Author: Anna & Mark

Earthworms as chicken feed

March 4, 2010 Posts No Comments
Harvey Ussery's greenhouse worm bins

Harvey
Ussery, my role
model in the chicken permaculture world, uses earthworms as a handy
source of protein for his chickens.  I’m unlikely to follow in his
footsteps since the infrastructure demands are quite high, but I wanted
to share his process in case some of you are keen to give it a shot.



Harvey has a big
greenhouse, in the center of which he has sunk worm bins into the soil
(surrounded by cinderblocks to keep the worms in place.)  He puts
big sheets of plywood on top of the bins so that he can use the worm
bin area as an aisle to walk down.  The bins are full of horse
manure from a neighbor along with the typical redworms you’d use in the worm bin
under your kitchen sink.


Harvesting worms from a big worm bin

The worms decompose the
manure and breed like crazy in the process.  At intervals, Harvey
scoops out five gallon buckets full of castings and worms and tosses
the whole thing to his chickens.  The birds scratch through,
eating up the worms and working the compost into the soil.  Free
protein and soil amendment all at once — what could be better than
that?



Want to keep your
chickens healthy?  Check out all of our innovative chicken feed
ideas, or our homemade chicken
waterer that keeps
water clean.

This post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series. 
Read all of the entries:

Black soldier fly larvae as chicken feed

March 4, 2010 Chicken feed, Chicken Health No Comments

Black soldier fly larvae and adultIf you want to feed insects to your chickens, black soldier fly larvae are probably the easiest and cheapest option.  Unlike mealworms, you won’t need to buy storebought food for the insects, and you won’t need to buy pheremones every year like you would for Japanese beetles.

What are black soldier fly larvae?  The little grubs are the larval stage of a flying insect that is naturally found in U.S. zones 7 to 10 (and maybe a little beyond that — we’re in zone 6 and I’ve found them in my garden.)  The adults look a bit like minuscule wasps, but they don’t sting.  The larvae look like dark, flat grubs.

 


I first saw black soldier fly larvae in my outdoors worm bin when I added too much wet, high nitrogen waste at once.  The adult black soldier fly lays its eggs in rotting fruits and vegetables, manure, or meat scraps, and within two weeks the eggs have hatched and turned into mature larvae.  Then the larvae crawl out of the feed so that they can pupate in the ground.


If you want to go the easy route, you can buy a special bin (the Bio-Pod) for $180 which will make your black soldier fly operation completely painless.  The bin is just a spot to put your rotting fruits and vegetables, with a ramp that allows the larvae to crawl out into a collection container.  All you have to do is add food waste then take the larvae to the chickens once a day.


We don’t want to pony up that much cash, so we plan to try to build our own bin this summer.  Check out this article for information on what a good bin looks like.  

This post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series.  Read all of the entries:

Japanese beetles as chicken feed

March 4, 2010 Posts 4 Comments

Japanese BeetleJapanese
beetles are invasive insects that defoliate roses, grapes, cherries,
and many other garden plants.  Although they’re terrible in the
garden, the beetles are one of our chickens’ favorite foods.

I go into the garden on cool summer mornings when the Japanese beetles
are slow-moving, place a cup of water below the bottom edge of a leaf,
and give the plant a sharp tap.  When startled, cold Japanese
Beetles let go of the plant they are eating and drop to the ground …
or into my cup if I’ve placed it correctly.  After my cup is full,
I toss the contents, water and all, into a chicken tractor and watch my hens go crazy.



Of course, this method
of catching Japanese Beetles isn’t going to cut it for large scale
feeding operations.  If you’re willing to buy some Japanese Beetle
pheremones, you can create a trap like the one shown below which will
capture these protein-rich insects for you.  The pheremones are
sold in many garden stores to bait Japanese beetle traps in a misguided
attempt to lure Japanese beetles out of folks’ gardens.  (In
practice, the traps more often lure the beetles right into your
favorite rose bush.)

Homemade Japanese beetle trap that feeds chickens.

I’d love to find a
method of capturing Japanese beetles that didn’t depend on storebought
scents — if you’ve got any thoughts, please leave a comment! 
Last summer, we had great (if accidental) luck capturing June bugs by
hanging some of our automatic chicken waterers up in the garden, partly
full of water and with the lids off.  The June bugs tried to land
on the slippery sides, but soon descended into the liquid at the bottom
of the containers, where they drowned.  If anything, our chickens
considered the June bugs even tastier than the Japanese beetles, so we
may have to work on developing a real June bug trap this summer.

This post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series. 
Read all of the entries: