The following blog post was kindly submitted by Liz Winton, Victoria.
I have kept chickens on and off for all of my life. In 2020, when we were all reviewing our lives in light of the Covid Pandemic, I started exploring alternative ways of feeding my chickens for nutrition and reduced cost of commercial feed. After watching many hours of YouTube videos, I tried breeding both mealworms and BSFL. Being based in Melbourne, Australia and having to keep the insects outside I realized I had no hope. Temperatures ranged from 0 to 45 degrees Celsius and neither the mealworms or BSFL had any hope of completing their lifecycle. This was incredibly demoralizing as everything I saw on Youtube was about how éasy’ this insect breeding should be. There was no one offering advice on insect breeding in temperate or cooler climates.
I decided to try and find others I could learn from. I focused on BSFL as they appeared to make more sense with the short breeding cycle and the fact that they consume food waste. I reached out to commercial groups around Australia asking if I could tour or if they would consider providing training courses for the small backyard hobbyist. I did not hear back from any of them. I gave up for a few years.
In early 2025, I decided to give it another go and this time in my Google search Mobius Farms came up as a BSFL team. I sent an email fully expecting to never hear again. To my complete shock Jeannine reached out to me in a very short amount of time. Over the next few months, I was able to read material provided by Mobius Farms and with Jeannine as an awesome mentor and my Dad as a partner in crime I jumped in the deep end.
In August 2025, I purchased a decommissioned mobile warm room on Facebook Marketplace. Initially I was looking for mobile rooms that I could convert to a warm room however this warm room came up and was perfect. This warm room had previously been used by the EPA as a mobile laboratory and had been designed to run at 25 o C +/- 3o C. The mobile room was 2.4 m x 3 m x 2.4m. I had it checked out by an electrician and connected to power. I fitted it out with shelves from bunnings and ordered small and large seedling trays from a gardening store for growing the BSFL. I installed temperature and humidity monitors connected to WiFi in the van so I can monitor both the temperature and humidity constantly and from a distance. The van currently sits at 24o C +/- 2o C. I moved my incubators and chick brooders into the van to take advantage of the constant temperatures to improve my hatch rates and my young chick survival.
By the end of September, I received my first delivery of BSFL eggs from Mobius Farms. I partnered with a local community centre to collect the food waste from their café kitchen. Since October 2025 I have been feeding approximately 50 chickens with BSFL roughly every second to third day. Long term egg customers have been commenting again on how good my eggs taste. Commercial feed costs have gone down. My calm chickens have turned into little raptors that swarm me as soon as I walk in the runs looking for their BSFL feed. Caption: One group of previously calm chickens crowding the corner of a very large chicken run demanding their BSFL!!
The learning curve has been significant, and I have made mistakes that have resulted in BSFL crawling all over the floor of my van!! I see that as a sign of success. It has been exciting and rewarding. At this stage I am very happy to purchase BSFL eggs from Mobius Farms and grow the larvae as I am not keen to move into hatching the flies to complete the cycle. I feel like I am helping the environment by not discarding any food waste from our house and minimal waste from the community centre kitchen. I love my multipurpose Melbourne warm room. I love having happy, healthy chickens and doing what I can to keep chickens out of cages and food waste out of landfill.