Anyone grow worms for your chickens?

[dottysfarm]

Anyone grow worms for your chickens? Please tell me about it! Is it difficult? How do you raise them? Is it possible to raise them in extreme weather climate like WI? How do you feed them? Do you dry and grind them as a meal or do you feed them live? Which way is better? Is it good to consider this at all? I have heard that the chickens can get worms from the worms... I have already had to deal with worms in the chickens...

Anyway, tell me all about it please

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Are you referring to earthworms? I have a red-wiggler composter and I've tried giving the worms to my chickens, but they don't seem to care for them. At some times of the year they will occasionally eat worms from the garden, but mostly my chickens ignore them. Your chickens may have different preferences. Yes, two types of parasitic worms can be transmitted to poultry via earthworms: gapeworms (Syngamus trachea) and cecal worms (Heterakis gallinarum). That's not to say that your earthworms will be infected with them, they just could be. I don't worry about it too much. If you're interested in raising worms, consider mealworms. I have a page describing how I grow them and the link can be found in my sig.

 

[AnaD]

We have a worm bin. All we do is put compost material inside from the kitchen waste and sometimes leaves or grass clippings. It is about a foot tall and 4X3' with a lid. We don't have it for the chickens but for the garden, I just hunt worms out every once in a while to give my inside brooding chicks a snack...The out door chickens can find their own worms.

 

[dottysfarm]

Quote:
I am not referring to any worms in particular. I know a guy who has worms that I could buy for the purpose of composting. I just thought it might be nice to consider them as a dual purpose. I will check out your page about the mealworms and find out if that is something the local guy has for sale.

The out door chickens can find their own worms.

I would love to let my chickens find their own worms but they are quite scarce on my property. We cannot seem to even dig up worms for fishing. Also, being in WI, I have about 5+mos a year where the ground it pretty much frozen. I wish I had nice loam for soil where the worms were abundant for the chickens

For both of you, where do you keep your worms? Inside or outside? I was told they have to be kept at a pretty tight temp range...?​

 

[jockey1975]

I don't raise worms but about once a week I buy a couple containers of night crawlers from Wal-Mart and they eat them like crazy. 20 in each container and they are gone in less than a minute. I do have 25 eating them though.

 

[NCSprout]

IMO it would be worth your while to check out mealworms. I raise them in the house year round for my chickens and the wild birds (bluebirds and wrens love them)
They provide an excellent protein source and the adult beetles provide a little fun activity for the chickens to scratch around and catch them. It doesn't take much to get started and maintain an active growing colony.
Good luck whatever you choose.

Ivy

 

[dottysfarm]

Quote:
Do you know how much the protein percentage is of the mealworms?

 

[Rathbone]

The link from Gallo del Cielo told how much protien percentage...and clearly explains how to do it. I am going to try it.

 

[b.hromada]

Like NCSprout said, mealworms are very easy to raise, and fun too!

 

[dottysfarm]

Quote:
haha, lol, I missed the protein percentage in Gallo del Cielo's link... I even printed it off

I will look again.

Thanks