Mealworm treats... aka fun stuff to feed the girls

[Minflick]

As an RVT, I'm very aware of the perils of overfeeding treats to cats and dogs and making them fat, and disturbing the natural balance of proper ingredients in any decent pet food. Yah da yah da yah da....

I just received a pound of meal worms from Tasty Worms in FL, and I've sprinkled a few out in the run, and the girls are all lined up, finding and snorfing them. I've got 6 LF girls, all pullets getting starter crumble at this time, with about a cup of scratch every morning, broadcast in the run, plus a feeder with oyster shell and another with grit, accessible all day every day. How much/many of the meal worms (dried) should I broadcast every morning? I'm pretty sure my pound would disappear really fast if I gave them as much as they would like, plus you know, treats =/= balanced diet.

Melinda

 

[chickenlover09]

When my chicks are free ranging for the day, I usually just take a mini handful and sprinkle them all over (I have 6 chickens). So, i'd say about a handful a day.

 

[Minflick]

Thanks, good to know. That will be either a 'shake' or a small scoop, because I'm not at all sure my hands are willing to touch the mealworms... I am oddly and selectively squeamish.

Melinda

 

[chickenlover09]

lol yeah they're kind of creepy to look at

 

[Minflick]

And they're in a bag with nothing else in there, and no disguising label on the bag, either! Nothing for my eyes to focus on but the ick factor!!!

Here in Boulder Creek, it's giant spider time. I'd give a lot to be able to carry a chicken in and point her at the ****** spider and tell her to go to it! As it is, my cat will play it to death, but sometimes the spider is quick and gets away. This morning, one ran out from under MY PILLOW! And when I say giant spider, I mean one of those juicy brown house spider that even the dinky ones make quite the mess on the wall when you squish them, but these ones are as big as a silver dollar.. I throw the cat at them! I hate bugs and spiders....

 

[chickenlover09]

lol me too. We have dead bugs all over our backyard. We bought one of those mosquito zapper things and have left it on for a couple months straight just to get those annoying buggers dead, but the chicks love to eat them.
Crickets are soo annoying! So, our coop is sort of like a run with nesting boxes (it's really secure, and we don't have coyotes or wolves), but the wire squares apparently could apperently fit squirrels and rodents in the coop. We had to start taking the feeder in at night, and little did we know that they're were many crickets in the feeder, who eventually hopped out into our house, and are still chirping away. When your listening to that sound in a "quite" house all night, you wish crickets didn't exist.

We don't seem to get big spiders, thankfully, but we do get a lot of those long weird bugs with lots of legs. lol if I squashed them, there would be a carcass in my house, so I usually just vacuum them up.

 

[Minflick]

The Dust Buster is your friend.... Long skinny 'nose' on it. Crickets in the house - I've had! We had a condo down in Orange County, CA, 20 years ago, where our only livestock was the family cat. We apparently had crickets in the pipe to the kids bathroom and when I ran the water into the girls tub, little teeny baby crickets would come out into the tub. Mostly they'd drown, but every so often, one would escape into the house, and then the cat would go nuts, chasing it up and down the hallway until he killed it. Yeah, that chirping would get annoying....

 

[BriardChickens]

I actually started a small mealworm farm so I could supplement the chickens with something "meaty" throughout the winter. No problem touching those crawlers.

But spiders.. yuck... there is a reason why there is a living spider in my garbage can next to the bed. Don't know how it got into the can but if it can get in it should be able to get back out in my opinion. Until my husband takes it outside, it's stuck.

 

[Minflick]

Hubs likes to look out the living room window at the chicken run and watch the girls putter around (or snooze, as the case may be). A little bit ago, he called my attention to a GIANT spider (orb weaver, I think) weaving a nice web just outside the window. Body was the size of a garbanzo bean!

 

[DownSouthOrps]

Mealworms for sale free shipping pm me