Researchers asked whether farms could swap costly soybean meals for cheaper farm scraps or bug protein to raise stronger chickens. They began with 252 newborn Cobb 500 chicks and built three feeding plans. The first group kept the usual corn-and-soybean mix. The second group swapped part of the soybean with sunflower meal, brewers' dried grain, and wheat middlings. The third group took that second mix and added five percent dried black soldier fly larvae. After thirty-nine days, the team collected droppings to study gut bacteria. Then, at day forty, they checked the taste and look of the breast meat.
By the time the birds hit day forty, scientists measured how the meat tasted and looked. Both the normal and modified diets made the breast meat more acidic, yet neither altered the white hue