Anyone grow worms for your chickens?

[Rathbone]

Ooops, my bad. I read another article this morning on it. I will go and see if I can find it.

 

[Rathbone]

"MEAL WORMS CONSIST OF 47% STRAIGHT NATURAL PROTEIN."
This is according to what I was reading - I am not sure myself and haven't checked this person's quote.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Here is an interesting link so you can compare earthworms and mealworms: http://www.rims.net/InsectNutritionalPrimer.pdf You can increase the protein content of the mealworms beyond 20% by feeding them other things, such as brewer's yeast.

 

[NCSprout]

The moisture, ash, protein and fat contents were 58.1-61.5, 1.8-
2.2, 24.3-27.6 and 12.0-12.5%, respectively.

here's the article... http://www.scipub.org/fulltext/AJAB/AJAB44319-331.pdf

there are others out there. what you feed them can affect the percentages. I have seen a statement about them being over 50% protein, but can't find it atm.

Ivy

ETA: i see i was a little late

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Quote:
That was the article I was looking for! I love the recipes at the end, mealworm canapes, mealworm cookies, mealworm appetizers...

 

[dottysfarm]

cool! Thanks for the info everyone! I am going to see if my local guy has mealworms or not.

Anyone know if the mealworms can also be used to create vermicast for composting?

 

[Arielle]

I was planning to raise red wrigglers as a protein source for my girls; good to know they may not like them; I'll try any way. And mealworms are a great idea! We eat a lot of whole, fresh foods so there is plenty of scraps, cores, etc to go around. I filled a 4 gal bucket in about a week with material headed to the compost! Sorry, I digress! Just saying it would be nice to turn it into chicken feed via red wrigglers or mealworms.

 

[Arielle]

I was planning to raise red wrigglers as a protein source for my girls; good to know they may not like them; I'll try any way. And mealworms are a great idea! We eat a lot of whole, fresh foods so there is plenty of scraps, cores, etc to go around. I filled a 4 gal bucket in about a week with material headed to the compost! Sorry, I digress! Just saying it would be nice to turn it into chicken feed via red wrigglers or mealworms.

 

[TigerLilly]

I don't, yet, but it will be incidental to having rabbits sometime this year. I do also plan to raise mealworms for them. I've done this before with great success (& quite by accident) for some of my reptiles.

 

[donnavee]

Ok, I'm ready to try the mealworms again - guess I got it too wet last time because the entire thing got moldy and they all died.

Anyone recommend a good on-line source for them?