I raise meal worms, they are really easy to raise/breed but take for ever to build a steady supply. In my case I can only feed once month but I have about 60 birds.I still do them because I sell some to friends for their canaries.Hi Colorado Peeps! Been busy fencing since the fox murdered Curl, now we have an enclosure that used 250 feet of fencing plus the width of the house and backyard. Chickens are safe(r). I put hardware fabric around 30' of the area and decided that life was much too short for this activity and found 10" landscape staples for 21 cents each at Lowe's which I drove into the ground about every 2-8 inches depending on the rock I encountered. Figured if the staple can't get past the rock, neither can Mr. Fox.
So.
Now my question to everyone is:
Has anyone raised their own mealworms? At $32.99 for 30 ounces (AND they're chinese), I'm looking into this because our recent newsletter from Greenwood Wildlife Rehab (Lyons, CO) had an article about doing just that.
The "frass" is the biggest management issue (mealworm poop).
The dried ones are very easy but darned pricey, so maybe I should raise live ones for them.
Anyone out there doing this?
I guess I would feed them live as I would have no idea how to dehydrate them. Plus, you know me, I don't think I could dehydrate even mealworms...like how to you dispatch them first? I couldn't just dehydrate them to kill them...what an agonizing death, eh?
Anywho, hope you all are doing great. I haven't even been lurking. Fence raising is time-consuming. But we did score 250 feet of fence from the neighbor who just happened to ask if we needed any...We had no idea how much there was but there it was, we'd measured out a 250 foot enclosure starting at one end of the house and going all 'round their coop/run and back to storage shed. Well, there were 250 feet. Almost to the foot! So spending $100 on staples seemed a no-brainer after dealing with my back from doing 30 feet of hardware cloth which had to be straightened out, bent, a trench dug, the cloth attached to the fence and the cloth then buried. Blech!
Oh, and hey! I learned something: The black zip ties are the strongest because they absorb 40% more of the UV limiter the mfr applies to zip ties.
And they had HEAVY DUTY ones at Murdoch's in Black and White. Black for the front of the house where it shows and white for the back (cuz they only had one bag of black). Way better than tying little pieces of wire like they do for horsefencing. Zip ties and Staples Rock!!!!
What I find really say to grow are dubia roaches and I can feed those about once a weeks to all my birds.Once you get over the gross factor they are really easy.