growing meal worms?

[flakey chick]

You can just pick them up- they don't fly. I move them when they turn into pupae.

 

[tuesdays chicks]

what do the pupae look like do they just look like dark dead mealworms?

 

[crazy huhn]

I cannot take a photo of my mealworm pupae at the moment, but you can Google "mealworm pupae photos" and some really good ones are coming up.

Pupae are white and look like little aliens. The tail is very wiggly.

 

[chickbird]

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they are white, you can tell there is a head end with no open eyes and the tail end wiggles when touched.

 

[chickbird]

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how do you handle the spent bran/cast off or do you just keep adding bran?

 

[chickbird]

the chicken feed , i'm told cannot be medicated. i use bran and oatmeal and carrots for moisture.

 

[gumbii]

do this...

your welcome...

 

[Stacykins]

Having raised dubia blaptica roaches for my crested geckos, I would expect that is an excellent insect source of food for chickens during the winter. Before anyone goes EWWWWWWWW ROACHES, if the enclosure is kept clean they have no smell. I kept the colony in the basement. And dubia are a tropical roach species, if they escape (they can't fly or climb glass, I kept them in a rubbermaid bin escapes only happen if I was stupid and dropped one), they'll die pretty quickly. I fed them cheap cat food, fruit and vegetable scraps, dry grain, and crested gecko diet (I'd pop the leftovers from the cresties into the bin and they'd devour every tiny bit). For moisture I gave them cricket gel (not the insanely priced gel found in petshops, I'd get the crystals in bulk, 1oz of crystals poured into a gallon of distilled water = a gallon of moisture gel for insects). I found them a million times easier to raise than mealworms, and much more productive too. Their only requirement is they need warm temperatures to breed. I used a small strip of flexwatt heat tape to do the trick.

 

[gumbii]

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+75213745234526789768066786408...


i raise dubia, red runners and madagascar giant hissing roaches... they're clean, easy to breed, easy to feed and are silent... well, except for the hissers... they fight for territory and women... but roaches are a great source of protein, and my chickens love them... well i don't give them the runners, those are for my frogs and geckos... but they also love worms... i raise mealworms, waxworms, superworms and might grow silkworms next... the only insect that is stinky and hard to raise are crickets...

 

[Suechick]

I'm working on mealworms too but it is taking a lllllloooooonnnnnnggggg to get a lot of meal worms.

I would love to know your secret Armageddon?

I have mine in a plastic shoe box with holes drilled in the lid. All of the phases are in there together, eggs, larvae, pupae and adult. There is no reason to separate them. Right now they are eating organic oats and I add moisture when I think of it. We keep them stored next to the computer's CPU since they supposedly multiply best near 80 degrees, but I haven't seen too much activity. I started the colony over a year ago with about 30 worms, now I have a few 100. When I feed them to the chickens I just scoop out as much as I want to give and put it in a bowl, oats and all, they eat it all!

Anyone have any tips to make them grow better? I really don't want to grow roaches, though I have considered trying silk worms.