**Fly Breeding Technology in Large Cage Rooms**
Around 2011, a relatively complete method of indoor fly breeding emerged. Due to its simple manual operation process, the labor cost was significantly reduced, thereby truly lowering the cost of maggot breeding. The large-scale utilization of maggot farming made it possible to replace expensive protein feed like fishmeal in large quantities. This not only improved the breeding effects on animals but also significantly reduced the breeding costs. The successful promotion and popularization of indoor fly breeding have brought obvious benefits to a wide range of breeders.
**Design of Fly Rooms and Infrastructure for Breeding Rooms:**
Generally, a flat room with an area of 15-20 square meters is used. The house is equipped with iron mesh screens and glass windows, and exhaust fans are installed on the windows. There are heating firewalls or stoves indoors to maintain the temperature between 25-30°C, while the relative humidity of the air is adjusted to around 70%. Iron mesh screens are installed on the doors, which are covered with black curtains to prevent flies from escaping. Newly built fly rooms should be single-row flat houses facing south. A closed walkway is set up on the north side, with an operating room in the middle that has doors at both ends. The north-facing doors of the fly rooms lead into the walkway through the back door of the working room. On the south side, there are 1.7m x 1.8m glass windows. Each room has an area of 38.5 square meters (2.5m x 5.5m x 2.8m) and is equipped with screen doors, screen windows, exhaust fans, and underground heating channels. This type of fly room has an appropriate size, high utilization rate, ample sunlight, and good ventilation. The closed walkway on the north side effectively prevents adult flies from escaping and can buffer against cold northern winds during winter, helping maintain indoor warmth. Depending on local conditions, the design can also be a combination of a simple greenhouse and housing for adult fly breeding. Cement pools can be built outdoors, filled with livestock and human feces to attract flies to lay eggs, which then hatch into maggots. Feeds are regularly injected, and maggots are harvested. This method is the simplest and most economical, but the yield is low and greatly influenced by environmental factors. After eliminating adult flies, the ground and surrounding walls of the fly room should be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected with ultraviolet light for 2-3 hours.
**Combining Traditional Cage Fly Breeding with Indoor Fly Breeding:**
This approach perfectly combines traditional cage fly breeding with indoor fly breeding, utilizing the hygiene advantages of cage breeding while fully leveraging the low-cost advantage of indoor fly breeding. After adopting the large-cage indoor fly breeding method, the most significant advantage compared to previous fly breeding methods is:
1. **High Maggot Yield with Low Cost:** Large-cage indoor breeding is basically consistent with indoor breeding methods, except that the flies are kept in cages larger than two cubic meters. The operation process remains very simple, and the output and cost of breeding are basically consistent with indoor breeding.
2. **Few Flies Seen Outside the Maggot Room:** By adopting the large-cage indoor breeding method, the problem of flies escaping is completely avoided, ensuring the cleanliness and hygiene of the overall environment of the breeding farm. Currently, there are two domestic methods for breeding houseflies: cage breeding and indoor breeding. Both methods have their strengths. Cage breeding provides better isolation, is more hygienic, and creates suitable breeding conditions, but the utilization rate of the rooms is not high. Indoor breeding improves the utilization rate, has simple equipment, saves labor and costs, and is suitable for large-scale continuous production, but management is inconvenient, and adult flies tend to escape easily.
3. **Cleaner Environment in the Maggot Room:** Without flies flying around everywhere, the flowers inside the maggot room look very fresh and bright, no longer covered by fly droppings. The working environment of the breeding staff has been significantly improved.
Of course, no technology is perfect, and indoor fly breeding is no exception. The following three main drawbacks have been identified:
1. **Flies Dropping Feces Above:** Any breeder who has experienced indoor fly breeding knows that flies excrete frequently during their feeding growth phase. To ensure high maggot production, we often conduct "high-density breeding" of flies. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is always a "drizzle" of droppings in the maggot room. Breeders entering the maggot room often need to wear work clothes and straw hats because fly droppings are difficult to wash off once they fall on clothes. However, wearing long-sleeved work clothes during hot summer days makes the working environment quite "harsh" for the operators.
2. **Difficult to Achieve True Sterility:** Flies move around inside the maggot room, often stopping on dung piles, walls, flowers, and other environments. Although the manure is treated with microbial fermentation, when these flies land on people's clothes or bodies, it is clearly unsanitary.
3. **Occasional Escape of Flies:** Although our fly breeding rooms use double anti-escape mesh doors, some flies often gather near the entrance. When breeders enter and exit the maggot room, especially when pushing manure in and out, it is easy for flies to escape outside the house, increasing the number of "wild" flies within the breeding farm.