How much is too much?... meal worms

[pinky_toe]

Hello all,

Great forum. Well, I have a 10 week old BO runt. She's perfectly normal in all aspects except her size. She's very active and eats, plays, poops and does all the chicky things but just not growing as others. So I'm constantly giving her extra treats like meal worms to fatten her up a bit. She gets about 15-20 meal worms a day and some turkey in addition to her feed and grass and whatever else she finds in the backyard. Just wondering if that's too much or can I give her more...?

 

[galanie]

Most will say to make sure your treats are no more than I think 15% of total food they get. For myself, I think she should be able to eat more of the mealworms with no problems. Just my opinion though since I don't really know what percent total her treats are.

 

[BellevueOmlet]

Since mealies are full of protein, they are not like normal treats and you can feed as much as you like. If you offer free choice oyster shell, they will get plenty of calcium and be fine. My chickens are super jealous of yours because it sounds like they get a lot more mealies than mine do

 

[WhySayWhat]

I give my 3 chickens (as of this morning 2 are laying now) a sprinkling of mealworms every day. But, my brute of a BR isn't letting the Wyandottes get any of them! I think they have resigned to the fact that they don't get the wormy-goodness...they leave her worms alone and she leaves the BOSS alone, lol. They do fight over the handful of pulled weeds and grass I give them every day though...