# flightless house flies



## Jayson745 (Dec 13, 2006)

Anyone know anything about them? I was going to try and breed them for baby bearded dragons. I figured it would be easier than crickets.

I was looking here http://www.azdr.com/ProductDetails.asp? ... Code=FHF32

but it says "These are not cultures, the flies in each will not reproduce - they are feeders intended for just feeding your herps."

I was wondering why they wouldn't breed. Is it not a genetic thing, and mabey something that is "done" to them to make their wings curl?


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## AlexF (Sep 26, 2007)

These flys are steile either to make them flightless or just to avoid competition and keep you as a customer.

I feed house flies to my terribilis at times, put them in the freezer a few minutes and then take a wing out. Not the best option but much better than paying $15 per single cup of flies, not counting the shipping.


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## Roadrunner (Mar 6, 2004)

Unless the wild flies have parasites. They feed on some pretty nasty stuff.


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

I have heard of flightless houseflies, but the main difficulty is a decent medium that will not breed botulism. I think we need Ed Kowalski here to help us decide how to make a decent medium that does not grow this toxin.

However, I read that you need to do something special for the adults to get them to lay eggs:

http://www.jangala.co.uk/Curly%20winged ... ebpage.htm

I'm thinking that a soy-based media would be useful to give the flies enough protein, but avoid causing the spread of B. clostridium.


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## argus411 (Feb 17, 2004)

An informative thread. I have been waiting and hoping someone would update it with the bran type mixture clarzoo spoke of.

http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ht=#242360


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## zaroba (Apr 8, 2006)

house flys are attracted to the smell of rotting stuff to breed right?

so, what if you were to make up a fruit fly culture without the flies, and then get something like this stuff: Hog Scent: Rotting Meat (bottom of page) to put on it. the flies would smell it and come, landing in it, and perhaps breed on the fruit fly media due to the rotting meat smell.

its just a theory, but it might work.


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## Jayson745 (Dec 13, 2006)

by the looks of dougs link, these guys are no easier to breed than crickets.

I guess I was hoping to breed a large flightless fly in cultures similar to ff cultures. Doesn't sound like thats likely to happen 

I just cant believe there is no "easy" option figured out yet, for a larger food source. Silkworms, crickets, and these flies, all seem to be a pain to reproduce.

It sounds like the problem is the adults like to be dry and the mags like to be wet. I wonder if one could make a culture with a screen lid and add water to the media every other day or so. If the cup was about twice as tall as the ones we use I would think it would be plenty dry twards the top, while staying wet at the bottom.


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## Rain_Frog (Apr 27, 2004)

> just cant believe there is no "easy" option figured out yet, for a larger food source. Silkworms, crickets, and these flies, all seem to be a pain to reproduce.


Roaches are really easy to keep. However, there is a tendency for them to get loose in vivariums. If you behead/ deleg them, that problem disappears.


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## Jayson745 (Dec 13, 2006)

there is no way I could purposely bring roaches into this house. I dont live alone. Every animal or insect is ok as long as its not dangerous, a large snake, or roaches. hehehe


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## AlexF (Sep 26, 2007)

House flies sometimes deposit their eggs in my old ff cultures. Those are the ones I use so I don't risk the frogs with parasites or something like that.

A good collection procedure is to put a piece of meat outside so it gathers lots of fly eggs. The piece is then placed in a regular medium cup and you just wait for the flies to appear.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

The flies can be reared on a mixture of dry dog food moistened with milk. the souring milk will induce the flies to lay eggs however do not expect cultures to not reek. 
Also the flightless house flies are not stable and it doesn't take long for them to revert to winged flies. 

Ed


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

I am also confused by their wording... I know the "cultures" are non-reproducing (houseflies are a multi step process and it doesn't work like FFs) in that you won't get reproduction from them in those set ups... while their wording can be taken as they are sterile I think it's the set up (just enough to keep the adults alive until you feed them), not them being sterile. These are not breeding kits, but rather just adult flies to feed out. That's not to say you can't use your own breeding set up for them 

There are housefly medias out there, as well as home recipes (boy do they stink tho!). I've been waiting to try a reduced smell mix I've had for a while, was going to try it on the regular houseflies from grubco if I couldn't get these guys or terflies again. Now that they are selling them, guess I'll have to buy a culture and test out the media 

Houseflies are easy to reproduce, it's just not economical for small collections... Houseflies, crickets, and silkworms are not hard unless you try and do them small scale. Small scale it becomes easier to either buy silkworm eggs, housefly grubs, or adult crickets to breed and then grow them to the size you need. Since I can feed out all sizes of larvae as well as the pupated adults, I can keep a few hundred of these guys going at a time and supplement a lot of my frogs diets. I could easily go thru a few hundred flies in a week tho... so sacrificing a shelf of a rack to produce these guys is worth it to produce thousands to feed.

Ed - I don't know if your last statement is true for this line of flies. I know the European terflies will have a small amount of reverted flies in every generation. These are easy enough to weed out of the population before the adults are sexually mature and mate... as I was told by a european keeper you just open the tank where they are pupating outside and let the fliers fly away. That way you preserve as much of the genetically funked ones as possible to keep the % of terfly higher.

These flies are supposed to not be the same genetic strain. "In the 2 years of research that went into getting these to the US market, no recessive fliers were observed". If they were terflies, you'd see some in every generation. Everytime I've mentioned the AZDR curly winged houseflies I get told that line... but that line is about the terflies, and I don't think it applies to the curlies. I'll have to put in my order and test.


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## Ed (Sep 19, 2004)

KeroKero said:


> Ed - I don't know if your last statement is true for this line of flies. I know the European terflies will have a small amount of reverted flies in every generation. These are easy enough to weed out of the population before the adults are sexually mature and mate... as I was told by a european keeper you just open the tank where they are pupating outside and let the fliers fly away. That way you preserve as much of the genetically funked ones as possible to keep the % of terfly higher..



Hi Corey,

I was speaking generically... The line of flies linked to above may not have been the ones they ended up with as there are some people who have been keeping flightliess house flies for years.. I couldn't be sure thier culture would be coming from AZDR in the long run. 

Yes if you get them out before they sexually mature but if you miss on one generation...... 

These flies are supposed to not be the same genetic strain. "In the 2 years of research that went into getting these to the US market, no recessive fliers were observed". If they were terflies, you'd see some in every generation. Everytime I've mentioned the AZDR curly winged houseflies I get told that line... but that line is about the terflies, and I don't think it applies to the curlies. I'll have to put in my order and test.[/quote]

A quick google search pulled up this information... snip "Finally, however, they located a breeding stock. "These flies are a mixed genetic batch of wavy, curled, vestigial and nonwinged individuals. When nonwinged flies are selected to breed, there is some sort of lethal gene that causes the flies to be sterile. When selecting for curly wing, they do not breed true. So the genetics are not simply a matter of selecting a phenotype," Loren Testa comments. The Testas now share the US market with a company that raises non-flies for schools"endsnip from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15220539.200.html

I think this link provides all of the needed information. http://www.jangala.co.uk/Curly%20winged ... ebpage.htm 

Ed


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## KeroKero (Jun 13, 2004)

Ugh, I thought this was a new thread, and got all excited when I saw the AZDR link... just to realize this is just a really old thread and the flies aren't available. I've not heard anything to imply they will be available every again. Talk about dashed hopes.

The AZDR flies were supposed to have been developed seperately from the terflies... thus the differences between the amount of fliers in their genetics - much like the differences between the FF strains. Then again, I've also seen a link to azdr.com/testa.html for their flies, and Testa being the name of the people who imported what looks to be terflies... who knows. At this point, all we are doing is beating a dead horse.

While the terflies will have a couple fliers in each generation, I never got the impression that leaving the fliers in to breed would result in all the flies reverting... just increasing the % of fliers, so basically you'd have less ideal breeding stock that generation. As you mentioned, a (small) percentage of the pupated stock will be sterile (which is one of the reasons they produce less) so losing more breeding stock to fliers is even less welcome... but it's not really a case of miss a generation and you're screwed, as much as miss a generation and you've gotta work to get your breeding population larger again. I could only see it being a problem in a really small scale breeding project... but it would have to be pretty small and likely not worth the effort for that little a population.


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