Insects have been reared commercially for over 70 years as fishing bait and for use in live feedings (e.g., to reptiles), but only recently have insects been included in commercial poultry diets. Researchers have examined black soldier fly larvae (BSFL; Hermetia illucens), house fly larvae (Musca domestica), and mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) (De Marco et al., 2015; Dörper et al., 2021) as feed ingredients for poultry. Among these, BSFL have many advantages. This insect is an incredibly sustainable source of nutrition, providing over one million pounds of protein per acre of production per year due to breeding efficiency, growth efficiency, and vertical farming methods (Koutsos et al., 2019. Larvae of the black soldier fly are high in protein with comparable amino acid digestibility to traditional protein sources (e.g., chicken meal and fishmeal), an excellent source of fat with a high concentration of lauric acid and consist of a positive calcium:phosphorus ratio (Koutsos et al., 2019).
