The Mealworm Farm

Okay, I love my girls a LOT. Enough that I would be willing to handle live meal worms for them. Meal worms are the way to a chicken's heart and we have trained the older girls to come sprinting whenever they hear the bag rattle. One issue- a bag of freeze dried meal worms runs $30.00. I decided to venture into farming them to save a LOT of money and make my girls happy. I ordered 1,000 live meal worms for $18 online. Hopefully the whole thing works out!

The set up:
The top drawer will be for beetles which will lay eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larva will fall through the wire mesh at the bottom of the top drawer into the second drawer to protect them from getting eaten by the beetles. I will then transfer the larva into the meal worm tub (the bottom drawer) for either growing out into beetles or fattening up to feed to the girls.











I found the first pupa today!! This is very exciting because if the pupae successfully turn into beetles my little meal worm farm will be sustainable. With 37 chickens, we need a sustainable source of protein. 

So many pupae!



Look who I found today!!!!
This little beetle means something amazing... My meal worm farm is sustainable! An adult beetle will lay 1,000 eggs in their lifetime- WOW! I never thought I would be so excited over a bug.


Our current meal worm count is 724. Our beetle count is at 10. We also have many pupa. 
Our girls are loving the live meal worms!




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