Meal worms

mccardey said:

So they're kind of gross, aren't they? I've bred a whole tray of them in a wormtray to feed to my chooks, but now I feel kind of mean. Like I should set them free, or something. Meanwhile the chooks are looking at me like Hello? Where's the mealworms?

I wonder sometimes if I have what it takes to be a farmer.

Click to expand...

They come in freeze-dried and very dead form too, and the chooks won't care.

mccardey said:

The chooks never care. The mealworms might.

Did you see my baby quail on facebook? Aren't they adorable?

Click to expand...

I saw quail being cooked on Masterchef Australia.

You people are mean!

Um, not to show my ignorance here, but what the hell is a chook?

We have to snip them up into tiny pieces for my grand daughter's finicky gecko. I've only had to do it once but I felt like Hannibal L. --s6

My bluebirds love to nom on the dried mealworms, so I keep putting them in the tray on the bird feeder pole. But they still give me the creeps even though they're quite dried.

Lillian_Blaire said:

Um, not to show my ignorance here, but what the hell is a chook?

Click to expand...

It's Strine (Aussie English) for chicken.

- - - Updated - - -

There's also suet, available as pre-made suet cakes, with meal worms etc. for feeding wild birds.

Those suet cakes go so fast that I don't bother with them. --s6

I just get a kid or the DH to refill the mealworms. And my local birds are addicted to the hot pepper suet cakes--good thing they're cheap at Home Depot.

Back to the original subject...I keep thinking raising chickens might be fun (the neighbor has a few), but we kind of live in the woods and have plenty of coyotes, mink, and fisher cats in the area. I'd hate to provide the neighborhood predators with a deli.

When my very soft-hearted spouse was feeding little pet-store iguana-food crickets to his Venus Flytrap, he would put the crickets in the fridge to make them go to sleep, then put them in the freezer to kill them.

For the record, we're not sure the Venus Flytrap liked crickets anyway. The mouths tended to die afterward. He just lets it fend for itself these days.

mccardey said:

I am not going to put meal worms in the fridge. It would be declared the final straw, and I'd be shipped away somewhere quiet and medicated to live out my days.

Click to expand...

I never thought keeping them in the refrigerator was odd. They actually sell little cartons of live mealworms at petstores here that are meant to be kept in the fridge. It slows them down and keeps them from going through their life cycle to turn into beetles (if one isn't interested in a worm-breeding gig). But I have a snake, so I purchase bags of dead, frozen mice and store them in the freezer next to the ice cream and chicken breasts.

We have bird feeders with different kinds of seeds and suet (which the birds aren't going for, so maybe the wormy kind would be something to try). I'm wondering if setting up a feeder with a seed-dried-worm mixture would add to the variety that comes to our yard. It might gross my spouse out, though, and he's the one who is tall enough to hang the feeders on the nails under our eaves without getting the step stool out.

Not meal worms, but I can't bring myself to use anything but live traps for mice. I recently trapped the same mouse at least three times (how could I tell? blue food coloring) because when I catch them in the middle of the night, I'm too tired to tramp out very far from the house in my rubber boots and bathrobe to release them. People who don't mind killing mice made fun of me.

I think I finally have the answer, though--took Blue Mouse for a drive to a local park this morning. If he manages to find his way back from there, I'm going to give up and turn him into a pet.

I have a mole in my backyard that is living out his life thanks to my bleeding heart and squeamish stomach--s6