I love maggots.

In particular, black soldier fly larva. Even the fly itself, the docile plump fly with the bulbous antenna that lives only for a couple days; doesn't eat, doesn't sting, no hair to carry disease; just lives to lech, or propagate the species.

And the species in the larva state is fascinating; voracious consumers and recyclers of wet fleshy food waste; a small colony can devour a large watermelon over night. You can hear the chewing - a kind of a clicking sound, a humming chorus in a large colony.

Chickens love them, too; so do other birds such as turkeys, plus racoons and wasps and probably fish - anything with wings or gills or walk on all fours. And they're smart to like them because the critters are more than 40 percent protein and 35 percent fat.

I've been watching and studying them for four years. They are seasonal here in the Willamette Valley. They don't show until the weather warms, in early July this year. They disappear late in the fall - or when there's less to eat and temperatures dip below freezing.

A couple years ago, I did an experiment: I took 3 ounces or worms in one small plastic container and three ounces of larva in another. In one month, the larva ate six times as much as the worms and left six times as much liquid, which I drained out of the containers to weigh. Conversely, the worms left twice as much solid waste, or vermicompost; the maggots left a gooey mess.

Conclusion: The larva make a great food source and converters of wet waste, but they don't breakdown cellulose and can turn a compost pile anaerobic with the preponderance of leachate they leave.
I found several people online who are equally intrigued by the creatures and one, Paul Olivier of Washington, La., has produced several designs online for harvesters.

I tried one of his plans this summer: A five-gallon bucket contraption to separate the leachate and the larva from the food waste and bedding in the bucket.

Just making it was an adventure. The local hardware store had most of the plumbing parts but not the filter. I didn't want to buy a few of the bits called for to drill ventilation holes, so I paid one of the helpful young clerks $20 to drill all of the holes, make the cuts and put the thing together. The parts themselves came to $44.

I bought a few air filters and sandwiched them between two sheets of half-inch wire mesh; the plans called for golf balls on the bottom and the filter on top. The three-quarter-inch tube leading up from the bottom of the bucket to the drain fitting near the top was supposed to be put into the handle end of the bottom section of a gallon plastic water jug. The idea: The maggots would migrate into the bottom of the jog when mature and circulating in the food waste and eventually find the tube.

I used sawdust for bedding (it's absorbent and the maggots seem to do well in them) and fed them what they like - watermelon, cantaloupe and other food waste.

So far, the only critters in the migration tube are fruit flies, who get in through the vents in the top of the bucket and hang around the exposure waste.
The filter does work. The tube leading out of the bottom of the bucket filled after two weeks. I diluted the leachate and put it on an impatient that wasn't doing very well. We'll see if it helps or puts an end to it.

As for the maggots, I'm getting impatient. I can move some of the dry matter off the top of the public compost bin at the River House Community Garden, reach in and grab hands full of the squirming mass of grubs. So, why do I need a harvester?

The online video shows large flesh-colored grubs in the harvesting bucket, separated from the mess of a pile and ready to feed the chickens or freeze for later use, which is what the narrator advises.
Who knows? With all of the folks raising chickens in Eugene now, there might be a market for the delectable critters.

If the things would only follow the fruit flies up the tube.