Since I first wrote this in 2006, the American public has been exposed to many cultures where the consumption of insects is the norm. There is less “knee jerk” reaction and more inclination to this subject seriously. Many people will never have the space or the resources for raising even small livestock. Besides being a readily available wild food, this good complete protein rich littlest livestock can easily be raised in small spaces and on scraps from the smallest garden. 230gr
The Smallest Small Livestock
Rising Insect food
The thought of eating insects may still be unsettling to some Americans; however, in many cultures insects and other arthropods have been eaten as a staple. Arthropods and other invertebrates that are commonly eaten now, such as crab, lobster, shrimp, and escargot (snails) are unacceptable to all but the lowest classes of society. Now of course we “know” better and pay a premium for them. Why couldn’t insects or even worms be just as good? They are a good source of complete protein, easy to find, can take up about as space an aquarium. We will look into which insects are most nutritious and easiest to rear. In a true survival situation the time and costs in rearing insects or labor to catch insects must be considered. One thing to keep in mind in hunting any animal you are going to eat is to never expend more energy in capturing it than it is going to give back to you upon consumption.
First of all, are they nutritious enough to bother eating in the first place? Well, they don’t stack up too badly. Earthworms are an excellent source of protein, reportedly 82% protein and the essential oil of earthworms is an Omega 3 fat. Most insects, like grasshoppers, are high in nutritional content and grubs are high in nutrition fat.
Nutritional Value of Various Insects per 100 grams
Insect……………. Protein (g) Fat (g) Carbs Calcium (mg) Iron (mg)
Water Beetle……….19.8 8.3 2.1 43.5 13.6
Red Ant……………..13.9 3.5 2.9 47.8 5.7
Cricket………………12.9 5.5 5.1 75.8 9.5
Small Grasshopper. 20.6 6.1 3.9 35.2 5.0
Large Grasshopper..4.3 3.3 2.2 27.5 3.0
June Beetle………..13.4 1.4 2.9 22.6 6.0
Beef (Lean)…….......27.4
Fish (Broiled Cod)…28.5
What types of critters are eaten?
The Japanese still eat insects such as: boiled wasp larvae, aquatic insect larvae, fried rice-field grasshoppers & fried cicada. American Indians where known to feast on ants, crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, weevil larvae, and beetle larvae. Many tropical peoples eat termites in quantity. I was surprised to find how many insects are being studied as direct human food and we can only cover a few.
How do we catch them?
Observe when each insect type is least active, especially if they are jumpers or flyers like grasshopper or earthworms on a warm, wet summer nights.
1. Termites are collected by placing a bowl of water under a light source. The termites are attracted to the light and will then fall into the water. The winged queen termites are considered a delicacy.
2. Crickets can be collected from soil tunnels which they build. A line of Indians would drive crickets across a field into trench with lightly covered with dry grass stocks. Then they would ignite the grass and roast them on the spot.
3. Grasshoppers crawl to the top of tall grass blades during the night and become very dormant and still. They are most easily captured in the early morning, while still dormant, and can be plucked by hand or swatted with a twig and gathered into a basket.
4. June beetles are strongly attracted to night lights or bon fires and can be caught by hand when land near it.
5. Grubs are found underground near compost piles, rotting logs or stump roots. They are easily dug.
6. Earth Worms
• Methods of "calling up" worms out of the ground, a process also known as Grunting. Take a seasoned piece of wood, about four feet long. It should be in the shape of a wedge, about two inches wide at the top and ½ inch wide at the bottom. Pound this wedge three feet into the ground. To create vibrations down the wedge and into the ground, rub a piece of tapered steel across the wood, just like you’re playing a violin. Some people make their “grunting bows” out of wood. These bows have lots of raised notches that vibrate when gently rubbed across the surface of the wedge.
• Another method is to drive two metal rods into the ground, about two feet apart. To each rod, hook up jumper cables connected to a car battery. Worms are said to just jump out of the ground.
Raising Smallest Small Livestock
Equipment is Minimal
• Rearing Container with a tight-fitting cover
o Good rearing containers- wide-mouth jars, gallon jugs, or terrariums (preferably glass as it is easy to clean and you can see what the insects doing.
o Cover with a small sheet of glass, Nylon window screen or old bed sheet held down by a rubber band.
o Choose your cover by the amount of humidity the insects need: glass holds moisture in; a screen or cloth lets it out.
• Drinking Water- a small vial, with water, laying on its side plugged with a cotton wick from which the insects will drink.
• Grow Temperature- 75-80°F (some warmer) a lamp near or near a bright window during the day.
Insect Food- cornmeal, grain, scraps fruits, and table scraps.
Cautions-
• Over Crowding- possibility of diseases and cannibalism; harvest excess insects or divide colonies.
• Start a New Colony- periodically give them a fresh habitat to retain vigor.
Types of Smallest Small Livestock
• Meal Worms
The meal worm is easy raised by the beginner. The adults are a hard-shelled beetle can lay about 275 eggs in their life time. The larvae grow to about l-inch long and molt 9 to 20 times before they are fully grown in 4-6 months (if the temperature is near 80°F). The pupa stage is next then the adult beetle. The adult lives about 2-3 months. All four insect stages will be present at the same time but the large larval stage, before they mature into beetles, is the choice eating stage. A mealworm colony of 5000 will make insect protein a regular part of your diet.
Simply take a flat plastic tub with a lid, fill the rearing container with an 3-6 inches or so of wheat bran, oats or other grain, put in a sponge or slice of potato as a source of water, and then deposit your mealworms. Replace the slice of potato before it growing mold. Humidity is important a damp sponge by the food and replace it when it dried out but too much will make the food moldy. Also add a piece or two of crumpled paper toweling for the insects to crawl on and for the larvae to pupate.
• Raising Crickets
Crickets can be reared indoors the black field cricket and the straw-colored house cricket are easy to collect. Male cricket makes the familiar chirping sound and female have a long, sword like egg laying apparatus. The female lays her eggs in sand and the nymphs appear 3-4 weeks later. At 80°F, the nymphs become adults in about 2 months; at 90°F they grow twice as fast.
Crickets are quite easy to raise and prepare, and the main problem is making sure that they don't escape. It is a good idea to put a rock on top of the lid to ensure that you don't accidentally knock it off.
Crickets can be kept in any fairly large container with high sides and a tight fitting lid. An aquarium or large glass container with a screen cover is a good choice. Place 3-4 inches of dry sand or potting soil in the bottom of the container and put three small shallow cups (about 1/2 in. high) on the sand. To one cup, add water and a cotton ball so the crickets won't drown. Keep it wet. To the second, add slightly moist (not wet) sand this will be where the crickets deposit their eggs. Place small bits of food in the third cup, not on the sand. Crickets eat almost anything edible, but very small nymphs prefer soft food such as vegetable scraps fruits, apples, or lettuce. Grains are good food for the larger crickets. Discard moldy food and clean the jar occasionally. Put several egg cartons or some crumpled paper in the aquarium for the crickets to roost on and for hiding places and add 50-100 crickets. Mist the potting soil lightly every few days, and make sure that the crickets always have fresh food. You can probably start harvesting the crickets within a few months.
• Flour Beetles
The flour beetle s one of the easiest insects to rear indoors, however, they are small and all the four stages of the insect live in flour or other grains. The female beetles lay their eggs in the flour and the small whitish larvae emerge and shed their skins 6-11 times before growing up fully. In time the small white pupae slowly turn to brownish beetles less than 1/8-inch long. The adults live long; some last from 6 months to 3 years. Their life cycle is about 40 days long when grown at 80°F and 75 percent relative humidity.
Rearing simply requires putting 2-6 inches of white, whole wheat flour or cornmeal in the rearing vessel and adding the insects. Disturb them as little as possible because they emit a slightly disagree able odor when stirred up. Be sure to thin the colony if it gets too crowded.
• Earthworms
The small red worms are ideal for composting your freshest kitchen and garden waste with wet grass, leaves or even shredded newspaper as bedding giving you vermiculite and high quality protein. The rule for feeding is only use the freshest organic waste and feed again when approx two thirds of the last feed has been converted to vermi-compost (the stage just prior to the darker and finer vermi-cast). Everything should be ground to the smallest particle possible; grind a pumpkin and in weeks it will be consumed but big pieces will not.
The red worms will double their numbers every month but when you harvest the worms and you leave too much cast behind, the mechanism for cocoon burst and egg creation is switched off. So harvest when approx two thirds of the last feed has been converted to vermi-compost and replication will be doubling every thirty days. Strip stock when cast appears, resets the pits and the growth rate remains near maximum.
No mating signs means the food is insufficient or the pH is wrong, as pH is the next biggest thing that goes wrong after too much cast. Pay attention to pH first or the wrong bacteria will grow and the worms can not use them to break down the food first, next keep moisture levels high and constant, So add large quantities of AG lime to keep the pH up to around 6.5 to 7.5 ideally.
Preparing the Harvest
• Mealworms
Starve them for 24 hours to purge them, next separate mealworms from any attached food, place a handful of them in a colander and gently toss then remove any dead worms. Store 24 hrs then wash the remaining live insects under cool water. Place the worms on paper towels and pat dry before cooking or freezing for later use. Optionally, you can chop off their heads before cooking.
• Crickets
Catch crickets put them in a empty container with cheese cloth tied over the mouth to kept the little buggers inside the jar, and after about 24 hours, they will empty their intestinal tracts (which are bitter). Then place the crickets in a refrigerator or other cold place, to slow them down before attempting to wash them by pouring them into a colander and cover it quickly with a piece of cheesecloth. Then rinse them and dry them by shaking the colander until all the water drains. After they were "clean", they were dumped into a cloth bag. The cricket's heads, hind legs, and wing cases can be removed according to personal preference since cricket legs tend to get stuck in your teeth.
• Grass hoppers
Grass hoppers are prepared in the same way as crickets but it is best to pull the sharp edged legs off before the cooking.
• June beetle larvae
June beetle larvae are quite large and live around rotting logs and stumps. Chinese feed them rice for a day or so until purge their guts of rotted wood or you can remove the dark guts from the end of the abdomen before the larvae are washed and fried.
• June beetle
Beetles may be rinsed in water and have their wings legs and head removed before cooking.
• Flour Beetles
The beetles and large stage larvae are less than 1/8-inch long and live through the flour. You can sift them out with a very fine sieve or simply use flower and all in your cooking.
• Earthworms
Water Purge- Earthworms are dropped into clean, potable water for a few minutes. The worms will naturally purge themselves out, after which they can be cooked or even eaten raw.
• Cleaning and Rinsing- Cut worms into pieces and pressing the pieces to remove dirt and sand. After vigorous pressing of worm segments they must be rinsed thoroughly in running water.
How to Cook the Smallest Small Livestock
Preparing Dry-Roasted Insects (applies to crickets, grasshoppers, mealworms and most insects). Take cleaned insects out of the freezer. Spread them out on a paper-towel covered baking sheet. Bake at 200oF for 1-2 hours, until the insects the insects are fairly brittle and crush easily can be easily crushed or ground them till they are about consistency of wheat germ. Dry-roasted insect flour can be included in most any recipe such as bread, biscuits or to stew and soups.
• Crickets
After remove the legs, wings, and ovipositor, (if not purged, the guts should be removed too) are dry roasted over a fire or hot coals in a cloth bag hung by a fire to dry out or pot to dry completely. They were munched as is for a tasty snack or crushed and used over rice meals.
Grasshoppers
Prepared and eaten in a manner similar to that for crickets, but they are more crunchy.
• Termites
Often eaten raw or simply fried in a pan and roasted over hot coals or flames. After cooking, the wings are removed and salt is added to taste.
• June Beetle and Larvae
The Ho Chung and other Wisconsin tribes especially prized these insects for nourishing the sick. They where slow roasted at low temperatures, mashed and made into broth that they gave to those so sick that could keep nothing else down. The Chinese battered and deep fried the grubs and called them “Grass Shrimp”.
• Flour Beetles
The beetles and large stage larvae can sift them out and dry roasted or added to soup but it is simpler to just use flower they live in and all in your bread. I have read where the old time sailors often considered them tastier than the hard tack they infested.
• Earthworms
Generally they are fried up crispy like chow main noodles or chopped fine for soup.
Recipes
• Oaxaca Grasshopper- Serves six (if you can find six).
Ingredients
About 1000 grasshoppers (the younger the better)
1/2 cup chili sauce
pinch of salt
garlic
onion
1 lemon
1 cup guacamole
6 tortillas
Directions:
Soak the grasshoppers in clean water for 24 hours.
Boil them, then let dry.
Fry in a pan with garlic, onion, salt and lemon.
Roll up in tortillas with chili sauce and guacamole.
• Fried Green Tomato Hornworms
Stuffing solely with tomato (not Tobacco!) leaves for the better part of a month, Hornworms taste great with just about any summer vegetable, but this recipe draws inspiration from the cuisine of the Whistle Stop Café.
3 tablespoons olive oil
16 tomato hornworms
4 medium green tomatoes sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
Salt and pepper to taste
White cornmeal
In a large skillet or wok, heat the oil. Then lightly fry the hornworms, about 4 minutes, taking care not to rupture the cuticles of each insect under high heat. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Season tomato rounds with salt and pepper, then coat with cornmeal on both sides.
In a large skillet, fry tomatoes until lightly browned on both sides
Top each round with 2 fried tomato hornworms.
Garnish the paired hornworms with a single basil leaf
• Earthworms Soups
o Earthworm and Vegetable Soup
50 worms were chopped, cleaned, with repeated rinsing and squeezing to remove sand and dirt from the worms.
The soup was prepared with 2 cups of water, blending in 1 tomato, 1/2 t Basil, 1 small onion sliced, and 1 clove garlic chopped. A stalk of celery and a green onion was sliced and added then the soup boiled for a few minutes. The worms were sautéed for 1 minute with 1 t. sesame oil with a small amount of chopped ginger and chopped clove of garlic. This worm mix is then pureed with a small amount of the vegetable soup and then returned to the soup mix. Noodles were added to the soup and boiled for 5 minutes.
Taste Test- very tasty, like Minestrone soup with no hint of worm taste discernible found this to be normal eating.
o Simulated Chicken Dumpling Soup with Earthworm
50 worms were chopped and cleaned with repeated rinsing and squeezing to remove sand and dirt from the worms.
The soup was prepared with 2 cups of water, 1/2 t. each salt and pepper, 1 chopped green onion, 1 chopped celery stalk and boiled for 5 minutes. The cleaned worms are sautéed for 1 minute with 1 t. sesame oil with a small amount of chopped ginger and chopped clove of garlic. The worm mix was put into the blender with a small amount of soup, and pureed, and then added back into the soup. Dumplings prepared with 1/2 t. Cinnamon, black pepper, and salt were added to the soup and boiled for 5 minutes. Result: a dumpling soup, simulating chicken soup in that fat globules can be seen and the color is golden.
Taste Test- No worm taste was detected. Soup was spicy, the color of the soup appropriate and was good with the taste of chicken soup. A child would take this to be chicken soup, and readily eat it.
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