Contaminated Bran Mash

[FLSpringChicken]

Hello all,

I have some mouse dropping contaminated bran mash. While giving it to my horse and/or chickens is out of the question, I was wondering if anybody had an alternative to throwing it out? I feel so wasteful just chucking it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Percheron chick]

It's a great medium for raising worms for the chickens.

 

[FLSpringChicken]

Thanks for the reply and the idea.

I was just wondering the same thing. (I was meandering around the site and got into an absolutely wonderful mealworm farming thread) We have been having some serious cannibal egg eating problems after mixing 2 different flocks and I have been looking into what I can do to add to their diet. This may a fast solution as I pretty much have everything needed to start except the worms.

Are mealworms the best option? Are there any other worms that would be as good or better?

 

[pdirt]

Mealworms have higher protein content than earthworms. From what I've read, not enough protein is often a cause of egg eating.

We just started a mealworm farm. It's pretty fascinating! If you do go that route, I would start with as many live worms as you can afford to get decent colony going. Perhaps buy a bunch of freeze dried ones to feed them in the meantime. Or just buy some ground meat. How many birds do you have?

 

[FLSpringChicken]

From flock one - 2 hens, 2 roosters (1 rooster injured and caged separately)
From flock two - 7 hens, 2 roosters (1 rooster injured and caged with above rooster)

We had a power struggle, the 2 roosters got injured, and a hen so bad she died and we still don't know what happened. (I may have a really mean hen in flock one).

After figuring out that they were eating the missing eggs (and not a predator) and knowing that flock two had been laying no problems before we put them together, we decided to separate the flocks and see if there was any change.

At the moment, all my chickens are at my husband's father's house (a few country blocks away), while we get supplies together and build a coop of our own. So as far as supervision, these birds are looked in on daily, but not really tended to but a couple times a week. They also cannot free range where they are bc predators are too bad. My father in law had a flock of about 30 that got picked off till there was none left.

Thanks pdirt. I didn't know about the protein content being higher. I did some looking into egg eating too - protein, calcium, vitamin D. May try adding in a layer pellet with that content and see if it helps. But the mealworms sound like a good idea. I know my husband was interested in fertilizer from the castings. I know that that would work with earthworms, but do mealworms offer that same benefit?

 

[Percheron chick]

I think your hen to rooster ratio is the bigger problem. I would get rid of all but one rooster and things might calm down dramatically.

 

[FLSpringChicken]

We've actually always had 2-5 roosters at a time and really didn't have too many problems. After they'd establish that initial pecking order, it never seemed to change much and created a fairly peaceful environment. But that was when they were free range during the day and put up at night. And we had the best head rooster I could hope for at the time.

The main reason we had multiple roosters was due to predators. We found to have at least one backup rooster to be essential after we had a couple killed.

Since circumstances are different, we may need to rethink this multiple rooster policy...

 

[Percheron chick]

It's probably more who the roosters are and the hens to a certain point. If you had a great rooster (probably older than the others) he didn't need to constantly reestablish his position in the flock. Are the 4 juveniles?

 

[pdirt]

Supposedly mealworm castings are superior to earthworm. I'm not sure why, I've just read lots of comments about gardeners coveting mealworm castings. You'd need a pretty big (or several) bin for mealworms, or any worms for the matter to gather much castings. I guess it depends on how big your garden is.

 

[FLSpringChicken]

No, I think they are all just immature adults.

Both flocks were given to us. Rough estimate on flock one would be about a year old.
Flock two I have no idea. They crow and mate and all. They are actually calmer roosters than flock one. But they are very different breeds.

You were right. My good ole rooster (deceased) was a senior to everybody else. He was also a different breed than the others. I think he was a red Orpington. Wonderful rooster.

Flock one is something I've not seen in pictures before. We call them game birds because they have a smaller sleek body like a normal flying bird. They fly way better and way higher than normal chickens. But they lay large pretty eggs. I'll have to poke around this site and maybe get some pictures up. I'd love to get more of these (hens) if I could figure out what they are. The roosters are pretty scrappy though and look similar but not the same as some Americana pictures I've seen.

Flock two is mixed and we just got them, so I haven't had the chance to figure out what breeds they are.

When we mixed the two flocks, it took a few days, maybe a week to establish pecking order. The head rooster is from flock one (about half the size as the flock two roosters). Half of flock two hens didn't seem like they liked flock one rooster. It's been a weird transition. We've added chickens before but never had this type of dynamic come out of it.