Can Chickens Eat Flies? Yes, but Don’t Grow Maggots for Them

My call: yes, a chicken can eat a fly. If your hen snaps one out of the air in the run, she isn’t doing anything wrong. Chickens are omnivores, and the Merck Veterinary Manual says birds with access to the outdoors “supplement their diet by foraging and eating insects”. But a page about flies is also a page about manure. Houseflies breed in it, and the Merck manual names the housefly as the intermediate host of a chicken tapeworm. Maggots that fed on a dead bird can carry botulism. So my call is to let your hens catch what they catch, and to work on having fewer flies, not more. Don’t grow maggots for them. Keep fly bait where they can’t reach it. And if you want to hand out bugs, my call is dried mealworms or black soldier fly larvae from the store, counted as treats.

I rewrote this page from 22 sources, all listed at the bottom. For hens and feed I used extension guides from Colorado State and Alabama, plus one from the University of California. Jacquie Jacob of the University of Kentucky wrote two more I used, on the national poultry extension site. Cackle Hatchery covered chicks. For disease I used three chapters of the Merck Veterinary Manual and one of its tables. The insect numbers come from three pages of Feedipedia, an animal feed database. The fly control lines come from Texas A&M, Penn State and Kentucky. Georgia and Iowa State add a few more. The beetle lines come from the University of Arkansas. I also read two fly bait labels and the CDC’s page on mosquitoes at home. Where a line is my own read of the sources, I’ll tell you so.

The old page opened with a story I can’t back up. “As I was tending to my flock one sunny afternoon,” it began, and then a hen “snatched a fly right out of the air with lightning quick reflexes”. It went on “after keeping chickens for over a decade now”. I can’t show you any of that happened, so it’s gone. So is the summer evening when “the fireflies were out in full force”. So is “I regularly let old fruit and veggies decompose to cultivate maggots as chicken treats”. So is “I routinely sprinkle dried mealworms into the run to supplement”. And so are “I remove any spider webs around the coop” and a pairing it called a favorite, “maggots and fresh grass clippings”.

The numbers went next. Jungle fowl getting “over 20% of their daily nutrients from insects and bugs” came with no source. Neither did crickets with “over 100% RDA for B12”, or “70% of a chicken’s immune system is in its gut”. Flies and worms covering “up to 30% of a chicken’s nutritional needs” had nothing behind it either. Neither did the line that hens eat their own eggs because “instinctively they know eggs are a rich source of protein”. The page’s three protein numbers didn’t agree with each other, and I’ll show you below where each one could have come from.

The worst advice went too. The page told you to “Put out shallow dishes of water to attract mosquitos”. It told you to compost manure “right beside the coop”, and to “Light the coop” so bugs come in. It said wild bugs are “perfectly safe nutrition sources” as long as they come from your own backyard. It told you to “never feed mealworms from bait shops, only certified organic sources”. I found nothing in my sources to back the bait-shop line or the organic one. The mosquito dishes run against what the CDC tells households to do. The manure pile beside the coop sits right where Penn State and Texas A&M say flies breed, so by my read it’s out too. More on both below.

A word on the photos. All 9 are real photos, credited under each one. Six are stock shots from Unsplash, and three are public domain photos from Wikimedia Commons. None of them shows a hen eating a fly (I looked). The fly up top was shot in Bogotá, and its photo page just calls it a black fly. The one on the jeans was shot in Bengaluru, and its page calls it a macro shot of a fly. Neither page says it’s a housefly, so I won’t either. The black hen and the hen with her cock and chicks come from one afternoon in 2012, shot by a Commons user who gave them to the public domain. She’s walking, not hunting bugs, and the chicks are pecking at bare ground. The dead bird in the botulism section is a wild bird in a wetland, not a hen. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took it, and its caption begins “A carcass typical of those observed during avian botulism outbreaks”. The butterfly on cut fruit stands in for what fruit left out draws in, and its page just calls it a brown butterfly. The stacked bales stand in for coop bedding. Their page tags them both straw and hay and doesn’t say which, and Merck’s backyard chapter says straw soaks up little and often goes moldy (more on that below). The cardinal on a birdbath is a wild bird, standing in for the birds the bait labels warn about, and there’s no bait in the picture. The horned beetle on a tree stands in for the beetle section. It isn’t a mealworm beetle or the darkling beetle you’d find in old bedding.

The short version.

• My call: a fly your hen catches herself is fine. Don’t stop her, and don’t count on it as food.
• Merck and Texas A&M both name the housefly as the intermediate host of a chicken tapeworm. So your goal is fewer flies, not more.
• Maggots that fed on a dead animal can carry botulism. Merck and Kentucky say to get dead birds out fast.
• Never let scraps rot to “grow” maggots. Kentucky’s Jacquie Jacob warns that rotting scraps can mean botulism.
• A fresh mealworm is more than half water. Its protein comes to about 22 percent as fed, by my math from Feedipedia. Alabama puts layer feed at 16 percent or more.
• Housefly maggot meal and mealworms are low in calcium for a laying hen, by my math from Feedipedia’s tables and Alabama’s layer figures. Black soldier fly larvae are the exception.
• Fly control is manure control: dry bedding, no leaks, no spilled feed and a weekly cleanup (Penn State, Kentucky, Iowa State).
• The Stimukil fly bait label says it is “toxic to birds”. Keep bait out of reach. My call is that no dead flies from bait go to your hens.
• Bugs count as treats: 10 to 15 grams a day for all treats together, by my math from Colorado State and Alabama.
• Your chicks get starter only for at least the first two weeks, says Cackle Hatchery.

A Fly Caught in the Run Is Fine

Start with the easy part. The University of California’s feeding guide says “Chickens are omnivores meaning they eat both animal protein and plant produced foods”. Jacquie Jacob writes that chickens scratch the ground “in search of various seeds, greens, grit, or insects to eat”. Colorado State says “Free-range chickens will consume insects to add to their protein intake”. When your hen chases a fly across the run, she’s doing what all three describe.

So my call is that there’s nothing for you to stop. A fly is small, she caught it herself, and it’s gone in a second. But the Merck manual adds a line worth keeping in mind. “Although foraging behavior might be desired, birds should receive most of their diet from a balanced, nutritionally complete ration.” A fly is a snack she finds, not food you plan around.

The old page went further. It said chickens “can and should eat all sorts of insects”. It said flies “make the perfect on-the-go snack for chickens”. My read of the sources is that hens can and do eat bugs. None of the ones I read says they should, or that you should bring more flies around to feed them. Below is why I’d go the other way.

Our own Can Chickens Eat It? checker won’t rate flies. Type in “flies” and it answers “Not rated here”, because “None of the official sources this tool uses rules on” them, “so it will not guess”. It also tells you to skip a treat you aren’t sure of. That fits my call: a fly she catches on her own is one thing, but don’t hand out flies. On mealworms the checker and I agree. Type in “mealworms” and you get “Fine as a treat”. It says they’re “protein-rich”, so they “count toward the treat limit rather than replacing feed”. Bugs you hand out are treats, and we’ll get to how much.

What a Bug Is Really Worth to a Hen

The old page gave you three protein numbers. “Bugs can contain up to 70% protein, more than chicken feed”. Then “Mealworms, for example, are about 20% protein”. Then “Dried mealworms are over 50% protein”. My read is that they don’t agree because they’re counted on different bases. Some count the water in the bug and some leave it out.

Feedipedia keeps tables for insects used in animal feed. Here’s what it lists, with protein as a share of the dry matter (the bug with its water taken out):

• Housefly maggot meal: 50.4 percent protein. The meal itself is 92.4 percent dry matter.
• Housefly pupae meal: 70.8 percent protein, on 92.1 percent dry matter.
• Mealworms, dried: 50.4 percent protein, on 94.6 percent dry matter.
• Mealworms, fresh: 53.5 percent protein, but only 41.1 percent dry matter.
• Black soldier fly larvae, dried, under 20 percent fat: 56.6 percent protein. Over 20 percent fat: 41.1 percent.

So the old page’s “up to 70%” is close to a dried housefly pupae meal, counted with the water left out. That’s my read, and it isn’t a live fly. A fresh mealworm is more than half water. Its protein comes to about 22 percent of what you hand out, by my math. Dried mealworms come to about 48 percent as fed, by my math. So “over 50%” only holds with the water left out of the count. I didn’t find a feed table for a live adult housefly in what I read.

Now set that next to your feed. Alabama Extension’s table puts a layer diet at “16% or more” protein. Jacob says “Layer diets that contain 16% protein are more common”. So a live mealworm runs a bit richer in protein than your layer feed, by my math. But it isn’t a balanced food. The UC guide says of scraps that they “are not balanced and you may cause nutritional disorders if the scraps are displacing too much of the balanced diet”. Alabama says overfeeding is “not typically an issue in small and backyard layer flocks”. But it can be when you add treats on top of a complete feed, and “Overconsuming protein and minerals can lead to urinary system problems”.

Calcium is where the maggots and mealworms in these tables fall short. Alabama puts a layer diet at “3% to 4%” calcium. Jacob says “Laying hens require large amounts of calcium for eggshells”. Feedipedia’s housefly maggot meal has 4.7 grams of calcium per kilogram of dry matter. That’s under half a percent of the dry matter, by my math. Fresh mealworms have 2.5 grams per kilogram of dry matter. That’s about a tenth of a percent as fed, by my math. Both carry more phosphorus than calcium (16.0 and 7.9 grams per kilogram of dry matter). Your layer feed runs the other way. Alabama’s table has 3 to 4 percent calcium against 0.4 to 0.5 percent phosphorus. The old page said maggots are “Full of calcium and protein”. The only maggot figures I found are for a dried meal. By that table, the meal is rich in protein but low in calcium. I found no figure for a live maggot.

Black soldier fly larvae are the exception. Feedipedia calls them “rich in calcium (5-8% DM)”. Its table for the dried, lower-fat larvae lists 43.2 grams per kilogram of dry matter. As fed, that’s about 4 percent, by my math, the top of Alabama’s range for a layer diet. The table’s own range runs from 6.2 to 84.4 grams, so it swings a lot.

The old page also called crickets “Packed with calcium and other minerals”. I didn’t read a source on crickets for this page, so I’ve left them out.

Houseflies Carry a Chicken Tapeworm

Here’s why the fly count around your coop matters. Tapeworms need a second animal to finish their life cycle. The Merck manual says “Cestodes require an intermediate host (eg, insects, crustaceans, earthworms, or snails)”. Cestodes are tapeworms. For one of them, that host is the fly. “Cage layers in unscreened houses may become infested with Choanotaenia infundibulum by eating its intermediate host, the housefly.” Merck’s table of common poultry worms lists Choanotaenia infundibulum in the chicken, carried by houseflies. It lives in the upper intestine. Its pathogenicity is listed as “Moderate”.

Texas A&M’s entomologists say the same in plainer words: the house fly is the intermediate host for the common tapeworm in chickens. Penn State explains how the fly picks it up. “Fly maggots ingest tapeworm and ascarid eggs from the poultry manure and retain them in the gut until maturity.” It adds that “Flies mechanically carry ascarid and other nematode eggs on their feet”. My read: the fly that grew up in your run’s manure is the one most likely to carry eggs from your own birds back to them.

Flies matter for a second worm too. The gapeworm lives in the windpipe and lungs. Merck ties “severe field infestation” to birds eating “transport hosts”, and its list of them includes earthworms and “arthropods (eg, flies)”. It says gapeworms “are not a problem in confinement-reared poultry” but cause serious losses in range-reared chickens. And “Young birds are the most severely affected by gapeworms”. Earthworms are on that list too. That’s one more reason our page on raising worms for chickens keeps them in a closed bin, not dug from the yard.

Now the other side, so one fly doesn’t scare you. Merck’s key points say worm infestation “usually does not cause clinical signs”. Of the tapeworms, it says the head buried in the gut wall “generally causes mild lesions”. Nobody I read puts a number on how many flies it takes. My read is that your hen catching a fly now and then isn’t the problem. A run that breeds flies all summer is.

And treating your hens won’t fix it for long if the flies stay. Merck warns that getting rid of a tapeworm “will be a short-term remedy if the scolex is not removed or if the intermediate host is not eliminated”. The scolex is the worm’s head. Worm eggs show up in a fecal test, which Merck calls a “reliable confirmation of the presence of worms”. But Merck adds that “eggs are shed intermittently and in varying numbers”, so one clean sample doesn’t rule worms out. If a bird looks unwell, my call is that you ring a vet who sees poultry and ask about one.

Maggots on a Dead Bird Can Carry Botulism

Maggots are a different worry. Botulism is a poison made by bacteria that live in soil and decaying matter, and maggots can carry it to your hens. The Merck manual says that in an outbreak, “the main spreading factor is the carcass-maggot cycle”. It explains that “Invertebrates, mostly maggots from necrophilous flies, will consume the BoNT and then be ingested by other birds”. Necrophilous flies are the ones that feed on dead animals. BoNT is the toxin.

Jacob puts it simply. “Birds can get botulism when they eat spoiled feed or infected carcasses or maggots that have been in infected carcasses.” She also notes that “Botulism is not spread from bird to bird”. It comes from what they eat.

Here’s what you’d see. Merck says the first signs “include leg weakness and paresis that develops into a flaccid paralysis”. It spreads “from the legs to the nictitating membranes” (the third eyelid). “Limberneck, a common name for botulism in birds, comes from the neck paralysis typically observed in affected birds.” When a bird is opened up after death, “maggots or other invertebrates may be found in the crop”. My call: if your hen goes weak in the legs or can’t hold her head up, call a vet who sees poultry that day.

The fix is fast cleanup. Merck says “Prompt collection and rapid disposal of dead birds is critical to limiting the outbreak and breaking the carcass-maggot cycle”. Jacob says “Incinerate or bury dead birds promptly”. Her list ends with two words: “Control flies”. Texas A&M’s sanitation list for poultry houses starts with “Quickly remove and dispose of dead birds and broken eggs”. Iowa State notes that adult flies lay eggs in “manure or decaying material (e.g., dead animals)”. My call is that you treat any dead animal in or near the run the same way, whether it’s a hen, a mouse or a wild bird. Our page on whether chickens eat a dead flockmate says to get her out the same day, and this is one more reason.

Don’t Grow Maggots for Your Hens

This is where the old page went most wrong. Beyond the line about letting fruit rot for maggots, it told you to “Add household veggie/fruit scraps to decompose and cultivate maggots” in a compost pile for the flock. It told you to compost manure “right beside the coop”.

The sources I read that speak to rotting scraps around hens point the other way. Jacob’s feeding guide says “Make sure that the scraps are not allowed to rot, or botulism might result”. The Merck manual says “Botulism may also result from direct ingestion of decaying organic matter that contains toxin”. Feedipedia calls the housefly “a worldwide pest and a major carrier of diseases”. It says that’s because “both the larvae (maggots) and the adult flies feed on manure and decaying organic wastes”. By my read, a bucket of rotting fruit by your coop is a fly nursery.

And flies breed fast. Penn State says “Each female can produce up to six batches of 75 to 200 eggs at 3- to 4-day intervals”. Texas A&M says as many as 1,000 houseflies can grow up in one pound of breeding material. Egg to adult can take just 7 to 10 days in a warm manure pit. Texas A&M lists where they breed: moist, rotting plant matter, refuse, spilled grain and feed, and “all kinds of manure”. My read: a pile you set up to raise a few maggots for treats will raise flies too, and plenty of them.

The maggot meal in Feedipedia’s tables is a different thing. It’s a dried meal mixed into a ration. In the laying-hen trial I’m citing, it replaced part of the fish meal. In laying hens 50 weeks old, “maggot meal could replace 50% of fish meal protein (5% diet as fed) without adverse effects on egg production and shell strength”. Feedipedia notes that “experiments have not reported contamination due to feeding maggot meal to poultry or fish”. My read is that a dried meal in a mixed ration tells you nothing about maggots from a pail behind your coop.

The old page’s mosquito trick goes too. It told you to set out water dishes so hens could eat the larvae. The CDC tells households to do the opposite once a week: “empty and scrub, turn over, cover, or throw out any items that hold water”. Its list runs from tires and buckets to birdbaths and flowerpot saucers. The CDC writes for people’s health, not hens’. But the Merck manual’s backyard chapter says “Water holes and vegetation should be avoided around the coop”. It says they draw in wildlife and vermin that can harm poultry and spread disease. So the dishes are out, by my read of both.

If you want bugs for your hens, my call is that you buy them dried, mealworms or black soldier fly larvae, and count them as treats. More on those below.

Fewer Flies Starts With Dry Bedding

Penn State and Texas A&M start in the same place. Penn State says “Fly control is basically a manure management strategy”. Texas A&M calls manure management the most effective way to control flies. Both write for big poultry houses, and Penn State mostly for caged layers. My read is that the biology is the same in your backyard coop, just smaller.

Water is what matters most. Penn State says “The manure moisture level is the most important factor in fly control”. It adds: “Fresh poultry manure is approximately 75 to 80 percent moisture, and flies can breed in manure with a moisture content of 50 to 85 percent.” In those houses, “Leaking waterers are the major source of wet manure conditions, so waterers must be inspected daily”.

For your bedding, the Merck manual’s backyard chapter gives a target: litter at about 20 to 25 percent moisture. Its quick test is to grab a handful of litter and see whether “it clumps briefly and then crumbles apart”. It also says “Wet litter encourages growth of pathogens”. And it names what to put down. “Sand, pine shavings, rice, and nut hulls are beneficial because they hold moisture well.” But “Straw and ground corncobs have poor absorbent qualities and often become moldy.”

Then the weekly cleanup. Kentucky’s insecticide guide for poultry says “Manure, spilled feed, and wet bedding should be removed weekly”. That breaks the fly breeding cycle. Iowa State’s fly sheet says to “Disturb or break up manure and organic matter (wet soil/mud, bedding) weekly to prevent insect eggs from hatching”. Kentucky adds: “Repair leaky waterers, cull birds that habitually produce very loose manure, remove broken eggs and dead birds and reduce feed spillage to improve fly control.”

Your feed counts too. Alabama Extension warns that a wet feed, “especially in the summer”, will attract flies. It says it’s “okay to feed your flock meals once or twice daily to avoid having excess feed sitting in your feeder”. Leftover feed “may attract rodents and insects”. And it says to keep feed “in a rodent- and insect-free container or area”. By my read, that means the bag from the feed store goes into a sealed bin.

Here’s my list for your backyard coop, built from those lines (the details are my call):

• Check under your waterer every day and fix any drip.
• Pull wet bedding and spilled feed every week, and stir up what’s left.
• Feed what they’ll finish, and keep the bag sealed.
• Pick up broken eggs and any dead animal the same day.
• Keep scrap piles, rotting fruit and standing water away from the run.

There’s one more reason to start with your bedding and not a spray. Kentucky says “Insecticides will provide only temporary relief unless breeding sites are eliminated”. And manure has fly killers of its own. Georgia’s broiler tip says “Natural biological control occurs within the manure”, carried out by beetles and mites and other predators already living there. To keep them alive, it says to avoid spraying insecticides on manure “except as needed on isolated wet spots”.

Keep Fly Bait Away From Hens

Fly bait is the trap I’d watch closest. The label on Stimukil fly bait (its active ingredients are methomyl and (Z)-9-tricosene) says “This pesticide is toxic to birds, fish, aquatic invertebrates and mammals”. It goes on: “Accessible areas treated with this bait are hazardous to birds and other wildlife.” And it says “Do not treat areas where animals can feed on bait”. Its bait stations hang “at least 4 feet off the ground”. Its paste goes where “children, poultry, cattle or other animals cannot come into contact with the paste”. And it says “STIMUKIL Fly Bait should not be used around or inside homes, or any other place where children are likely to be present”.

The QuickBayt label (imidacloprid and Z-9-tricosene) says “Do not place in areas accessible to food producing animals”. Your laying hens are food producing animals, by my read. Both labels are written for farms and commercial buildings. So before you use any fly bait near your coop, my call is to check that its label allows it there.

Neither label says anything about a hen eating a fly that died on the bait, and I couldn’t find a source that tested it. So my call is simple: no dead flies from a bait station or a sprayed spot go to your hens. Sweep them up. Stimukil’s label says “The dead flies and any remaining bait should be disposed of” the way it spells out. So follow the label on the product you bought. The same goes for any bug that may have been sprayed. Our page on locusts for chickens comes down to the same rule.

The old page also told you to sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the run so it “kills crawling bugs, for the chickens to eat their carcasses”. The one line on diatomaceous earth in my sources is Merck’s. Mixed into feed at 2% and fed all the time, it “lowers numbers of Heterakis and Capillaria in chickens”, two kinds of worm. That’s not a bug killer for your run, so the old line is out too.

Mealworms and Soldier Fly Larvae: The Bugs You Buy

If you want to give your flock bugs, the ones raised for it are the cleaner choice, by my read. Feedipedia says mealworms “are produced industrially as feed for pets and zoo animals, including birds”. Most are the larvae of the yellow mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor. A grown one weighs 130 to 160 milligrams.

Don’t mix them up with the lesser mealworm, a relative from the same beetle family that lives in poultry litter. The University of Arkansas says it’s “also known by many in the poultry industry as the darkling beetle, litter beetle or black bug”. Arkansas lists a long set of diseases it can carry, from Marek’s disease to Salmonella typhimurium, E. coli and the parasites behind coccidiosis. Writing about commercial houses with heavy infestations, it says “Chickens will readily consume beetles instead of feed”. That’s a problem if they “fill up with beetles rather than the more nutritious feed ration”. And eating them “can result in intestinal impaction because chickens lack the enzyme (chitinase) necessary to digest the chitin found in these insects”. The Merck manual adds that “Darkling beetles in proximity may also serve as intermediate hosts” for the fly-borne tapeworm. So if you see small black beetles in old bedding, that’s a cleanup job, not a treat (my call).

Black soldier fly larvae are the other bug sold for hens. Feedipedia says “Adult black soldier flies are not generally considered important disease vectors”. It says the risk lies in what the larvae were raised on and how they were processed, not in the insect itself. It also says the larvae “can reduce some bacterial populations” as they feed, but that contaminated substrates “may introduce foodborne pathogens”. So buy them from a seller you trust (my call). In trials with laying hens, “Moderate inclusion of BSFL meal, defatted or partially defatted meal, oil, or controlled live larvae generally maintained egg production”. But it names a limit: “excessive nutrient intake when hens had unrestricted access to live larvae”. That’s the same lesson as any treat. Measure it out for your flock.

One more thing from the old page. It said store bugs like mealworms and crickets “sold as bait or chicken feed may harbor Salmonella”. It told you to get bugs “naturally from your backyard instead”. I didn’t find a source that tested store-bought mealworms for Salmonella. Iowa State does say “Flies are potential vectors for diseases including vesicular stomatitis and salmonellosis”. For North America, Georgia’s 2004 broiler tip adds that “incidence of infection vectored by flies is rare due to modern sanitation and hygiene”. My read: your backyard isn’t the clean option the old page made it out to be. For the bugs that bite back, we have pages on venomous spiders and fire ants.

How Much, and When for Chicks

Bugs you hand out are treats, and treats have a cap. Colorado State says “Treats should make up no more than 10% of their daily diet”. Alabama says “A laying hen will consume between 100 and 150 grams of feed per day”. So your hen’s whole treat share is 10 to 15 grams a day, by my math. That’s all treats together, not bugs on top of the rest. At Feedipedia’s 130 to 160 milligrams per grown mealworm, 10 to 15 grams comes to roughly 60 to 115 live ones, by my math. Dried ones weigh less each, so my call is that you weigh them, not count them.

Jacob has a time rule too. “The total supplementation of table scraps and scratch grains should be no more than chickens can finish in 20 minutes.” The old page told you to “Scatter 1/4 cup of mealworms” and to give bugs as treats “2-3 times per week”. It gave no source for either, and I found none, so I’ve put grams in their place.

Your chicks wait. Cackle Hatchery says “Feed only starter ration for at least the first two weeks, when chicks need those important nutrients for fast growth”. After that, treats come in “only small amounts at a time”, and no more than 10 percent of a chick’s diet by volume. Cackle lists dried, crushed mealworms among its treats for chicks. Our page on mealworms for baby chickens goes through it step by step. And since Merck says young birds take gapeworms hardest, my call is that you keep the fly count down wherever your chicks range.

Sources

• Colorado State University Extension: Raising Poultry the Organic Way, Disease Control and Feeding.
• Alabama Cooperative Extension System: Feeding the Laying Hen.
• Maurice Pitesky and Nancy Reimers, UC Davis: Feeding your Flock.
• Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky, Poultry Extension: Feeding Chickens for Egg Production in Small and Backyard Flocks.
• Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky, Poultry Extension: Botulism in Poultry.
• Cackle Hatchery: What to Feed Baby Chicks.
• Merck Veterinary Manual: Botulism in Poultry.
• Merck Veterinary Manual: Helminthiasis in Poultry.
• Merck Veterinary Manual: Common Helminths of Poultry (table).
• Merck Veterinary Manual: Management of Backyard Poultry.
• Feedipedia: Housefly maggot meal.
• Feedipedia: Black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens).
• Feedipedia: Mealworm (Tenebrio molitor).
• Kelly Loftin and Ricky Corder, University of Arkansas: Biology and Management of the Lesser Mealworm in Poultry Operations (FSA7081).
• Jeffery K. Tomberlin and Bart Drees, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension: Poultry Pest Management.
• Penn State Extension: Pest Management Recommendations for Poultry.
• Lee Townsend and Ric Bessin, University of Kentucky: ENT-28 Insecticide Control on Poultry (2022).
• Iowa State University, Center for Food Security and Public Health: Preventing Disease Transmission in Livestock and Poultry, Vectors: Flies (2021).
• University of Georgia Cooperative Extension, Broiler Tip (July 2004): House Fly Control Strategies That Can Prevent Problems Down the Road.
• Stimukil Fly Bait (methomyl and (Z)-9-tricosene), product label.
• QuickBayt Fly Bait (imidacloprid and Z-9-tricosene), product label.
• CDC: Mosquito Control at Home.

Sources checked November 2, 2026. Calling a fly your hen catches herself fine is my call, and so is buying dried bugs instead of growing them. Reading the old page’s three protein numbers as counted on different bases, and its “up to 70%” as a dried pupae meal, is my read. So is putting the manure pile where the fly guides say flies breed. Some lines here were written for big poultry houses and farms (Penn State, Texas A&M, Kentucky, Georgia, Iowa State, Arkansas and the two bait labels). Carrying them to your backyard coop is my read. So is using the CDC’s mosquito advice and Merck’s line on water holes for a run. Counting laying hens as food producing animals on the QuickBayt label is my read. Keeping flies killed by bait away from your hens is my call, since no label I read speaks to a hen eating one. The coop checklist, picking up any dead animal the same day, weighing dried bugs, buying them from a seller you trust and calling a vet over weak legs or a limp neck are my calls too. Any figure I worked out in percent, grams or a count of mealworms is my math from the numbers these sources print. We aren’t vets. If a bird looks sick, call a vet who sees poultry.

Related read: How to Raise Chickens for Eggs — Instant PDF download. Secure checkout by Stripe