Superworms for chicks

[laurenj1910]

At what age is it safe to feed to chickens?

 

[Outpost JWB]

Now! How old are your chicks? I read about superworms, they are comparable to mealworms, so very nutritious. If the chicks are young, I would definitely only use the superworms as a secondary feed.

 

[Duck Drover]

I would advise feeding the mealworms and not the superworms because the superworms have been known to eat their way back out of birds. If you do feed them you must first decapitate them.

 

[Outpost JWB]

I would advise feeding the mealworms and not the superworms because the superworms have been known to eat their way back out of birds. If you do feed them you must first decapitate them.

Ewwww! I had never heard of superworms, but am learning now that they bite. @laurenj1910, decapitating them seems like a lot of work for a little food......any way you can cook them? Using an old covered dish, or covered stew pot? Maybe on an open bonfire if permitted, or over the grill. Or roast them, or boil them. Just a thought, no experience.

 

[casportpony]

At what age is it safe to feed to chickens?

I feed them when to chicks that are about a week old, but I squish their heads and chop them in half, 'cause they can bite.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

I would advise feeding the mealworms and not the superworms because the superworms have been known to eat their way back out of birds. If you do feed them you must first decapitate them.

Ewwww! I had never heard of superworms, but am learning now that they bite. @laurenj1910, decapitating them seems like a lot of work for a little food......any way you can cook them? Using an old covered dish, or covered stew pot? Maybe on an open bonfire if permitted, or over the grill. Or roast them, or boil them. Just a thought, no experience.

Just squish their heads. During chick season I'll go through about 2000 of them, and most of those will get their heads squished.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

I would advise feeding the mealworms and not the superworms because the superworms have been known to eat their way back out of birds. If you do feed them you must first decapitate them.

Squish the head... Much easier than decapitation.

-Kathy

 

[Lynn Manes]

At what age is it safe to feed to chickens?

I feed them when to chicks that are about a week old, but I squish their heads and chop them in half, 'cause they can bite.

-Kathy

Yes, Kathy, you're so right.They do bite. I hate them. I raise & use regular old mealworms, bc I don't want anything around here that bites.

 

[Duck Drover]

Ewwww! I had never heard of superworms, but am learning now that they bite. @laurenj1910, decapitating them seems like a lot of work for a little food......any way you can cook them? Using an old covered dish, or covered stew pot? Maybe on an open bonfire if permitted, or over the grill. Or roast them, or boil them. Just a thought, no experience.

You may be able to just squish the heads but to me removing the head is more humane and a guaranteed death. I have squished spiders and had them twitch for awhile so I pretty much flatten them to know they are goners.

I wanted to try freeze drying mealworms to feed them to chickens because it seems like the mealworms would get flung around and then manage to burrow in the dirt in order to escape being eaten but it sounds like people who feed them live don't have issues with hatching out beetles everywhere (not sure if the chickens would eat the beetles or net). I would ideally like to be able to freeze dry and package them using my food saver bags in order to store them as dry goods instead of putting them in the fridge to slow their development once they are maximum size (they get shorter and make a C shape before they become pupae so then it is too late to feed them). I don't want to have to sift the worms daily so I want to sort and package every week and package them for daily feeding.

I used a strainer and a colendar to sort them by size and to pull out pupae and beetles to put in different tubs but not every day when I was feeding lizards. I could put some in the fridge but then I would have some develop into the short C worms that were not as active and were more useful as beetles at that stage.

There are people who cook with them so I suppose cooking them into some sort of bisquit to feed to the birds is an option too. It would be worth looking into.