CultivatingMaggots

Here is a method for cultivating big clean maggots. Sounds fun, huh?

You will need a whole beef heart from the butcher (if it is not already cut open when you buy it, you will need to do that). Place it outside, with the inside surface facing up, in a bucket or similar container, for the flies to land. This may take a few hours or a couple of days, depending on the temperature. The trick is to get just the right amount of maggots in the meat, and this takes a bit of experience. If there is too little, you get large maggots, but less in number, and also have to dispose of a greater amount of uneaten, smelly heart. If there is too much, the maggots will consume all of the meat before they have fully developed, and you will end up with a large number of undersized maggots.

When the flies have blown the heart, fold it closed, wrap it in several layers of newspaper and place it in a sheltered spot in a ten gallon plastic rubbish bin in which you have spread a layer of unprocessed bran (obtainable very cheap from the supermarket) about half to one inch deep.. Place the wrapped up heart on a cake rack to keep it clear of the bran. Leave the lid off the bin, otherwise the build up of moisture and ammonia will not be able to escape.

After about four to eight days, depending on the temperature, the fully developed maggots will leave the meat and start to crawl out of the newspaper and drop into the bran. When you see this, unwrap the heart and shake the remaining maggots into the bran. If the maggots show a dark line down the center, this is the undigested meat, so leave them in the bran for a day or so to finish digesting and clean themselves out. Then sieve off the old bran, place the maggots in a suitable container with about two to three times the volume of clean bran as there are maggots, and place a tight fitting lid (with a number of pinholes to admit air) on the container. You can store them in the refrigerator and they will stay alive for a couple of months.