- Location
- Essex
Aren't prawns insects?
Is the answer to UK livestock sustainability
- Thread starter Stuart J
- Start date
Pigken
Member
- Location
- Co. Durham
Think prawns are crustations or similar, somet to do with shell?
Can already buy deep fried crickets, not sure on the slaughter house facilities needed or how crickets are reared to red tractor standards.
Is there not a lab factory Cambridgeshire that is growing flies for human protein?
If you want an environmentally sustainable business, you first of all need to be in business. Or, as I think I read on here, to be green you first of all need to be in the black.
Stop feeding soya meal, fine, well done. Wont do your business any good. Many (most ?) on here who rear cattle and sheep will still be out of business in the next 5-10 years. For the same reasons that most on here who used to rear pigs and poultry, or grow fruit and veg, no longer do so.
You need to find ways to promote your business as being environmentally sustainable, which at the same time increase your chances of remaining in business.
Stop feeding soya meal, fine, well done. Wont do your business any good. Many (most ?) on here who rear cattle and sheep will still be out of business in the next 5-10 years. For the same reasons that most on here who used to rear pigs and poultry, or grow fruit and veg, no longer do so.
You need to find ways to promote your business as being environmentally sustainable, which at the same time increase your chances of remaining in business.
Chae1
Member
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
Speaking to people in the pig/poultry industry. They see insects as way forward as a protein source.
A chicken would eat a fair amount of insects in its natural environment anyway?
A chicken would eat a fair amount of insects in its natural environment anyway?
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
Dare say I’ve consumed the odd fly over the years Dose t mean I want a bowl of them for breakfast dinner and tea
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
Already common in some Asian cultures....
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
I’m not Asian , I don’t eat dogs or bats either .
- Location
- Fife
Pigs and chickens are monogastric and natural omnivores. I see no problem with feeding them insect based protein.
While will those who rear sheep and cattle be out of business?
- Location
- Devon
It is very hard to predict the consequences of the changes which are being put forward in the name of environmentalism,but I fear in many cases the net result will be negative.
This is mainly due to the changes being driven by business more than science, and in any case is bereft of understanding in the practicalities.
The clamour is not to save the world but to control and own the future source of protein.
Insect farming probably has its place but is less sustainable than grazing ruminants.
Grazing requires no inputs;
"Feed handling for any kind of farm is an integral part of the overall system. Likewise, this is also true for industrialized edible-insect farming (Fig. 6.2). Due to the perishable nature of some feeds used, especially for those with high water content such as those formulated from nonmarketable produce products, insect farmers have to serve-in-time (pickup/delivery: once or twice a week) to reduce feed spoilage. When feeds are formulated from dry material such as spent grain and yeast, wheat flour, dry oilseed cakes, spoilage is less of an issue but it is important to deliver only the quantity of feed needed and when it is needed to reduce unnecessary wasteful feed use, especially since feed delivered often becomes contaminated with insect waste, saliva, secretions and/or further environmental contaminants such as mold and moisture. It is unusual when feed can be recycled or reused after it is delivered to farmed insects, though this may be the case in some well-designed and very efficient systems for some species requiring very dry environments."
Likewise, farmers generally try to minimise the housing of stock, but when they do, at least they don't need to keep them heated;
This is mainly due to the changes being driven by business more than science, and in any case is bereft of understanding in the practicalities.
The clamour is not to save the world but to control and own the future source of protein.
Insect farming probably has its place but is less sustainable than grazing ruminants.
Grazing requires no inputs;
"Feed handling for any kind of farm is an integral part of the overall system. Likewise, this is also true for industrialized edible-insect farming (Fig. 6.2). Due to the perishable nature of some feeds used, especially for those with high water content such as those formulated from nonmarketable produce products, insect farmers have to serve-in-time (pickup/delivery: once or twice a week) to reduce feed spoilage. When feeds are formulated from dry material such as spent grain and yeast, wheat flour, dry oilseed cakes, spoilage is less of an issue but it is important to deliver only the quantity of feed needed and when it is needed to reduce unnecessary wasteful feed use, especially since feed delivered often becomes contaminated with insect waste, saliva, secretions and/or further environmental contaminants such as mold and moisture. It is unusual when feed can be recycled or reused after it is delivered to farmed insects, though this may be the case in some well-designed and very efficient systems for some species requiring very dry environments."
Likewise, farmers generally try to minimise the housing of stock, but when they do, at least they don't need to keep them heated;
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Already a shortage of abattoirs in the uk and most are struggling to find staff. I think it unlikely that any of the major players will be putting any new lines in for the humane slaughter of insects.
No but they do in some countries, anyway this was about livestock eating them, all I was trying to get at is that livestock most likely would already eat insects out in the field so I wouldn't think it would be so likely to cause problems like BSE as feeding cows and sheep to cows
I suspect we all have, never eating any animals is probably close to impossible
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
I just don’t think it’s right feeding insects , I don’t like unnatural things like that .
livestock eating them is not unnatural is what I was trying to say.
I have cut fields of grass before now that have been moving with grasshoppers so much so that I could see them from up in the tractor, some of them are bound to end up in the silage. I took some photos the other day of some of the bugs that were on the top of the mower when I finished mowing some were tiny some were quite big they are bound to end up in the silage and the cows will eat them and it would be just the same if the cows were turned in to the field to graze it.
I am not saying and have not said that we should intentionally farm insects to feed to livestock, just that they eat them anyway
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
It’s not unnatural for you or me to swallow the odd fly but it would be to have a plate full of flys everyday .
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
I've seen one of our cows catch and eat a Yellowhammer that wasn't quite quick enough, so they'll chomp through heaps of invertebrates if available. Aphids, spittlebugs, crickets, spiders
Good way to keep your Nitrogens safe from being lost, is to have most of it trying to eat itself.
There's a lot going on when you observe intensive grazing - like harriers killing fieldmice and the cattle flushing them off their kill to eat the mouse. Sometimes 3 or 4 gang up on the hawk so it isn't "just an accident" at all
I used to be too busy to watch it, now I sit and watch. Makes a bit of a mockery of strict vegetarianism and veganism when even cows recognise easy protein when they see it .
No but I don't fancy a bowl of silage either.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Imagine a diet of mostly pickled food for 6 months of the year
yet we think nothing of stock eating pickled food it because "it's all around us" infact one of the biggest associated costs with keeping cows, is providing them with "unnatural" things to eat and "unnatural" places to live, mainly for the benefit of people who want to eat meat but don't even know how to kill it, let alone cut it into bits - in real life, they wouldn't get meat unless by luck
it really just boils down to perception, availability heuristic, etc - I'd say it would be viable because we get by feeding things on milk, pasture for life - so the actual need to jam more protein into the ruminant is a construct.
But on the whole, insects are hugely efficient in terms of feed conversion into protein and so it's likely to be a matter of time before the 20% of the world who don't eat insects, suddenly work out they can do it too
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
Here mrs house wife please buy this beef it was fed on insects ! It’s very nice 
oh mr farmer I think i will go vegan you desperate barsteward .
oh mr farmer I think i will go vegan you desperate barsteward .
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
BBC news just see it now , big bad nasty farmers feed insects to cattle! Bloody own goal on the pr front for sure .
As said, for the same reason as all the pig, poultry, fruit and veg folks have gone.