- Oct 21, 2015
- 5
- 0
- 65
Hi BYC!
Funny thing, every time I 'googled' a bit of information I needed about chickens, I ended up finding it on this site. I figured I ought to join it as pay back for the great advice I have obtained - if there were to be something I could offer.
I had chickens about 6 years ago, ironically I built the coop over an unused barbecue pit in the back yard. Things were great, we had 4 Black Chickens (the store called them Americanas but I am not sure what they were) and 2 Rhode Island Reds. Then we were attacked by a pair of Raccoons which decimated our flock. The only one remaining, we affectionately referred to as 'Ms Weirdo', survived and we moved her to a safe place at a friends yard.
A few years back, I bought a Bearded Dragon for my grandson. We enjoyed it so much we bought 2 more... Turned out there was 2 females and a male. Mother nature took it's course and we ended up with 35 bearded dragon eggs. I gave all but 12 to the local pet store thinking it would be interesting to try to hatch them. 10 weeks later in my sourdough bread incubator, we had 9 hatchlings. Well, 12 bearded dragons eat a lot of insects when they are young and it started to get really expensive, so I decided to start breeding the insects they eat. First crickets, then superworms followed by Dubia Cockroaches. Over the past few years I got too good at it and became over stocked with extra feeder insects. From my experience with chickens, I knew our neighborhood BYC may be interested in the surplus insects. It would be way too expensive to buy feeders at the pet store or even on a well known auction site to feed chickens, so either having them be given to you or raising them yourself is the only possibility this is feasible on any sort of scale.
Okay if you are still following this....I found a glitch in my above strategy when it came to cockroaches. Nobody felt comfortable having them around. What to do? I decided I would need to enlist in a new flock AND a high security coop to control my surplus and get some righteous eggs. I built and automatic door for the coop and battened down the hatches so my girls will be as safe as possible. I now have 5 Australorps about 21/2 months old and plan to add 2 Barred Plymouth Rocks soon.
These 7 are in for a real smorgasbord (and all they can eat at that!) of Large Brown Crickets, Superworms and Dubia Cockroaches.
One last thing... The really great things about feeding these to chickens is the high protein and nutrition value they would get free ranging but also I found I can freeze the crickets and cockroaches (kills them) the night before, thaw and add them to the live superworms in a small plastic container which cause them all to move around. The reason I opt for this is that the crickets and cockroaches tend to escape when the girls go into a frenzy over them.
Locrawl
Funny thing, every time I 'googled' a bit of information I needed about chickens, I ended up finding it on this site. I figured I ought to join it as pay back for the great advice I have obtained - if there were to be something I could offer.
I had chickens about 6 years ago, ironically I built the coop over an unused barbecue pit in the back yard. Things were great, we had 4 Black Chickens (the store called them Americanas but I am not sure what they were) and 2 Rhode Island Reds. Then we were attacked by a pair of Raccoons which decimated our flock. The only one remaining, we affectionately referred to as 'Ms Weirdo', survived and we moved her to a safe place at a friends yard.
A few years back, I bought a Bearded Dragon for my grandson. We enjoyed it so much we bought 2 more... Turned out there was 2 females and a male. Mother nature took it's course and we ended up with 35 bearded dragon eggs. I gave all but 12 to the local pet store thinking it would be interesting to try to hatch them. 10 weeks later in my sourdough bread incubator, we had 9 hatchlings. Well, 12 bearded dragons eat a lot of insects when they are young and it started to get really expensive, so I decided to start breeding the insects they eat. First crickets, then superworms followed by Dubia Cockroaches. Over the past few years I got too good at it and became over stocked with extra feeder insects. From my experience with chickens, I knew our neighborhood BYC may be interested in the surplus insects. It would be way too expensive to buy feeders at the pet store or even on a well known auction site to feed chickens, so either having them be given to you or raising them yourself is the only possibility this is feasible on any sort of scale.
Okay if you are still following this....I found a glitch in my above strategy when it came to cockroaches. Nobody felt comfortable having them around. What to do? I decided I would need to enlist in a new flock AND a high security coop to control my surplus and get some righteous eggs. I built and automatic door for the coop and battened down the hatches so my girls will be as safe as possible. I now have 5 Australorps about 21/2 months old and plan to add 2 Barred Plymouth Rocks soon.
These 7 are in for a real smorgasbord (and all they can eat at that!) of Large Brown Crickets, Superworms and Dubia Cockroaches.
One last thing... The really great things about feeding these to chickens is the high protein and nutrition value they would get free ranging but also I found I can freeze the crickets and cockroaches (kills them) the night before, thaw and add them to the live superworms in a small plastic container which cause them all to move around. The reason I opt for this is that the crickets and cockroaches tend to escape when the girls go into a frenzy over them.
Locrawl
