Can a chicken eat too many worms?

[saysfaa]

My grandparents were fruit farmers. If you don't prune the peaches, they die of fungal diseases many years before they die if they are properly pruned. Pruning lets air circulate, along with the other benefits of pruning.

 

[saysfaa]

I would dearly love to have a good woodlot, small farm with mix of pastured livestock, orchards, gardens and ponds that they could free range in. It just isn't possible with my other priorities (like staying married to Dh). I don't know how much less than that has a reasonable chance of good outcomes. I am sure there is a point that is not good.

 

[Shadrach]

Good posts from HollowOfWisps and Perris (loved the leave your plants alone)

I must say it makes a nice change to read about the stuff chickens dig up rather than concentrating on what gets seen on the suface.

Just got back from the allotments. Me and the chickens have been digging. Carbon the Legbar is very partial to a worm, or couple of dozen. I watched her swallow eleven sizeable worms. When I felt her crop this evening I could feel one wiggling.

I dare say that if one fed a chicken nothing but worms then it's possible that they might have a nutrition problem but no chicken does just eat worms so it's not a problem worth considering.

What anyone who free ranges or ranges their chickens does need to be aware of is all that beak in the dirt stuff means they are likely to pick up the type of worms that are not so great and those do need to be dealt with.

An interesting question that raises still more questions is do Jungle Fowl get worms and if not, why not? Perhaps given sufficient variety of forage the chicken can find other things that help to reduce the parasites that would seem to be impossible to completely avoid when fully free ranging.

My estimate is a bit higher than HollowOfWisps. I estimate 30% vegitation and the rest bugs and roots and whatever else it is they dig up.

 

[Perris]

I estimate 30% vegitation and the rest bugs and roots and whatever else it is they dig up.

Of course vegetation doesn't move, so in that sense it's more dependable, and I suspect that the amount consumed varies quite a lot with what else is available, and they've been able to find/catch. I love watching them dashing across the lawn chasing flies, but it only happens occasionally.

 

[Magnumchicken]

If eating worms was bad for chickens mine would have been dead a long time ago.

 

[Jenbirdee]

I would want to keep most of my garden worms in my garden to continue aerating the soil for the plants so I would not let them eat them all...I only let my ducks and chickies have a few

 

[saysfaa]

I would want to keep most of my garden worms in my garden to continue aerating the soil for the plants so I would not let them eat them all...I only let my ducks and chickies have a few

I wondered about that. I've tried to tell how much difference it made. I don't know yet other than there is obviously fewer worms in places I go back to check.

I started turning the soil over in a patchy pattern in hopes that the worms will fill it the sparce sections from the densely populated sections. Lots of organic matter should with that.

 

[Perris]

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Chickens won't eat every worm out of a garden, simply because they are only realistically going to dig down so far.

 

[saysfaa]

I agree when they do the digging themselves.

I've been giving them time in the garden but no longer when I'm spading it. They are eating much more greens now. I don't know if it is because the worms aren't nearly as easy to get or if there are more options since it is later in the spring, or if foraging is just not so new to them.

It has been interesting - I've been learning a lot more about worms - like what worm egg cases look like.