Alternative, Organic Protein for Chickens, The Undiscovered Meal Worm



I know it is gross but this homesteading thing can't all be cute bunnies, precious chicks and charming moments. Some of it is practical solutions and yes, gross bugs.

My husband has worms. Wait, that didn't sound good at all. We have decided after years of not feeling quite right about feeding our laying hens commercial grade layer ration to find alternative sources of feed for them. Why? When it comes down too it, why would we feed our chickens something which is formulated especially for factory chickens whom are neither free ranged, allowed to procreate or to socialize. In the summertime, our chickens free range and we hardly feed them anything but table scraps and a bit of grain at night of which they leave most in their tray. In the hard winter when the ground is frozen or covered in a layer of snow we must feed them some grain.

We have been feeding them commercial layer pellets because it is cheap and seems more or less to agree with them. Also when we did a search it simply seemed to be the only way it is done. There isn't a lot of information about alternatives in our area. As we get further away from eating GMO corn and soy, we are beginning to want to keep it out of our food even indirectly. Most commercial chicken food contains large amounts of one or the other, or both. We could source all of the same ingredients that are in commercial pellets but their organic counterparts are expensive. Upon doing some research we found that you can feed chickens any number of different grains but the real challenge is to find the chickens a healthy source of protein in the range of 17%.

We are uncomfortable feeding our chickens meat so that is out. Corn and soy are out. We could feed them fish meal but couldn't be sure what is in that. My husband stumbled upon the idea of growing meal worms for them and after looking into it, he says it  seems "ridiculously easy". I am suspicious of anything that seems "ridiculously easy" so at best I am cautiously optimistic. He has already gathered the plastic containers from a second hand thrift shop, so how could I argue? So it came that he bought 3000 meal worms for $12.00 on kijiji (like Craig's List) from a woman who breeds them as a small business for lizard pet food as apparently there was some sort of drought crises at the pet stores and now they are too expensive charging $4.69 for 25 worms. Yes some city pet store cashier has the job of counting out 25 worms  for someone to take home to feed to their pet lizard.



My husband cut the bottom off of a plastic storage container, hot glued window screen to the bottom, added duct tape (orange is what we had, don't judge!) and placed it into another plastic container. This is to allow the babies and the poop to fall out of the bottom and be sorted and in turn allow the big worms and beetles to stay in the top part to be sorted as well. I have to admit, that I am starting to find it all kind of fascinating, though when he said "put your ear near the container" I was dumb enough to try it and heard 3000 worms munching bran flakes and oats and it made me a little skittish.



My husband has explained that you get the worms, they grow into little black beetles which lay more, smaller worms and the cycle continues. He tells me the beetles lay in the neighbourhood of 200 eggs at a time, each. Now, I consider myself pretty countrified. I am used to dealing with all manner of smelly, gross things in a day. I have mucked out stinky chicken poop that would curl your nose hairs. I have participated in slaughtering chickens and I have picked slugs, worms and many different bugs from my garden. The idea of a gazillion wriggling worms and their gazillion black glistening beetle parents freaks me out more than a bit.  Keep in mind, chickens left roaming in nature consume pounds of bugs so to them it isn't gross but I like to think rather luxurious. They get to eat bugs all winter long!



Later as I sidled up to him on the couch he had his laptop on. I rested my head on his shoulder and said "what's up?" It was then that I noticed his computer screen was showing "25 delicious recipes using meal worms".  I said "you aren't planning on eating them yourself, are you!?" He said "ya, I think I am". Well, intellectually I am all for anything contributing to self sufficiency but I have a long way to go before I can eat that. I have no idea if he will actually cook up delicious meal worm meals but it certainly is never dull around here and I can't wait to see the looks that one gets the next time we are at a dinner party. I will let you know what happens with this project. I guess it is good to have hobbies and dreary fall and winter days to try them out.
http://www.hcmealworm.com/mealworms_recipe.php


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