SeanKriger
Hatching
- Feb 22, 2026
- 1
- 1
- 4
Howdy!
This is going to be one of the craziest posts on the forum. I am a trash diver. I am so efficient at it that I can feed my family of 4 in about 20 minutes of work dumpster diving once a week and about an hour or two of cleaning the food (yes, I wash everything thoroughly). This provides a tremendous amount of food. Let me show you 3 hauls worth.
Pics!
The thing is, if I spent about 4 hours, two or three times a week, I could bring home 200-300lbs of scrap food every single week by hitting more locations. I am attempting to start a food share program where I am basically gifting some to people in need. But, that leaves a tremendous amount of vegetable product leftover in both scraps and just flat out stuff we won't eat. There are days when I could grab literally 100lbs of potatoes, bananas, apples, greens of all type, and more. I am genuinely not kidding when I say 100 lbs.
I have a flock of 24 birds. I have been feeding them scraps from my hauls on a treat basis. Albeit, probably more than I should, but the majority of their diet is feed. I want to figure out a way to turn large quantities of food scraps into legitimate substitutes for feed where I can cut back their store-bought feed to only 20-30% of their total feed. Granted, I will still supplement with calcium and grit as needed.
A couple of avenues here. Any feedback is great.
I can put rotting meat scraps into a 50 gallon drum, let flies infest it (or I purchase some type of bug that would infest it- any ideas?), cut holes in the bottom, and let the bugs come out into the coop and get eaten all but immediately.
I would use an industrial apple crusher to grind products into much finer "chips". I add them to 275 gallon totes to create worm towers. Where I am stuck here is the labor involved in getting the worms to the chickens. Reproduction speed isn't the issue. I could have 10-20 of these totes and just let it go slowly but surely. It's how to transfer the worms efficiently and then also the time to harvest the casings. All of these products I can sell, but really I am just after quickly turning food scraps into protein and this seems like alot of work.
What else am I missing. Has anyone tried to harvest significant amounts of trash to supplement feed? I am also going to have rabbit hutches which seem easier to substitute feed, but I sure do like eggs and chickens. Also, I should mention that production volume is of virtually no importance in this system. The trash is basically a free byproduct for me. I'd rather have 1/2 egg production and not use any feed if it were possible.
This is going to be one of the craziest posts on the forum. I am a trash diver. I am so efficient at it that I can feed my family of 4 in about 20 minutes of work dumpster diving once a week and about an hour or two of cleaning the food (yes, I wash everything thoroughly). This provides a tremendous amount of food. Let me show you 3 hauls worth.
Pics!
The thing is, if I spent about 4 hours, two or three times a week, I could bring home 200-300lbs of scrap food every single week by hitting more locations. I am attempting to start a food share program where I am basically gifting some to people in need. But, that leaves a tremendous amount of vegetable product leftover in both scraps and just flat out stuff we won't eat. There are days when I could grab literally 100lbs of potatoes, bananas, apples, greens of all type, and more. I am genuinely not kidding when I say 100 lbs.
I have a flock of 24 birds. I have been feeding them scraps from my hauls on a treat basis. Albeit, probably more than I should, but the majority of their diet is feed. I want to figure out a way to turn large quantities of food scraps into legitimate substitutes for feed where I can cut back their store-bought feed to only 20-30% of their total feed. Granted, I will still supplement with calcium and grit as needed.
A couple of avenues here. Any feedback is great.
I can put rotting meat scraps into a 50 gallon drum, let flies infest it (or I purchase some type of bug that would infest it- any ideas?), cut holes in the bottom, and let the bugs come out into the coop and get eaten all but immediately.
I would use an industrial apple crusher to grind products into much finer "chips". I add them to 275 gallon totes to create worm towers. Where I am stuck here is the labor involved in getting the worms to the chickens. Reproduction speed isn't the issue. I could have 10-20 of these totes and just let it go slowly but surely. It's how to transfer the worms efficiently and then also the time to harvest the casings. All of these products I can sell, but really I am just after quickly turning food scraps into protein and this seems like alot of work.
What else am I missing. Has anyone tried to harvest significant amounts of trash to supplement feed? I am also going to have rabbit hutches which seem easier to substitute feed, but I sure do like eggs and chickens. Also, I should mention that production volume is of virtually no importance in this system. The trash is basically a free byproduct for me. I'd rather have 1/2 egg production and not use any feed if it were possible.
