled, 12 as standard, 20 to 40 in the days before a shoot or where birds are straying. A pinch to a handful, not a ration
- Scatter thin between feed points and go out often, rather than leaving heaps down. The searching is the point
- Put out what will be cleared in a session, with nothing left on the ground overnight, which also keeps other animals away
- No soaking, no mixing, no new equipment, no refrigeration. Runs through a spinner with the wheat and maize, gate open
- Eighteen month shelf life in a dry store. Anything not used this season can be used the next.
It sits alongside your existing wheat, pellets or maize. Tell us your ground and your bird numbers and we will size it for you.
It comes out of your returns, not your feed bill
Returns are the figure that matters. Every bird that crosses the boundary in August was paid for, reared and fed all summer, and will not appear over the guns.
Where estates have improved holding through those weeks and reduced losses by 20 to 30%, that has worked through to putting down 10 to 15% fewer poults for the same days on the card. On a shoot putting down 5,000 birds, 12% is 600 poults not bought, not reared and not fed.
There is a labour saving alongside it that rarely reaches a spreadsheet. Birds that settle are birds that do not have to be walked back.
Indicative, not a promise. Ground, predation pressure, pen siting and application all change the answer. Tell us your numbers and we will work it through properly before you commit to anything.
You are not feeding kilos. At the standard holding rate each bird gets a dozen larvae a day, a small handful, and a pallet of 4 million holds roughly 10,000 birds for a month. The useful question is how many birds it holds, and what it does to your returns.
That works out at roughly 8p a bird a month, or around 40p a bird across a full five-month season. Set that against a poult price and the arithmetic is not a close one.
By the million larvae, and by how many birds they hold
We sell by the million larvae and deliver by the pallet. Insects are classed as livestock, so as standard practice they are counted rather than weighed: each larva is different, anywhere from 40mg to 60mg, and we work on an average of 50mg. A tonne price invites a comparison with pellets and wheat that is not like for like, because this is not fed by the tonne.
A typical pallet holds 4 million larvae: sixteen bags of about 250,000, packed two to a box, about 1,440 litres in all. Smaller quantities are available: enquire for prices and minimum order quantities. What a pallet covers depends on the rate.
| Stage | Larvae per bird per day | Birds held for a month, per pallet of 4 million |
|---|---|---|
| Settled holding, a large pinch | 8 | ~16,700 |
| Standard holding, a small handful | 12 | ~11,100 |
| Pre-shoot or straying birds, a handful | 20–40 | ~3,300–6,700 |
| Nutrition and condition, a large handful | 60–100 | ~1,300–2,200 |
For 10,000 birds at the standard rate that is roughly four to five pallets across a September-to-January season. Tell us your bird numbers and where you intend to use it and we will size it for you, which is usually less than you would expect.
Wheat and pellets are the ration and they stay exactly as they are. The fair comparison is whatever you already put down purely to hold birds: split maize at 25% of the feed costs about 19p a bird a month, an aniseed holding mix about 17p, and larvae at the holding rate about 8p.
Take the maize out, or trim it back to around 10%, put the same weight of wheat in its place, and the larvae are paid for out of what you already spend on holding. Same money, give or take. What changes is the bird: a dozen larvae of insect protein it has to work the ground for, instead of just carbohydrates.
What the shoots using it say
"I'll be honest, I thought it was another gimmick. But the difference is where the birds are. They stay in the cover working the ground instead of drifting out the back of it, and we held them far better through the seasons than we normally manage. We were even able to use some old difficult drives we hadn't been able to use in years."
Dickie C
Shoot Manager · 20,000-bird estate, Wiltshire
"The birds took a couple of days to get used to it, but then they couldn't get enough of it and were seeking it out first. It's ideal for holding them where you want them before a shoot. We had far more birds than usual by the end of the season."
Dave L
Gamekeeper · 10,000-bird shoot, Buckinghamshire
"Birds love them, practically dug a trench in the spot I scattered a handful neat yesterday! Big selling point for us though is getting that extra protein into them that they just can't get from the wheat."
Dave J
Carswell Coastal Shoot
"I've had this idea for ages, it was good to see on Instagram that someone was doing it."
Ross H
Shoot Captain · 1,800-bird syndicate, North Yorkshire
We can put you in touch with keepers and shoot managers already using it, on ground of a similar size to yours. Ask when you get in touch and we will arrange it.
Want the full analysis?
The complete technical and nutritional information, including the full amino acid and fatty acid profiles, quality testing and batch traceability, is in our product brochure. Ask for it on the enquiry form and we will email it to you.
Estate quantities, estate prices
Tell us roughly how many birds you put down and where you intend to use it, and we will come back with a price and a sensible quantity the same day. Sold by the million larvae, delivered by the pallet.
300g trial bag
About 6,000 larvae. Enough to scatter at a feed ride and watch what happens. Sent with our product brochure, which has the full technical and nutritional information.
Pallet of 4 million larvae
Sixteen bags of about 250,000, packed two to a box, about 1,440 litres.
Smaller quantities
For smaller releases, rearing fields and breeding stock. Enquire for prices and minimum order quantities, and tell us your bird numbers so we can suggest the right amount.
Year-round
A certified producer network across Europe and Southeast Asia. Ordered in February, delivered in February.
A family business, run by the person who built the supply chain
WildWyn is run by Tom Berry. Tom spent twelve years in Asia founding and building Nutrition Technologies, one of the region's largest black soldier fly operations, rearing larvae by the billion and establishing the first large scale EU compliant facility of its kind out there. He came home to do something more direct with it, and runs WildWyn as a family business.
In practice that means technical questions are answered by the person who understands the material, rather than passed along. If it does not suit what you are trying to do on your ground, you will be told so.
info@wildwyn.co.uk · 07707 315 943
A network of certified producers means premium stock at competitive prices and year-round availability, rather than the feast and famine most insect suppliers operate on.
Before you get in touch
These are dried. Does that work as well as live insects?
Movement is one trigger among several, and it is not the most important one. A foraging bird locates food by size, shape and smell as much as by motion, and the larvae are dried whole so they keep all three. Poults typically take them from the first scatter.
What you gain by drying is considerable: eighteen months of storage, consistent quality, no fly population around the pens, and the ability to put the insects exactly where you want the birds rather than where a carcass happens to hang.
Will the birds actually take them?
Yes, and quickly. They are golden, nutty and roughly the size of an insect the bird would be seeking anyway. Most keepers see them cleared within a day or two of the first scatter. If yours do not, we want to hear about it — which is part of what the free sample is for.
Will it draw rats and corvids?
Any feed will, if it is left in heaps. Scatter what the birds will clear in a session and the exposure is the same as with wheat, arguably less, because nothing remains on the ground overnight. Standard pen and hopper hygiene applies exactly as it always did.
How does it fit with what I am already feeding?
Alongside it. Keep your pellets and wheat as they are and use this for holding, condition and health. It is not a like for like substitute for a compound ration.
Where a shoot already puts down split maize or an aniseed mix purely to hold birds, the larvae are usually paid for out of that line: take the maize out or trim it back, put wheat in its place, and the spend is the same, give or take. Same money, a different bird.
Can it go through a hopper or a spinner?
Through a hopper, yes, at roughly 5 to 10%. Check the flow on the first fill, because larvae are light and bulky and ride differently to grain. Through a quad spinner, mixed in with the wheat and maize with the gate open; one customer steadies the flow with a few golf balls in the spinner's hopper and it feeds perfectly well like that. Scattering by hand through the cover and around the bales still does the most for foraging behaviour.
Will it hold birds in a cover crop through a shoot day?
It is one of the commonest reasons keepers use it. A light scatter through standing maize gives birds something to work for inside the drive rather than walking out of the back of it. Put it out several days ahead so the ground is already known to them.
What is the minimum order?
Enquire for prices and minimum order quantities. Tell us your bird numbers and we will reply the same day. A typical full pallet holds 4 million larvae, roughly 10,000 birds for a month at the standard rate. Before committing, claim a free trial bag so you can see how your own birds respond.
How quickly can you deliver?
Samples go out within 1-2 working days. Pallets are typically three to five working days depending on location. Get in touch and we will give you a firm date rather than a range.
Where are they reared, and on what?
At GMP+ and HACCP certified facilities across the UK and Southeast Asia, on pre-consumer vegetable substrates only. Never manure, never animal material. Every batch is documented and traceable through the batch number on the bag.
Brook & Hollow whole dried black soldier fly larvae are a supplementary scatter feed.
Nutritional values are typical and vary between batches. Figures given for returns and
bird numbers are indicative and depend on ground, weather and application.