Chicken Manure in Larvae Substrate?

Not an expert on Dynastes, so I won't speak to that, but just a reminder for anyone trying it who has access to chickens: poultry manure needs to be aged and should not be used fresh. Fresh poultry manure has high levels of several chemicals that can burn sensitive skin and can kill plants. It is best to either age the dropping a year (a particularly active composting program may shorten the time.)

The bagged stuff you buy at a gardening store will have been aged, so that's not a concern.

Interested to follow this and see results.

 
I'm reasonably sure that chicken manure, even aged, will probably kill Dynastes larvae.  It's just too chemically "hot" - it's very different from the manure of herbivorous mammals (which consists mainly of undigested plant material).  Bird waste however, is more like bat guano.  I've heard of cases of hobbyists experimenting with poultry manure, and they just ended up killing their larvae with it.  Dynastes lives in rotten wood.

 
Goliathus said:
I'm reasonably sure that chicken manure, even aged, will probably kill Dynastes larvae.  It's just too chemically "hot" - it's very different from the manure of herbivorous mammals (which consists mainly of undigested plant material).  Bird waste however, is more like bat guano.  I've heard of cases of hobbyists experimenting with poultry manure, and they just ended up killing their larvae with it.  Dynastes lives in rotten wood.
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Out of all the different types of manure easily accessible, chicken manure is one of the strongest in terms of NPK content - hence why it seems quite odd that one would put this manure out of all others into the substrate. However, if H Kojima had actually done this, it might have some credibility. The nature of the way we produce our artificial substrate lends itself to having at least some nitrogenous content in them already - so perhaps they could tolerate the amended nitrogen (once broken down, not raw chicken feces)? In fact, the flake soil we produce is essentially a type of compost (which of course typically has a decent amount of nitrogen for plants), the carbon source being the wood chips (the "brown" as they call in gardening)and the nitrogen source being the wheat bran/wheat flour (the "green" as they call in gardening). All the nitrogen from the wheat does not simply go away once the fermentation is done.

I personally feel like it would do more harm than good, but was curious on other's thought on this. I don't quite understand why the manure would benefit the grub at all, its not like the grub is a plant and can actively use nitrogen in its inorganic form.

 
Just remembered a discussion on antkeepers forum about some species of ant (camponotus sp., I think?) reaping some benefits from being provided chicken manure. IIRC, it stimulated egg laying. 

 
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