Flesh eating beetle update

Well, I've had the flesh eating beetles for a few months now and thought I would post an update on them.

First off, they stink. They got banished to the barn and Cathy pretty much refuses to even go in the barn unless the doors have been open for a while. I think they don't smell that bad, but maybe my sniffer is off.

However, they do seem to be doing a pretty decent job of cleaning skulls. I added a pig skull and my bobcat skull when I first got them and it took them forever to get them clean, but they have grown as a colony now and I added the skull from the pig my friend shot when he was down here a few weeks ago and they made pretty short order of it.

Here's the skull just a day or two after I added it. Not sure what the light brown stuff on there is, maybe Beetle poo.

Here's the skull as of this morning. They have about got it cleaned up. The dark brown that you see on the skull are the beetles doing some final cleaning. It basically took them 2 weeks to clean it.
You can see my bobcat skull in the bottom of that picture and the original pig skull on the bottom right side of the picture. They are pretty much clean now, I just need to soak them in some degreasing solution (dawn dishwashing soap) and then soak them in peroxide to get them gleaming white. I am going to wait until all of them are done and then do them all at once.

I need to start finding something else for them to eat pretty soon.

Nathan