Farming SUCCESS! Mealworms.

Happy Monday!

Enjoying a little taste of success this morning.  

I had read a lot of chicken articles that stated that mealworms make great chicken treats.  We found ourselves in town last week and ventured into a local Petsmart store.  They had cups of 50 mealworms for $2.50.   Sounded like a doable venture so my little ladybugs and I purchased four containers along with some wheat bran from a local bulk store.

We quickly set up a tupperware container with our wheat bran and some potato slices and added our worms.  We had to see if our research was correct about chickens enjoying mealworms and offered our chicks a few worms (It is true!  The chicks went nuts for these little morsels.. the ducklings?  Not so much - however seeing a flock of ducklings chase a housefly is certainly worth the price of admission.  :)  )

Fast forward four days - Sammy spotted our first darkling beetle in our mealworm farm!  From what I understand of the lifecycle, this beetle should happily lay eggs which will grow into the larvae which is the tasty morsel that the chickens will enjoy - the 'mealworm'.  Now to decide whether or not to split beetles/eggs/larvae as some people choose to do or whether we leave them as one big happy mealworm family.

Much like housing our poultry in the basement, the mealworms were also positively received by our visiting friends last week - one friend who is also a 2nd grade teacher pointed out that mealworms are often wanted in the classroom for teaching children about lifecycles.  For all my teacher friends - consider me your mealworm source. 

 

I may not have had any real influence on the positive outcome but I will take any successful farming learning venture - big or small.  :)

Jeanette