If you’re squeamish, don’t read this and certainly don’t watch the video…
When we first got chickens five years ago, the aim was to convert slugs and weeds into eggs. Of course, for a chicken to make an egg it needs calcium, protein, water and various minerals and the easiest way to provide all these things is to feed your hens commercial layer pellets. Because our hens free-range and have access to a variety of habitats, they forage quite a bit of their own food, but they still need some supplementary feeding. In a small garden there is a limit to the amount of chicken feed you can grow, so this is a compromise that we have had to accept. We give them any slugs and snails we come across when we are working in parts of the garden they do not have access to and I give them weeds that I have removed – docks from the fruit cage are a particular favourite at the moment. But, even so, they get through more organic layer pellets than I would like. Indeed, since they have done such a good job of reducing the mollusc population, they are getting less food from this source.
The new livestock arrives
A couple of winters back we had very cold weather (for here) and boosted the hen’s diet with mealworms, which you can buy live or dried and which are sold as wild bird food. The hens LOVE these, but they are rather expensive. I, therefore, decided that the time had come to try to produce my own. Mealworms are the larvae of flour beetles and can be raised on bran or oats (no need for rotting corpses as you need for maggots) so they seem like a good source of protein to produce for use as chicken feed when space is limited. I’m not particularly bothered by insect larvae, so over the weekend I bit the bullet and ordered a mealworm starter pack, so that I can grow my own!
What you receive is three tubs of live mealworms, a bag of mixed bran and calcium and a set of instructions. To be honest, I think the instructions are little lacking, but hey that’s why we have the internet! So, I sprinkled a good covering of bran into a plastic tub and added the larvae, before giving them some yummy chard leaves, which they ignored:
Fresh greens?
A bit of reading around revealed that they like something a bit more chunky to get their mandibles into, so later I added some satsuma pieces. The fresh food provides them with their only source of water, so it’s important to make sure they have it. Apparently they will pupate in t”a few weeks” at which point I will need to transfer them into another container without bran before moving the adults into a third container when they’ve emerged. At this point they will mate, lay eggs and die and I will them wait for more mealworms to hatch. In theory I will get increasing numbers and thus food for hens. Our local mill has an excess or bran, so that’s not a problem as regards feeding and I can give then vegetable peelings/waste as their water source. So, I’m hoping that this is a pretty sustainable, environmentally sound method of producing some chicken feed. It won’t replace the layer pellets, but it will reduce the need for them a bit.
And now, just to make you squirm, a slightly wobbly video of them when I first put them in the bran:
The Snail of Happiness 
wscottling
/ June 10, 2014Look at you! You worm-farmer you. 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 10, 2014I’m still slightly surprised at myself!
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Jacquline Cappuccino
/ June 10, 2014Ewwwww! But also, super interesting.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 10, 2014I know exactly what you mean!
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davidprosser
/ June 10, 2014You can even send Mr SoH out fishing now with home grown bait.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 10, 2014Now, that’s a great idea!
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writinghouse
/ June 10, 2014I wonder what they taste like? Mmm…wriggly…
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 10, 2014… meaty… just check the strawberries…
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shapeofthingstoni
/ June 10, 2014Mealworms are supposed to be very nutritious and have been mooted as a possible human food source for the future (apparently the next generation will be eating insects for reliable, sustainable protein…). Certainly when I was involved in bird rescue work mealworms proved irresistible to my feathered chargers, though I never tried them myself. Perhaps chocolate-dipped?
*grin*
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 17, 2014I wondered about deep-fried as a crunchy snack?
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katythenightowl
/ June 10, 2014I wish I’d found out about this when we kept chickens, Jan – but then, as we lived on farmland, they always had a good source of worms and insects, and the occasional dead mouse if either the cat caught one – and we managed to get it from her – or if we needed to lay traps indoors 🙂
I must admit, it never put me off eating the eggs, no matter what I saw them eating! Lol
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 17, 2014Hens are the perfect way to convert slugs (yuk) into something edible and, indeed, delicious.
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katechiconi
/ June 10, 2014You could always bypass the hens entirely and throw a handful into the stirfry! I hope you’re going to post images of the girls fighting over a worm; nothing to beat a tug of war for entertainment value!
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 11, 2014I’m hoping there will be plenty to go round in order to minimise squabbles!
As for eating them myself, the dried ones actually smell quite nice…
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katechiconi
/ June 11, 2014It’s just micro farming. I don’t see why you shouldn’t eat the produce…
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narf77
/ June 13, 2014Wriggly little buggers aren’t they? Great idea and your hens will love them 🙂
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 17, 2014It’s going to be interesting to see how much the population bulks up and whether we can produce a significant number to feed to the hens.
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narf77
/ June 17, 2014I applaud your efforts but my fat guzzling hens are completely free range and are working their way through a HUGE pile of horse manure and oak leaves that we assembled recently. When I say “assembled” the hens are doing their level best to disassemble it now 😉
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Nice piece of work
/ June 17, 2014just got to this now. They don’t say much, do they?!
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