Author: Anna & Mark

Last summer, I tried
raising silkworms to feed our chickens.  My project had growing
pains, for reasons I’ll explain below, but I think the idea still has
lots of merit.  So I’ll be giving away 100+ silkworm eggs to one lucky reader this week! 
These are so-called “peace silkworms” that are able to break free of
their cocoons as adults and breed naturally, so you can keep your
silkworms going if you like the project.  The caterpillars are
great food for your chickens, and their cocoons can be used to make silk
cloth (with caveats).  To enter, just leave your comment below before midnight on Thursday, December 12, and be sure to check back next week to find out if you won.  I’ll use a random-number generator to select one lucky winner.



If you want to learn more about silkworms before entering, here are my the highlights of my experience over the past year:

• The potential of raising silkworms for chickens
• How to raise silkworms
• Is it efficient to raise chickens on silkworms?
• When to hatch silkworms
• Silkworms hatch!
• Day 3 silkworm observations
• Hungry, hungry silkworms
• Great silkworm dieoff
• Mulberry taste test
• Breeding silkworms
• Silkworm final week observations
• Mating silkworms

You should also know that I
started out the experiment very enthusiastically, but by the end decided
I wasn’t going to raise silkworms again soon.  So I figured it
might help to hear the scenario in which I think it’s worthwhile to
raise silkworms for your chickens.

Heat was a big problem for
me since I don’t use air-conditioning and silkworms suffer when it gets
above about 80 inside.  If you do air-condition,
or have a cool basement, this would be a non-issue.  However, I do
recommend keeping your silkworms somewhere other than your living room
since they start to smell a bit after the first couple of weeks.

The other big problem
we had was collecting enough leaves for the voracious worms as they grew
larger.  Our young mulberry tree was no match for their appetite,
but if you have a mature tree, you’ll be fine.  You’ll be even
finer if you have an interested kid or two who’d like to collect
mulberry leaves and play with caterpillars multiple times a day.

I hope you try
silkworms next year and report back with your results so I’ll hear more
about when silkworms do and don’t make sense on the homestead.  And
the cheapest way to experiment is to win our giveaway, so be sure to
enter below!

I’ve been enjoying getting chicken books out of the library and giving them a test run lately, and my most recent checkout was Chickens in Five Minutes a Day
by the Murray McMurray Hatchery.  I wasn’t sure what to expect
from a book written by a hatchery, but I was pleasantly surprised. 
This is another visual-heavy and word-lean book that you can read in an
hour or two, but it covers the basics better than some books in that
category.  Sure, you won’t learn anything remotely alternative
(although chicken tractors are briefly mentioned), but the book does
have a list of big cities that do and don’t allow chickens.  (Did
you know that you can’t raise chickens in Houston unless you have a note
from your doctor attesting to your need for fresh eggs?)



Since hatcheries
specialize in breeds of chickens, I was interested to see Murray
McMurray’s top recommendations.  Helpfully, the book broke their
favorite breeds down by purpose, as follows:

• Productive white-egg layers: Pearl-White Leghorns, followed by Silver Spangled Hamburgs, Single Comb Brown Leghorns, and Blue Andalusians
• Productive brown-egg layers: Red Stars and Black Stars, followed by Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, and Barred Rocks
• Multi-colored-egg layers: Araucana/Americana
  hybrids.  (Did you know that each individual hen only lays one
  color egg, so if you want lots of hues, you’ll want lots of hens?)
• Exotic-looking birds:
  Bantams in general, but specifically White Silkies, Blue Silkies,
  Frizzle Cochins, Belgian Bearded d’Uccle Mille Fleurs, and Quail Antwerp
  Belgians.  (Did you know that you usually can’t order bantams
  sexed because the chicks are just too small?)
• Pets: Cochins and Orpingtons.

What’s my biggest
disappointment from this book?  I wanted to hear more about the
hatchery!  They’re one of the oldest and biggest hatcheries around
that cater to the non-industrial chicken-keeper, and I’d love to hear
their take on which varieties have waxed and waned in popularity over
the last century, and also more about how their operation runs.  I
did learn that backyard chickens are nearly ubiquitous in the1930s and
1940s, but popularity dropped off drastically in the 1950s and 1960s,
which makes sense given a similar trend with gardening.  Maybe
Murray McMurray Hatchery will make my day and come out with another book
soon to fill in those gaps?