GrubTerra Black Soldier Fly Larvae Review -

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If you are looking for a way to increase your chicken flock health and nutrition you might consider giving GrubTerra’s black soldier fly larvae a try! Here is my review of their product.

Full disclosure: GrubTerra sent me a free bag of their larvae to try with our chickens in exchange for an honest review. Aside from that free bag I am getting no monetary compensation for this review.

What is GrubTerra?

According to their website, GrubTerra is “a social impact company that focuses on creating a sustainable feed source for livestock while also helping to reduce landfill waste and creating a positive impact.”

They sell only three main products on their website, one of which is the Black Soldier Fly Larvae that I gave my chickens as a supplement.

The fly larvae have been raised on food waste that has been redirected from landfills. According to their product page, each pound of worms takes twenty pounds of food waste to produce.

What are the Benefits Black Soldier Fly Larvae?

Aside from the positive environmental impact, these little larvae have great nutritional benefits for your flock.

75% more calcium than mealworms
Improved feather production
Stronger Egg Shells
A tasty snack that you’ll chickens will run for

How much fly larvae should I feed my chickens to see results?

They recommend on their bag to treat this as a special snack and only feed a few handfuls each day. One 16oz bag will feed up to five chickens per month.

How much does it cost per chicken to feed them GrubTerra Fly Larvae?

If each 16oz bag will feed up to five chickens a month, and a bag costs $18.95 per month, it will cost about $3.79 per chicken per month to feed them GrubTerra larvae.

If you buy their larger bag this price will go down quite a bit.

Let’s say you have a small backyard flock of chickens and are only feeding five birds. But you decide to buy the large size bag at 10 pounds at $69.40. A ten pound bag will feed your five chickens for ten months. That drops your cost per month per chicken down to $1.38.

To calculate the cost for your flock just take your number of chickens x $1.38 (if you buy the bulk bag, which I would recommend) then you get your monthly cost of supplementing black soldier fly larvae.

How does GrubTerra compare to Grubbly?

I haven’t had a chance to try Grubbly with my birds so I can’t share a comparative difference from a performance perspective.

We can compare price though!

Grubbly offers two options, Hometown Harvest or World Harvest. I don’t see what the difference is, but Hometown is $20 for a one pound bag (GrubTerra is $18.95) and World Harvest is $17. The price again goes down if you buy a larger bag. They do offer up to a twenty pound bag.

Since GrubTerra only offers up to ten pounds, let’s compare that price breakdown. GrubTerra’s ten pound bag is $69.40. Grubbly Hometown is $100 (less if you subscribe) and their World Harvest is $65.

At the time of writing this article they are sold out of World Harvest so you would have to go with the more expensive Hometown.

My Experience with GrubTerra Fly Larvae

I received my five-pound bag of fly larvae and, to be honest, I left it on the shelf for several months. The bag was only one pound which is only enough to feed five chickens for a month. We had a pretty large flock at the time and I didn’t think I’d be able to see much of a difference in their feathers or eggs if they each only got a grub or two.

After reducing our flock size I started to supplement our chickens daily with GrubTerra Black Soldier Fly Larvae.

It took a couple weeks but I definitely started to see improvement in feather regrowth. I also noticed we did not have a long molt/eggless stretch this year. We never went without eggs! I didn’t notice a marked difference in terms of shell toughness. However, our girls always have access to oyster shells so that one is hard to gauge.

chickens and fly larvae rough and tumble farmhouse

Would I recommend GrubTerra Black Soldier Fly Larvae?

I’m going to say it depends.

I do think their product makes a difference for chicken health and my flock absolutely loves them.

If you have a smaller flock of say ten chickens or so, I would supplement with it and buy the bulk ten pound bag. We have reduced our flock to around 20 chickens and I do plan to get the larger bag for helping keep our girls healthy this winter.

However, if you have a large flock it might not be cost-effective. At one point we had around sixty chickens. That would cost about $83 per month to supplement their feed with Grubterra. For me with free-range birds who get a lot of good nutrition, that just wouldn’t be worth it.

GrubTerra Discount Code

If you are interested in trying GrubTerra for your birds, they have kindly provided the discount code Grub10 for 10% off your order of anything on their website.