Today’s post is about a crazy
experiment that probably won’t work…but is worth the 90% chance of
failure. It occurred to me that I could take a handful of compost
worms from our worm bin and seed them into the deep
bedding of the
currently-vacant coop, then wait and see if the worms multiply.
If the experiment works, the worms would increase the quality of the
deep bedding compost, and our flock could scratch the annelids up for
fresh protein once chicks displace our laying flock from their current
coop in October.
The biggest flaw in my
plan became evident when I pulled back the top layer of deep bedding to
seed the worms. Even six inches down, the deep bedding material
was far too dry for worms. I poured in the castings and worms
anyway and covered them back up, hoping that the critters would crawl
down to the damper layers, but I’m not holding my breath.
However, this ill-fated
experiment suggested a different avenue of experimentation. I
snagged worms from an area of our worm bin where the lid has bowed
down, creating a puddle after rains that then saturates the bedding
directly underneath. When I dug into the wet spot, I discovered
that black
soldier fly larvae
were four times as common as compost worms! I thought black
soldier fly larvae needed to eat high nitrogen kitchen scraps, which
are in short supply on our homestead, so I’d given up on using these
insects as feed for our chickens. But now I’m wondering if I
could make a black soldier fly bin full of wet horse manure and feed
the flock. Back to the drawing board….
Vermiculture in the deep bedding
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About The Author
Anna & Mark
Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton are a pair of back-to-the-landers who have been homesteading for over a decade.
I’ve read at some point a university professor’s paper promoting just what you are trying with raising worms in deep litter. He contended that this was the answer to supplementing the chickens’ feed and also to taking care of their manure. This article was on the web, and was from the 20s or 30s, as I recall. I’m sure I’ve got the link somewhere, but it’s time to head back to the field at the moment. Good luck! – Bill
Bill — Interesting! A quick search of the internet didn’t turn up the article you mentioned (although I did learn that one study found that dried earthworms were very palatable to cats….) If you do stumble back across it, I hope you’ll come back and provide a link.