Raising Earthworms For Chicks

[professor-yellow]

I have many mulched beds rather than grass, so I have about 20 bags of horse manure/sawdust from a neighbor, and rotate them around every couple of weeks. Wigglers like to stay under black plastic, and the bags collected in the Fall will keep warm in the winter so you will have a perfect hatching environment for the worms.

Pick the bags up and the ducks and chickens come running (literally). Rotation allows the weeds to stay in check and allows new worms to propogate.

No kit and expence required which is the best part. I do have a larger bin too but is stationary.

 

[RyanAndMeri]

WOW - great ideas everybody. Thanks for sharing!

I'm going to try several of your ideas. Mealworms (sounds like fun) and maybe even those Black Soldier flies now that I know they dont bite. Sorry, definately NO to maggots, lol. Worm kits sound like a great idea, and I especially love the cheap mulched bed rotating bags that Professor-Yellow mentioned. (It's cheap!)

 

[Livinzoo]

I'm working on my coop plans and was thinking that I might be able to incorporate a worm bin in the dropping pit.

I will have it so I can clean different sections out at a time. And feed the birds the worms and then use the worm castings for the garden.

Any one see any problems with this?

 

[catfish]

Best thing to raise nightcrawlers is rabiits, specifically the manure. The worms thrive on it.

 

[Ace_king_brahma]

Quote:
I would think if the chickens develop a disease keeping worms in the droppings would only spread it once they were fed to them. I could be wrong as far as disease but I could defintely see parasite spread this way.

 

[AK-Bird-brain]

Quote:
Chicken poo is too harsh on worms, it'll kill em off. But it is handy to keep a bin near the coop to feed the chickens from. You can add the chicken poo to a hot compost bin or pile to pre compost it, after it has gone through a good high heat cycle and cooled then you can add it in small amounts to a worm bin.

Ace is right if your hens have gape worm they can be spread by earthworms.

 

[whatnow?]

Quote:
November 2007 Issue of Mother - I was reading it again this week while the wheels in my head turned.

Quote:
I remember an article about a guy who put carrion in a 5 gallon bucket suspended over the run. He kept the carrion covered with compost and kept the lid on. The maggots fell out of small holes drilled on the bottom. Between maggots and poop, I'd rather have the chickens eat maggots.

 

[blueskylen]

Hi,

i remember reading in one of the posts that a teaspoon or so of apple cider vinegar in gallon of water is supposed to keep the chickens from getting internal parasites like worms.

also, isn't that one of the reasons to us the DE - the chickens eat a bit and it keeps them from getting worms?
not sure about that, but it seems that i read it here somewhere.

I have been giving my chicks - 5 weeks old now - a few as a treat, and have the vinegar to start adding to their water. When they are in the run, they like to dig for worms too.

 

[RyanAndMeri]

Ok so for the last few months I've tried raising earth worms (dew worms) meal worms, and superworms and here's what I've learned...

Raising dew worms is difficult... they take forever to breed and it's hard to keep their conditions right in captivity. It's much easier to just give them the proper conditions to grow in your yard than try to grow them in a bin.

Superworms are popular with the chickens, but they're creepy to handle because of their size. It takes a long time to breed them, you have to separate them (stress them) into individual cups and let them mature into beetles. Then they lay eggs. They have a breeding cycle that is at least twice as long as that of meal worms, maybe longer (still waiting for the new hatch...)

Mealworms couldn't be easier. I have them living in a bin with chicken feed and I toss in a carrot, potatoe, or piece of apple now and then for moisture. They mature without needing to be separated like the superworms, and they are easier to handle. From a small group of 50 mealworms we now hundreds hatching out and they have matured rapidly and I'm already feeding the hatch to the chickens.

From now on I'll only be feeding meal worms as treats for the chickens because they're so easy to breed and keep.

I'm going to see about loading them up with calcium or other vitamins before feeding them.

 

[BearSwampChick]

Edited: my link didn't work.