Dirty Jobs

Bird Food

Every living creature needs to eat food. With forests being cut down for human uses, bird habitats are disappearing and feeding birds with bird feeders in backyards is becoming popular. But how is bird food made? What is it made from? Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs found a couple that makes high quality bird food.

The first step in making this high quality bird food is cleaning out the tank that they will melt the fat in. Using shovels, they scoop out the left over fat from the tank. When it is all cleaned out, they put fresh fat in it. It’s beef kidney knobs. This fat surrounds the kidneys in cows. It has a high nutritional content and will provide the birds with insulating fat. They put about 1500 pounds of fat into the tank and it takes a few days to melt it all down into an oil. Then they head down to a center where they make the bird food. They have to set up molds that the bird food mixture will eventually go in. These molds have a wooden base covered in felt with a layer of plastic wrap over top. Then on top of this base they put a square metal box. The bird food mixture will eventually be poured in it. Freeze-dried flies, peanuts, the oils from the fat, and other ingredients are poured into the container and stirred together. The mix will then sit to get hard and then be cut into proper sizes for labeling and packaging. But what about bird snacks? The couple showed Mike how to make those too. Larva are scalded to death and mixed with other nutritional ingredients and then dried in a clothes-drying machine. The result is a crunchy, healthy bird treat.

Spider Pharm

When most people see spiders in their home, their instincts are to either run from it or kill it with something. But in Arizona, Mike Rowe found a couple that actually go out looking for spiders to bring into their home. Their intent is to milk the spiders for their venom. Scientists use the venom for its medicinal qualities. It can be used for cures of many diseases including diabetes.

Collecting the spiders is their first task. A good place to find many spiders is in the home of a pack rat. A pack rat is a rather large rat that lives in a den it creates for itself. They carefully take apart the den and pick up the spiders they can find including Black Widows and Brown Recluse spiders. They put these spiders in little containers to take back to their home where they will store them in a bigger container.

Then it’s dinnertime for the spiders. The couple feed their spiders fresh homegrown maggots. Despite the wretched stench the maggots excrete when they are eating, the couple must collect them. They feed the maggots with rabbit poop. Tiny fruit fly maggots will be fed to the small Black Widow spiders. Each spider receives about five to ten maggots each. The Tarantulas are fed with crickets.

When all the spiders have been fed, it’s time to collect the venom. To ensure the safety of the person collecting the venom, the spiders are given a gas that puts them into a twilight state. They are not as aggressive and are easier to handle. Then the fangs are placed in a tube and a small electric current shocks the spider so they excrete their venom. The bigger the spider, the easier it is to collect the venom. The Black Widow has tiny fangs, and it is very difficult to collect its venom. They are so small that a microscope is needed to do the job. It takes about 500 Black Widows to get one drop of venom, but it is extremely poisonous. The collected venom is stored in a refrigerator so it stays fresh. Spider pharms aren’t any kind of ordinary farm.