Having been grown on the base of small-scale innovative enterprise in a laboratory environment, black soldier fly's larvae were used as food additive to daily ration of calves. Experiment resulted in obtaining data of reliable significance level and that data proved a favourable effect from dried larvae as efficient food additive.
Keywords: black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens, food additive, volume increment, agriculture
Recently, biotechnologies have spread out to a big scale as the perspective science trends researching opportunities to use life forms, systems, their waste products to solve technological and agriculture problems. Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) was used as a research subject. The researched species can satisfy all the requirements lodged to forage and food additive, for livestock and poultry. Fly’s larvae are remarkable for its high nutritiousness and accumulation of microand macroelements, whose percentage depends on feeding diet, in an organism.
Research objective: to study efficiency of dried black soldier fly’s larvae in week-old calves’s food.
Materials and methods of the study. Researches were conducted on the basis of agriculture enterprise OJSC «Vazhskoe», Arkhangelsk region. Research subjects were 39 calves of 1 week-old.
To determine unalloyed dried fly’s larvae influence efficiency calves were divided into two groups: test group (23 heads) and check group (16 heads). Daily rate of dried grinded larvae as food additive was 7 g per day.
Experiment results. efficiency of Black soldier fly’s larvae influence (as food additive) on calves physical conditions was measured by calculating statistical indicators of volume and volume increment for every separately weighed animal after feeding period and experiment were finished. (Table 1)
Table 1 Statistical indicators of volume and volume increment by mass of cattle
According to analysis of average statistical data, after fly’s larvae was used, calves volume increment by mass increased by 2% in comparison with check group. Since the experiment period and feeding period were different in duration it was reasonable to use larvae’s influence efficiency index by mass per one experiment day (in kilograms) per every head of cattle. Analysing data for the experiment period it can be noticed that calves in test group put on 0.89±0.05 kg and in check group this value was 0.72±0.04 kg on average per day. Reliability of values differences was proved as t=13.03, larvae proved its worth in capacity of food additive. During the second part of the experiment feeding the cattle with larvae was finished so as a result animal volume increment by mass dropped by 0.76±0.03 kg, as for check group this value was 0.91±0.07 kg. Differences of data obtained are reliable.
Conclusions. Use of black soldier fly’s larvae in capacity of food additive leads to volume increment of calves and provides additional increment per one head of cattle at the rate about 170 g on average per day In comparison with check group. As a result, extra month increment by animal mass is 5 kg and more while using 210 g of dried larvae per a head.