Raising Mealworms for Your Chickens

When I first told my husband I wanted to raise bugs in my kitchen so that my chickens had treats, he thought I was nuts. By this time I had jumped in head first into the world of chickens. I had a chicken purse, a tshirt and I was growing stuff for my chickens to eat. Which was very weird because I had all but given up on growing anything because everytime I tried to grow something, I killed it. But for my chickens, I tried again and got a whole garden of things grown just for them. So as you can imagine, I told my husband i needed some things to start growing worms and he of course was blown away. Once I got my "worm farm" started though, he didn't think I was so crazy.

First I want to say this. I have done A LOT of research and reading. I am going to share with you what works for me. It is not the only way to do this. There are many other ways. This way is just the best way that I have found to do this.

Ok, so starting your worm farm is so easy to do. Its also pretty cheap. The things you need to set up:

- a 28 quart clear tote

-a 56 quart clear tote

(note that the smaller one needs to nest inside the bigger one, see photo)

-an exacto knife

-a hot glue gun

- a piece off window screen big enough to cover the bottom of one tote

- a screw gun and a drill bit

First, take the smaller of the two totes, turn it upside down and cut out the bottom, leaving about an inch lip to glue the window screen onto.  I found that the easiest way to cut it out is to not use much pressure and go over and over it with the knife. It will get weaker and pop right out. 

Once you have the hole cut, get your glue gun ready and glue the window screen to the bottom. Try making it as tight as you can so that the screen wont sag.  Let it dry at least an hour so that the hot glue isnt sticky.

Next, get one of the lids. You want to drill holes in it for air. I put about 15 holes in mine, you can gauge about how many you need. They dont need much air but you need some air to circulate in the boxes. I also hot glued a small piece of window screen on the inside of each hole to help prevent moths from entering the setup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Setting up your worms and what you need -

- a jar of plain oats (not the instant kind)

- layer pellets, yes the ones for chickens

- a basket strainer

- a potato, carrot or celery stick.

-  blender or food proccessor

Start with your layer pellets, you need to grind them up in your blender/food processor. I actually use a knockoff of the Magic Bullet, I bought it for $17 at walmart. Add the layer pellets in and grind them up. Get a big bowl and sift the ground layer pellets into the bowl to get any big pieces out. Make sure the bowl you use can be put in the microwave.  Do this until you have a full bowl.

 This next part is VERY important. Are you listening? Place the bowl in the microwave and heat it up for 30-45 seconds. This will kill anything that may be living in the feed. I didnt do this the first time I set up my mealworm farm and I ended up with grain mites. They bite and they are very tiny! So make sure you do this!!!

Keep grinding them up until you have about 2.5 inches in the bottom of the big tote, the one you didnt cut. Once you have them ground, heated and put in your tote, add 2 cups of the oats to the tote and mix well. Now you are done with the bottom set up!! Congrats!! Set the smaller tote inside the bigger tote. Now you have created a sort of sifting system.  In the top tote, add 2 cups of oatmeal.

Now, for the fun part. Worms!!! There are many places you can get your initial worms from. I will put some links at the end of this post for you to check out.  I started my farm with 500 worms. I bought mine from the pet store at $3.50 per 100 of them. I could have gotten them cheaper (and more of them) if I had ordered them online, but I have a problem with instant gratification. Make sure that you start with MEALWORMS. Don't get confused and buy superworms.  If I had to do it again, I would have gotten about 3,000 mealworms to get started.

Once you get your worms, place them in the bottom tote with the oatmeal and layer mash. You need to take your vegetable and cut it up into 2-3 pieces. Place it in the tote with the worms. Humidity is important and the veggie helps with that. The worms will eat the veggie along with the bedding they are in. Don't let the veggie ever get moldy, so replace it every couple of days.

 

Keeping your worms-

The first part of your mealworm farm is the most time you will spend with your farm the whole time you have it. The life cycle of the mealworm is very simple:

 

Your worms will turn into these little alien things. They are called pupa. They dont move much and they dont eat. I went a little crazy with checking on my worms. I would do it multiple times a day because I was so excited to see the change happen. So when you go through your bottom tote ( you can do it every other day ) You put the pupa that you find into the top tote. They will turn into beetles. Each femal beetle can lay up to 500 eggs in her short lifetime. That is A LOT of worms. Its hard to wait on the worms to turn and the pupa to turn and its a HUGE deal when you get your first beetle. Make sure that the top tote has a veggie in it for the beetles.

The mealworm beetles are actually called darkling beetles. And they are named well. The beetles love dark. They love having places to hide, so make sure that you have some toilet paper rolls or some cut egg cartons. Give them places to get under.

 

Im sure that you are wondering why you have a top tote that has window screen on it. When the beetles lay their eggs, sometimes they can be a little bit canabalistic. The window screen allows the eggs to fall through to the bottom to join the worms. Therefore, beetles cant eat them.

That is about all you need to know about a mealworm farm! Its one big cycle. The worms turn to pupa, then to beetles, they lay eggs that fall to the bottom and turn into worms. Simple!

Things to do with your farm......

Name each worm. My kids did, well they tried.

Feed them to your chickens, they will follow you everywhere for a worm. Its quite funny actually.

Freeze them! Click here to get instructions on how to freeze them for your chickens.

Thats all I can think of really. There isnt much you can do with worms, hahaha! They will save you a bunch of money and give you some really cool entertainment watching the life cycle. I hope everyone  sends me pictures when they start their own! I want you to show off your worms!

Resources to buy worms online -

Uncle Jim's Worm Farm

Fluker Farms

Worm Man's Worm Farm

Spotlight on Poultry ~ Silkies

Silkies, We have all seen them and many of us have them. They are a breed all their own. I remember thinking when first saw a silkie, "that looks like an abominable snow-chicken!" Which is exactly what they look like! They are covered in feathers from the top of their head, to their feet! So if you own them now or might be interested in one day getting them, here is some cool info about the breed!


A Splash Silkie owned by

Tamara Paradis-Bittner


Silkies come from Asia. They are an ancient breed because they are mentioned by Marco Polo during his travels to china in the 13th century. He wrote about a fur covered fowl with black skin. Silkies have a blue slate colored skin under all that fur. That is one old chicken! Once a trade route was established and they were brought to Europe, Silkies showed up in the Netherlands and were sold as "a cross between a rabbit and a chicken"

Deana Rogers's day old silkie chicks

The silkie has many characteristics. Most of them are easy to spot. Having fur completely covering them is one but another is that they have 5 toes! If a silkie doesn't have 5 toes, they consider it a genetic condition called polydactylism. Silkies have what is called a Walnut comb. The comb is normally a black or mulberry color. As I mentioned above, they also have black skin and also they have black bones. Centuries ago in China the bones of a silkie chicken were thought to have healing powers and they would be ground up and eaten. I myself, am not going to eat ground chicken bones, but hey whatever floats your boat.

Samantha Avery's White Silkie Rooster & Splash Hen

There are many types of silkies that are recognized by the American Poultry Association (APA) and the American Bantam Association (ABA). Yes, they do come in a bantam size too! The colors that are recognized are White, Partridge, Gray, Splash, Black, Blue and Buff. Silkies are also available in bearded or non bearded.

Silkies are great mothers. They can become broody whether they have eggs to sit on or not. They were used in china to raise chicks because they are so great at it. Also, because of their feathering, they do very well in colder temperatures. They are fair egg layers giving between about 100 eggs a year. They lay cream colored eggs.  As far as their meat goes, most people in America don't care to eat silkies. They are great pets and very friendly, but in China they consider it a delicacy. Silkie meat was actually featured on the 3rd season of Top Chef. It was also on the show "Chopped" twice.  Famous chicken.


A white silkie sitting on her baby owned by Deana Rogers

Great Pyrenees ~ She needs a name!!

Our family just adopted a Great Pyrenees puppy to watch over our chickens and what ever else we may get. We wanted a dog that would be great with kids and keep our property safe. I did tons of reading on what breed would be best. Great Pyrenees kept popping up. We found some puppies in the area and we just brought our new little pup home tonight. I thought I would ask all of you for help in naming her! She is so sweet. We played in the backyard until it was dark.

We gave her a bath, at that point she fell asleep in my arms while i was drying her off.

And now, she sits on the couch with the kids watching a movie.

As you can tell, she is fitting right into our house. So she needs to be called more than just "puppy"

Can you put some ideas in the comments? Thank you!

She is already doing great with the flock!! :) Hope everyone had a great weekend like I did!

Spotlight on Poultry : Wyandottes

As a new addition to the Talking Chicken Scratch blog, to inform everyone about each breed of chicken. I am starting with Wyandottes because I love my wyandottes. We have 6 wyandottes. One white wyandotte rooster, a splash hen, a columbian hen, and 3 silver laced wyandottes. Their names are Nugget, Sesame, Omega, Turtle, Rainbow, and Buffalo. I sure hope that you will enjoy this spotlight each week as much as I will enjoy writing it. 

A silver laced wyandotte hen, Courtesy of Tamara Paradis-Bittner

The wyandotte breed of chicken originated in the United States somewhere in the 1870's. The silver laced wyandotte was the first of the variety to come about. It showed up in New York state.  Before it was called a Silver laced Wyandotte, it was called an American Sebright and/or a Sebright Cochin. It wasnt until later on that it was named a silver laced wyandotte. The breed was named after the Wyandotte American Indian tribe of the Iroquois Indians. 

Silver Laced Wyandotte hen and White Wyandotte Rooster

Wyandottes are a wonderful dual breed chicken that are great egg layers and great moms. They lay brown eggs and will lay around 200 eggs per year.  They are known to occasionally become broody.

There are 8 colors of wyandottes that are recognized by the APA (American Poultry Association) which are golden laced, silver laced, white, black, buff, columbian, partridge, and silver penciled. However, there are more colors too! Blue laced red and buff laced. There is a total of 17 wyandotte colors. 

A Silver Laced chick

There are also bantam wyandottes. Bantams are smaller birds. There are different colors associated with bantam as well. Buff columbian, black breasted red, blue red, lemon blue, barred, brown red, and birchen.

With personal experience, Wyandottes have been a grreat breed to have with kids and as a starter breed. They are easy to take care of too.  I wouldnt trade my wyandottes for anything. 

My kids, when we first got our chicks

Every afternoon, I go outside with raisins or bread, and they all come running up to me. Its one of the best parts of my day.They have made my family stronger. We all work together with the chickens and they have taught my teenagers how to be more responsible. 

Basics of Canning with Kelly Nale

I had a chance the other day to speak with a Chicken Scratch member, Kelly Nale, about canning and what I need to know to get started. She shared with me her knowledge. She has been canning for 30+ years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kelly Nale was raised in California and married her husband in 1979. That year they moved to Indiana where they still live. Since then they have had three wonderful children. Samantha, Charles Jr. , and Heather. They are now all grown up. Kelly also has a few grand kids that she thinks the world of. I asked her why she got into canning. " I started gardening and canning as soon as we moved to Indiana. It was June and all of my husband's family was working in the gardens and canning so I had to jump in there and learn how to do it too! His mother showed me how to can things and his father showed me how to grow it all. It has been our way of live here for our whole marriage and I love it. I love planting something and watching it grow and I love to can it, freeze it, and dry it. We grow 95% of all our food. I love knowing what my family is eating and looking at all the jars of food and a freezer full. It is very comforting to me." 

Kelly, like a lot of Americans are beginning to do in today's economy, has figured out how to provide for her family. They skip most all processed foods and eat what comes from their land. They know that there is no chemicals going on the food that they eat. I myself am very proud of her. 

Orange Marmalade and Candied Apple Jelly

 

So, You want to start canning? Here is the info from Kelly on how to do that.

What Every Beginner Needs To Read

Kelly gave some links to things that you will need. 

Tools that you need

Pot for Canning

Pressure Cooker/Canner

Of course you dont have to buy from those links, you can find them at your nearest Walmart. Just make sure that you get something that is good quality so you can use it for years to come. 

Canning done by Kelly Nale. That is a lot of jars!

Before we get on to the recipes that Kelly uses, it is very important that you read and memorize the next information. It is how to prevent getting food poisoning. It helps to identify what you need to know about your canning process to make sure that you kill the bacteria that can make you sick. 

Canning Saftey - Prevent Food Poisoning

21 quarts of Green Beans

Now we get on to the fun stuff! Recipes!

Kelly has so many photos of things that she has canned I cant possibly share them all with you at once. You would be reading for weeks! So, we thought we would share the simple ones first. Applesauce, Pickles, Green Beans and Grape Jelly. I would say pickles have to be my favorite. I love them so much that I had a cat named Pickles when I was young.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Applesauce

Applesauce is very easy. You can add cinnamon or other flavoring to create variations on just plain applesauce.

• Use sweet apples. Such as Fuji, Gala, Red Delicious, and Rome. Using sweet apples will make your applesauce sweet enough that you wont have to use sugar. 
• Wash and Peel your apples. Slice them up and cut out all of the cores. 
• Cook the apples. You can cook them in a few inches of water or you can use apple juice. Cook them until they are soft. Apples are 99% water so you dont need much liquid. 
• For thicker applesauce, ladle off the excess liquid once the apples are done cooking. Save that liquid! Is apple juice, home made and it tastes great!
• Now, make the applesauce by mushing or blending. You can use a masher, a food processor, a blender. Anything that will make a sauce consistency. 

Canning the Applesauce

• Put the applesauce in a big pot, heat it up and add your cinnamon (optional) You do not need to cook it any further, you just need to get it hot.
•  Wash your canning jars. You can put them in the dishwasher or soak them in boiling water for 10 minutes to sanitize. To wash the lids, do them the same way! Only boil them for 5 minutes though. 
• Fill the jars. You want them to be filled to within 1/4 inch of the top of the jar. Wipe any that may have spilled on the top of the jar. 
• Place the lid on and screw on the ring. Tight.
• Place the jars in your canning pot, boiling. Make sure the jars are covered with about 1 inch of water above the lid. 
• Boil the jars for at least 20 minutes. Keep the water level above the jars. Dont boil them any longer than 30 minutes. 
• Remove them from the boiling water and put them in a draft free place to cool. Loosen or remove the ring while they cool. It will keep the lids from rusting. 
• Let them cool overnight.
• Once they are cool, check to make sure you have a good seal. If they are sealed correctly, the lid will not pop up and down when its pressed on. Replace the ring.

Thats it! And you have just canned applesauce! 

If you would like to see the website that Kelly uses for this recipe , Click here

Kelly's Apple Canning

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other simple recipes:

Grape Jelly

Pickles

Green Beans

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kelly recommends that you also check out the Ball Canning & Recipes for more tips and tricks. Lots of great recipes can be found there as well.

I hope to find that many of you will try canning! If you have any questions you can leave a reply here or Email Me and I will do my best to get you an answer! Now go get some fresh cucumbers or green beans and get started!

Dont forget to thank Kelly Nale for all her help with this! Thanks Kelly!
You can also contact Kelly directly on her FB page! The Empty Nest Farm

Some Interesting Facts about the Chickens We Love!

Taylor and Ian, Nugget rides in the Wagon

So last night I was way to excited to sleep because I just posted our first CONTEST!! Yay! I was just browsing around the internet and I came across some really cool facts about Chickens! Some made me go "what?" and others I was laughing at. I had to share them. I hope everyone is having a great day! Enjoy!

A chicken's heart beats 300 times a minute (about 4-5 times more than a human).

Arkansas produced over 1.1 billion broilers in 2006 which averages about 422 broilers for each Arkansan.

The record for multiple egg yolks in one egg is nine.

On average, a hen lays 300 eggs per year.

A mother hen turns her egg approximately 50 times in a day. This is so the yolk does not stick to the shell.

To produce a dozen eggs, a hen has to eat about four pounds of feed.

The largest chicken egg ever laid weighed a pound and had a double yolk and shell.

A chicken with red earlobes will produce brown eggs, and a chicken with white earlobes will produce white eggs.

A chicken is 75% water.

In the U.S., approximately 46% of the chicken that is eaten by people comes from restaurants or other food outlets.

Hens will produce larger eggs as they grow older.

A chicken loses its feathers when it becomes stressed.

A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.

I personally like the chickens to have heads when they roam my yard and im pretty sure that my 74 yr old neighbor enjoys that they arent headless too. 

Has anyone ever found more than 2 yolks in any of their eggs? I would love to hear about it!

Talk to you soon! 

~Jessica

Coming Together Through Chickens

In researching “our little hobby”, it’s become clear to me that over the last few years there has been a huge resurrection of families keeping “backyard flocks” of chickens.  The growth and interest is phenomenal and online communities such as backyardchickens.com, which has grown its membership to 145,000+ members in just a few years of operation, and facebook groups such as “Chicken Scratch” are sprouting up regularly and growing into new online communities of support and assistance.  These communities not only tie people together on a larger scale creating strong bonds, friendships, and support nets between people all over the world, but have also become the “breeding ground” for innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Although I think it’s awesome that we can make a few bucks here and there selling surplus eggs, hatching eggs, and chicks to offset our feed costs, this is not what im writing about today.  What im writing about is this whole new niche industry of businesses and online stores, aimed at supporting the urban flock owner, are opening, it seems like daily, and growing in support of our hobby.  The best part about our little “micro economy” is that most of the supplies and accessories being developed and sold to this growing market are American made products most of which are handmade by local craftsmen and small business owners: An unemployed engineer in Ohio was recently featured in a CNN story where he has been able to design and build small chicken coops “full time” and is able to generate income for his family doing so; A man in Indiana makes and sells electric chicken coop doors with timers for people with busy lives; and an ever increasing number of craftsmen and craftswomen across the country are making chicken related crafts, jewelry, egg carton labels,  diapers (some people like to bring their chickens into the house from time to time), and hen saddles (for breeders to protect their hens) and selling them within our community. Small businesses have been able to thrive. Randall Burkey Company is a family run business and they are able to provide everything for chickens and baby chicks.  Even reputable “seasoned” hatcheries that previously only dealt with commercial buyers are now serving the public and almost all of them currently have backlogged orders which is amazing given the economic news we read and hear day in and day out.  

Now, I’m not by any means saying this industry is “Americas road to recovery”, but in an otherwise oppressed economy, this movement is a small but growing “success” story which warms my heart and is something, I for one, am proud to be a part of and I think you should be to.  We have “accidently” figured out how to bond together and utilize our passion to do what it would seem our politicians can’t figure out.  It is so awesome to see so many entrepreneurs build their businesses thru the online communities without the need for brick and mortar outlets or even paid advertising thanks to all of the loyalty within our community.  So, the next time you order something from within the community or refer a newbie to our supplier friends, know that you are making a difference and give yourself a big “pat on the back”!  

Through chickens and other animals, we have created a way to help each other. A community that will stay strong because its members care about one another. Some may just come in and comment but others stick around and become part of our chicken family.

  

Written By Marc and Jessica Belanger