Mealworm farming

[HenOnAJuneBug]

Do you mean to say they are eating the Styrofoam?

yep

see > https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/mealworm-farming.492636/page-892#post-19268781

 

[tigger19687]

I personally don't think I would be feeding those to my Hens (organic or not) due to the chemicals that are in the Styrofoam. I keep hens to stay away from chemicals and such and have healthier Hens and eggs.

Maybe it would be a good thing for like a Trash dump to put that stuff in with mealworms instead of letting it sit in the ground for eons

 

[aart]

I didn't read all the studies linked here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/mealworm-farming.492636/page-892#post-19269173
...but wonder if the worms and their feces were tested for chemical remains.

 

[Cebarmlds]

I personally don't think I would be feeding those to my Hens (organic or not) due to the chemicals that are in the Styrofoam. I keep hens to stay away from chemicals and such and have healthier Hens and eggs.

Maybe it would be a good thing for like a Trash dump to put that stuff in with mealworms instead of letting it sit in the ground for eons

I agree. I would NOT feed those to my birds.

 

[Kusanar]

I personally don't think I would be feeding those to my Hens (organic or not) due to the chemicals that are in the Styrofoam. I keep hens to stay away from chemicals and such and have healthier Hens and eggs.

Maybe it would be a good thing for like a Trash dump to put that stuff in with mealworms instead of letting it sit in the ground for eons

Yeah, I think it might be good to feed the Styrofoam to the worms, then feed the worms to chickens, then feed the chickens to something else, maybe Black soldier flies, and have the frass fed to something like grass to keep cleaning any chemicals out with each processing...

 

[aart]

Maybe @HenOnAJuneBug read studies far enough to know what the plastic chemicals got changed too?
What I read was that gut bacteria drastically changed the chemicals.

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

Maybe @HenOnAJuneBug read studies far enough to know what the plastic chemicals got changed too?
What I read was that gut bacteria drastically changed the chemicals.

This science paper - http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5b02661 - makes it pretty clear that the styrofoam is biodegraded into harmless materials. They used some pretty sophisticated lab equipment to determine that.

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

Yeah, I think it might be good to feed the Styrofoam to the worms, then feed the worms to chickens, then feed the chickens to something else, maybe Black soldier flies, and have the frass fed to something like grass to keep cleaning any chemicals out with each processing...

It's not that complicated. Styrofoam is just a long chain hydrocarbon, ie, a molecule consisting of hydrogen and carbon atoms. Once the polymer bonds are broken, it's not the same thing anymore. Ocean microbes do the same thing to oil, which is a much more complex hydrocarbon, that has leaked into the oceans at natural oil seeps for millennia.

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

I didn't read all the studies linked here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/mealworm-farming.492636/page-892#post-19269173
...but wonder if the worms and their feces were tested for chemical remains.

Yeah they used some pretty high-powered stuff.

"The analysis of fecula [poop] egested from Styrofoam-feeding larvae, using gel permeation chromatography (GPC), solid-state 13C cross-polarization/magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (CP/MAS NMR) spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric Fourier transform infrared (TG–FTIR) spectroscopy, substantiated that cleavage/depolymerization of long-chain PS molecules and the formation of depolymerized metabolites occurred in the larval gut."
​

 

[aart]

Thank you for the synopsis!