Using mealworms as a main of food

[All About Chicken]

Using mealworms as a main source of food, but how much other stuff needs to added for my layer?

 

[cafarmgirl]

I would suggest using the meal worms as a treat and feed them a good layer feed as the main diet. Meal worms are very high in protein, over 50%, and eating them as the main food source is much more protein then chickens require. A good layer feed will offer much more balanced nutrition including the vitamins and minerals, especially calcium, that hens require. Most people also offer a dish of oyster shell for added calcium that the hens can take when they need it.

 

[All About Chicken]

I use certified organic and at $27 per 50lb it killing me. My girls are free range in a tractor pen that move daily and sometime more. In the winter food is not plentiful so I plan on bails of hay meal worms oyster shell and maybe a premix of vitamins. I plan on raising my own meal worms I can get 5000 per week and only a hand full 2 times a day in each pen. The worms would be the main source just other stuff added.

 

[HooDoo Mtn Farm]

I, too, was going straight organic, but decided to get more creative (I've posted this elsewhere, but to save effort . . . ):

Update on my sprouting system . .
I bought a bucket for each day of the week from the Dollar store.
Day 1 is a soaker, no holes in bottom, with a pint of whatever seed (currently lentil culls; 100 lb bag for $10!).
Days 2-6 have holes in bottoms, nested into one another.
I cut 4-inch-long sections of 4" dia white plastic pipe, and set one in the bottom of each bucket as spacers, so these buckets stack about 20" high.
Day 6 bucket is at the top of the stack, & is where I run my fresh rinse water into, 2x a day (filtering down thru the stack, all set in the bathtub).
Day 7 bucket has no holes & is in a lighted area, "greening up".

The gals get Day 7 bucket every day; day 6 goes into #7, Day one soaker bucket gets dumped into #6, which then gets rotated to the #1 (bottom) position in the stack.

That 1 pint turns into a gallon & a half of sprouts for my 2 dozen chickens.

Next on the agenda is fermenting a separate batch of seed grains, when my 100 Delaware chicks come in May

 

[All About Chicken]

Thanks that seems to work! Sound like we both have the same amount of hens at 100. So this system can supply enough feed? Do you add any oyster shells for calcium or in my case a few meal worms for protein? really thank you for the help!

 

[HooDoo Mtn Farm]

Thanks that seems to work! Sound like we both have the same amount of hens at 100. So this system can supply enough feed? Do you add any oyster shells for calcium or in my case a few meal worms for protein? really thank you for the help!

As I posted, I'm getting 100 Delaware chicks in May . . . I have a couple dozen, mixed, now.
Yes, I have a feeder with oyster shells, hanging.
I also feed cracked grains, with camelina (grown locally for oil) hulls mixed in.