Questions about feeding live worms

[crazyhen]

I have heard that they can get cocci through the worms. But, they are going to be subjected to it eventually and while they are on med. chick starter is a good time to build up the antibodies needed. I would think the ones locally would do the best job of giving the antibodies they will be later exposed to anyway. Jean

 

[Tala]

I find big fat earthworms every time I move something in my yard. If earthworms are going to kill my chickens there's not much I can do to prevent it.

I think the benefits outweigh the risks, and that's good enough for me.

 

[sangel4you]

I was actually going to come in and ask about this. It ook my 6 year old out for the bus this morning and it's been raining here the last two days so there are DOZENS of worms in the driveway and he had this idea to collect them for fishing. Then I was like hmmmm I wonder if we can give them to the chicks (almost 3 wks). So we gathered about a dozen and I put them in a container with some moist earth and plant to give the girls one when my son comes home if you all think it's an ok thing to do? But like I said we like to fish as well and I was thinking this may be another good project...does anyone one anything about raising earthworms? And should I have put these bad boys in the refridgorator? Thanks! HEck if I can find enough and you want me to send any your way lol....

 

[deerman]

Wow, for all those thinking it does not hurt to feed worms. You are asking for trouble. Yes the earthworm is the host to diseases(blackhead) and other thing that can hurt you birds.

Low egg production, slow weight gain, can be trace back to birds with worms, or birds in bad health. Yes they can live, but why not keep them in top health.

Health chicken produce health chicks.

 

[deerman]

Quote:
If they were bad for chickens, then there wouldnt be a chicken left alive on the planet???????????

Many thing bad for chicken, but does not wipe them out!!!

 

[sangel4you]

bumping it for more thoughts/information....only bumping bc it's getting close to the time fo eve they get their treats and that was going to be it for tonight!

 

[deerman]

Meal worms are fine, Earthworm are not good for them, yes they will eat a few they find. No reason to feed anymore.

Think about feeding your children Mud Pies, sure it will not kill them, but nobody would think its good for them.

Sure may have seen them eat dirt, no reason to feed them MORE!!!

 

[mikecnorthwest]

A local urban farm store I emailed said that the chickens would love redworms. In fact they said, "LOVE", redworms. Also, I'm talking about the occasional snack, not as their primary diet. I'll still need worms to fish and compost with.

 

[sangel4you]

between the 5 of them tonight we gave them one tiny one, and the got it split into three peices so three of them got a treat...we figure the very most we'll do is one a day or every other day in hopes the wealth gets spread a bit... and obviously we'll be watching them to make sure they're not affecting them in anyway...but I must say what a treat that was to watch! 10 full minutes of madness in the brooder!

Lol

 

[bucketgirl]

My new chickens are actually part of a larger effort to make better use of our food and paper waste and to produce more of our own food. It actually began with a wormbin that I have maintained for about a year now.

My plan all along has been to feed excess worms to my chickens.

Raising worms is easy and rewarding, and in my experience the more expensive and fancy the wormbin, the worse. Your mileage may vary, but I'm really happy to see paper waste, food contaminated paper waste, dryer lint, used paper towels, etc. be turned into incredibly rich soil and tons of worms.

I'm looking forward to scooping out a load of worms and compost from the bin and dropping it on the ground for the chickens to distribute over my lawn.

A fascinating article on this topic that expresses a larger version of my ultimate goal is here:

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Boxwood+Vermicomposting.html

The one caveat that I will offer is that as I understand it, heavy metals can build up in a worm, and it stands to reason if your chicken eats a worm full of heavy metals, the chicken will be full of heavy metals. For this reason, it pays to be conservative about what goes into the bin. From Appelhof's book Worms Eat My Garbage, I gather that keeping colored inks and colored papers out of the wormbin is one way to reduce heavy metal content.

Because of our general environmental toxicity, some contamination is going to be unavoidable. And worm bins are very dirty. They attract all manner of creepy crawly - they are not the tidy things shown in magazines for sure.

In other news, composting worms can defend against and help to eliminate e. coli from your microsystem:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...=3765386&md5=d5eadaf17fedf3aaab87625fc3126a00

There are other studies that show that compost worms can eat infected material and reduce and eliminate harmful bacteria from it - in effect sanitizing the material.

As far as earthworms giving chickens worms, I did find some information here:
http://palekarzerobudgetnaturalfarming.com/organic.html "Augustinc & Lund 1974 and Jakovlijevic 1975 have shown that, the parasitic nematode Ascaris Suum in Pig and Ascaridia Galli in chickens are transmitted by these worms."

Wikipedia does indeed say that it is suspected that Ascardia Galli is carried by earthworms. I was not able to find the Augustinc & Lund study, but the author of this page has misinterpreted the Jakovlijevic study. First, it has to do with a different type of worm and pigs, not e. foetida and chickens. The abstract for that indicates that the worm studied was not a carrier:

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1654/1525-2647(2002)069[0206:TELTAA]2.0.CO;2?journalCode=copa

"No intermediate or paratenic host role for L. terrestris in the As. suum life cycle was demonstrated. "

So for those of you who are chicken-experienced - it seems like the threat of eating earthworms is parasitic worms? Does worming or DE adversely effect chickens?