Yes they are edible and have a delicious flavor and aroma when cooked, like seafood but they live on land in and feed on damp rotting wood, leaves and commonly inhabit compost piles. My best flavor comparison is that they taste very similar to boiled crawfish. The name "Pillbug" is said to have been given to them by old timers who used to eat them raw for stomach problems or acid indigestion and that due to the calcium content woodlice contain.
The bucket has a heat melted/fused on stainless steel #40 mesh bottom. More of an experiment than anything in trying to raise these outside. I'll keep it in the shade under the roof eve so any rain can freely drip into it and any excess drains out through the bottom. They like it wet but not flooded or so I read.
Today I looked under the plastic bag which the original leaves were mulched from, it sitting in the back lot of my work office, still about half full of leaves. There were many woodlice there among the bits of leaf and gravel and so I easily gathered up a hundred to add and will gather another hundred tomorrow and could probably gather another hundred the day after. Found it rather easy to scoop them up with a plastic spoon and dump them into a glass baby food jar they can't climb out of.
So getting these bugs to gather for harvest is easy. Just lay something out they can get under that is in a damp, shady area with some shredded leaves or grass clippings under for a food source. One could easily maintain several square feet of boards laying out in the yard somewhere to continually harvest these if they wished. I just want to see how they will do in the mesh bottom bucket that will hopefully keep out other things that commonly inhabit the same areas like centipedes, black widow spiders and those creepy looking things you don't know what they are unless you happen to be an entomologist haha!
My hopes are they will reproduce and convert the entire bucket of leaf mulch into whatever it is they do. I plan to get around one thousand in the bucket and just keep it moist and shaded, see what happens. After a time I'll dump it into a bin and see how many happen to be there.
OMG! I stumbled across you site looking for stuff about wormeries - and was impressed to read your article explaining the difference between worm tea and leachate.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I've uncovered something a work colleague was telling me - that woodlice are edible but I refused to believe him.
So, how EXACTLY are you supposed to cook them?
The ones I've eaten were boiled. There are a few recipes around the net. Thanks for stopping by!
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