Birds seek insects. Insects hold birds.
Whole dried black soldier fly larvae, scattered through cover crops, straw bales and woodland feeders. Around 40% protein, naturally rich in highly digestible calcium, and instinctively palatable to pheasants, red-leg partridges and English partridges.
"I thought it was another gimmick. The difference is where the birds are."
Dickie C · Wiltshire
Free trial bag on request · 07356 093 369
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.
Aniseed makes wheat smell interesting. It does not make it worth seeking.
Most holding products do one job. Straight wheat gives energy and holds a bird while it feeds. Aniseed wheat and the tonic mixes work by scent and novelty, adding interest to the outside of something the bird was not looking for in the first place. Pellets feed the bird properly but give it no reason to work the ground.
| Holds birds | Real nutrition | Feather & flight | Health support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Straight wheat | Briefly | Energy only | — | — |
| Aniseed wheat & tonic mixes | By scent | Minimal | — | — |
| Pellets & compound ration | — | Yes | Yes | Some |
| Whole dried larvae | By instinct | Yes | Yes | Yes |
A whole insect needs nothing added to it. It is palatable by nature, not by additive, and that is the difference between a bird that is briefly interested and a bird that comes back to the same ground tomorrow or after a busy week.
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
25 to 30% lipids, 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
- 0.4-5g per bird per day, depending on age, weight, objectives and the rest of the diet. Many run lighter than that as a holding scatter
- Scatter rather than heap. The searching is the point
- Put out what will be cleared in a session, with nothing left on the ground overnight
- No soaking, no mixing, no new equipment, no refrigeration
- Eighteen month shelf life in a dry store. Anything not used this season can be used the next.
It sits alongside your existing feed programme. Tell us your ground and your bird numbers and we will suggest a sensible starting quantity.
Sell a better poult, and sell it on more than price
Poults are close to a commodity. Two farms quote within pennies of one another and the buyer decides on haulage. Anything that allows a different conversation is worth having.
Poults grown with whole larvae in the rearing field come out better feathered and better conditioned, and they come out calmer. Foraging occupies a bird, and occupied birds pick at one another less, which shows in feather cover at seven weeks.
What your customers will value most is what happens after delivery. A poult that has already learned to work the ground for larvae settles into their release pen more readily and holds better once it is out. You are selling a bird that has already acquired the habit the buyer wants it to have.
- Rearing field — feather, frame and calmer birds before sale
- Release pen — birds already recognise the scatter, so they settle more quickly
- Fully released — the habit is established, and the holding does its work where it matters
Game farms are supplied in 12.5kg bags, with year-round availability and stable pricing so it can be used with poults and breeding stock. Being thoroughly dried, the larvae are easily crushed and crumbled for younger chicks.
Where it earns its keep through the year
Most holding products are a seasonal purchase that then sits in the shed when not needed. This one has a job in every quarter of the calendar, and once the shooting season closes the wild grey work, breeding and nesting is only beginning.
Season closes, next season begins
Pheasant and partridge seasons close in February. Laying stock caught up, spring pair counts on wild ground, and the hungry gap when seed stocks are exhausted and there is nothing alive in the sward. Insect protein here goes into hen condition and the quality of the clutch. It is also the quarter in which next season's orders are placed.
Laying, hatching and the rearing field
Eggs, hatch, and poults growing on. Condition, feather cover and calmer birds through to six and seven weeks, where the difference is visible in the bird a game farm sells and the bird an estate puts out. Wild grey broods hatch into their insectivorous fortnight.
Release pens and the weeks that follow
Poults to the pens through July and August. Scattering begins before the pop-holes open, so the ground is already worth working. Then the weeks that decide your returns — around the pen, through the cover crops and along the rides. Pheasant and partridge shooting season then opens.
Through the shooting season
Holding birds in the drives between days, keeping them within the cover crop rather than walking out of the back of it, and maintaining condition through frost, when natural invertebrates are at zero.
The bird every serious shoot is measured by
A driven day on wild greys is the pinnacle of British shooting, and the reason is understood throughout the trade: it cannot be bought. Greys are the hardest birds in the country to get right, and a beat holding a wild population is saying something about itself that no number of pheasants can.
On a well run beat the limiting factor is rarely habitat. The headlands, the beetle banks and the margins are already in place. It is chick survival, and chick survival is insects.
Whole dried larvae offer something practical in the two windows where it counts: the hungry gap, while the hen is building condition for the clutch, and the fortnight after hatch, when chicks require invertebrate protein and a cold, wet June has not provided any.
Conservation headlands, beetle banks and unsprayed margins are the foundation and nothing replaces them. We would rather supply less and be accurate about where this fits than oversell it and have you conclude that it did not work.
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.
But weight is the wrong measure here, because you are feeding grams per bird rather than kilos. The useful question is how many birds a pallet covers, and what it does to your returns.
Set a pallet against a poult price and the arithmetic is not a close one.
By the pallet, and by how many birds it holds
We quote per pallet rather than per tonne. A tonne price invites a comparison with pellets and wheat that is not like for like, and it tells you little that is useful, because this is not fed by the tonne.
A pallet is 200kg, made up of eight 25kg cartons and containing approximately 2.5 million dried larvae. What it covers depends entirely on how heavily it is scattered.
| Scatter rate | Birds held for a month |
|---|---|
| Light holding scatter — 0.4g/bird/day | ~16,700 |
| Standard holding — 0.6g/bird/day | ~11,100 |
| Heavy holding — 1g/bird/day | ~6,700 |
| Light supplement — 3g/bird/day | ~2,200 |
| Full supplement — 5g/bird/day | ~1,300 |
Most estates run a light scatter across the drift weeks and increase it around the pen. Tell us your bird numbers and where you intend to use it and we will tell you what you actually need, which is usually less than you would expect.
Set against the cost of poults, keepering, dogs, feed, fuel and everything else a season absorbs, the scatter is a relatively small line, often averaging only a few pence per bird per month. It is though, aimed at the one part of the operation where a small change moves a large number.
The nutrition also can help to offset part of what is spent elsewhere.
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
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.
The analysis, in full
Typical values across batches. Exact composition varies with rearing substrate and conditions. Full amino acid and fatty acid profiles, plus batch certificates of analysis, are sent with any sample.
| Parameter | Typical | Guaranteed |
|---|---|---|
| Crude protein | 38–42% | >35% |
| Crude fat | 28–32% | >25% |
| Lauric acid (of total fat) | 35–45% | — |
| Calcium | 2.5–3.0% | >1.5% |
| Phosphorus | 0.5–0.6% | >0.4% |
| Crude fibre | 9–11% | <13% |
| Moisture | 3–7% | <10% |
| Energy (kcal/100g) | 600 | >440 |
Tested, documented, traceable
- Produced under GMP+ and HACCP certified systems, independently audited
- Salmonella absence per 25g sample; Enterobacteriaceae under 300 CFU/g
- Aflatoxins below 20 ppb; heavy metals well inside permitted limits
- Reared on pre-consumer vegetable substrates only. Never manure, never animal material
- Full batch traceability, certificate of analysis with every consignment
The full technical and nutritional sheet is sent by email alongside your sample.
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 the same day.
300g trial bag
Enough to scatter at a feed ride and watch what happens. Sent with the full technical sheet.
200kg pallet
Eight 25kg cartons, shrink wrapped and banded. One pallet is the minimum order.
12.5kg bags
Bagged for chick rearing field use.
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.
tom@wildwyn.co.uk · 07356 093 369
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.
Longer term we expect the nutrition to allow estates to reduce some of what they spend elsewhere. We are gathering figures on that and will show them before making the claim.
Can it go through a hopper or a spinner?
Through a hopper, yes — mixed into the wheat 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 they throw out wider than wheat for the same reason, so many prefer to scatter by hand through the cover and around the bales, which also does more 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?
For shoots and estates, one 200kg pallet (eight 25kg cartons). For game farms, eight 12.5kg bags. Before committing to either, ask for the free sample 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, with a certificate of analysis available on request.
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.