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Hey Hey!! I’m back! Thank you for your patience and allowing me a little bit of time to rest and recover. That’s not how I wanted to take a week off of the podcast to be sure, but life happens. Today we’re going to be talking about another way to become more independent of your feed store, reduce costs, and increase the health of your animals. I’m likely going to be covering several kinds of insects over the course of the year, so this might be the first in a series about raising insects for animal feed but this episode is about mealworms. They’re super easy to raise and grow. They’re the larvae of a beetle called Tenebrio molitor, which is a species of darkling beetle. They’re considered a pest in factory farmed chicken houses, but they’re great for all sorts of insect eating creatures like chickens, ducks, quail, geese, gamebirds, fish, reptiles, and even humans. Although I was informed by my wife in no uncertain terms that she was not going to cook them. Never ever, unless it was the end of the world and she was starving. You should’ve seen the look on her face when I said people eat them.

But human food aside, I think they’re a fantastic resource to add to your liberty toolbox. Of course they won’t be for everyone, some people just can’t stand insects, but they’re almost scent free, high protein, reproduce rapidly, cheap to feed, and low maintenance. Sounds like a recipe for the birds.

News

Well I am pretty sure that what took me out for a week was a cold that turned into a respiratory infection. I had a low grade fever for a solid week and felt awful. Add to that, my quail all died, predators killed half my laying flock of chickens, 2 baby goats got orphaned and died, and 5 rabbits died. Folks, you need to have automatic systems in place and working properly so when you and your spouse get sick, the animals are taken care of at least in a basic way. All the predator losses and the orphaned goats were unavoidable, but man it’s awful to lose that many animals all in one week. I don’t know if it’s the foxes, or coons, but something got in the coop and killed tons of birds for several nights in a row. I have to get them locked up tight tonight to hopefully prevent it from happening again tonight.

We are reducing the number of animals on the homestead anyways so I suppose it might have saved me some trouble to have so many losses, so I’m trying to keep on the bright side and look at things optimistically.  

The bull and pig are both hopefully going to the butcher in a couple weeks if he doesn’t flake out on me again, then we’re going to let Ribeye the new calf grow, and I’m a little undecided as to wether I’m going to let him grow up to full size to butcher in a year and a half… We’ll just have to see. I might just turn him into a hundred pounds of veal in a few months and be done with it.

Also, 3 goats are being retired to the great beyond. Or in their case, the new garden space. That will put us down to Momma Cow, and 3 goats for my larger ruminants. Some rabbits, and a handful of chickens. And of course the ducks will still be hanging out in the lake. One of those hens is setting on some eggs near our front gate, but this is her first time and I don’t know if she’s being consistent enough to keep them warm enough to hatch. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

The garden is a wreck, overgrown, and the barnyard is a mess too. I have quite a bit of work cut out for me to get things all put back to rights. But it’ll be worth it once I get things organized and cleaned up. I’ll take some before and after pictures. They might be too embarrassing to share, so you might never see them.

I got about ten tons of hay delivered to cover a large area in mulch, I plan on letting the goats just tear the bales apart and spread the hay around. They do a fantastic job at trampling perfectly good hay and manuring it thoroughly, so I’m hoping they’ll do the same with this hay, cause that will save me a ton of work! And you guys know I always like for my animals to do the work for me if possible!

Plant of the Week

Blackberry, they’re low maintenance and easy to grow. I love the flavor but hate them in cobblers and pies because the seeds get stuck in my teeth and it drives me crazy. But if you’re not borderline OCD about seeds in your teeth like I am, then you should be good to use them in cobblers.

Propagation

Most blackberry is super easy to propagate with tip layering, but they also propagate very well with root cuttings. Dig the roots, and cut up into 6-8 inch lengths around pencil diameter, and plant wherever you want more blackberries. You can also divide the crowns for plants that are quicker to mature and produce.

Hardiness Zone: 4-9

Light: Full Sun

Minimum Chill Hours Needed: 400-500

Soil: Average (6.0-7.0), well-drained. However, they adapt to most soil types except alkaline and very wet.

Pollination: Self pollinating, no need for a pollinator.

Where to Plant: Blackberries tend to form thickets and root vigorously. Position your berries where you can easily control suckers and spreading.

This little guy rooted all by himself from the tip of one of the thornless blackberries I have in pots sitting in front of the house. Super easy!!

Why You Should Grow Bugs

I want to grow bugs because one of my big goals is to become as independent of outside feed sources as possible while still meeting my family’s food needs. That means I need free eggs. To get free eggs, I have to figure out some way to feed my birds for free, and also to hatch new generations for free. I want a very robust and hassle free system, and I want it to be resilient. So I’m going to set up some insect growing systems and one of the first is going to be mealworms. Why mealworms? Because live they have between 20% and 30% protein, they eat waste products, and birds love them. I can buy a 40 pound sack of wheat bran, and mix that 50/50 with dried rabbit manure as the feedstock for the mealworms. But before we get into numbers and really blow you out of the water, just let the possibilities sink in for a little bit.

I can take manure from my rabbits, that are being fed comfrey, and grass clippings, and in a few years I’ll have all my fodder trees producing well and we’ll have a 100% self sufficient meat source on our property. The manure is nutrient rich fermented plant matter, will be fed to those insects, and what I get back from them is a high protein, high fat animal feed that I can feed all my animals. Add to that I get another product, mealworm poop which is called “frass” and that stuff is highly sought after for organic growers as an almost miraculous fertilizer. Any dead insects and insect manure goes to the garden, the mature larvae are fed to the chickens, ducks, dogs, pigs, and could even be fed in small amounts to the ruminants as well! Yeah, you can mix it into livestock feed to bump up the protein content. If you have an aquaponics system, boom, instant fish food, if you have a pond, you can feed them to catfish or bluegill, or tilapia. If you keep reptiles or tropical fish, they’re amazing food for pretty much anything that eats insects.

So that’s the short version of why I think you should raise insects. It’s one more component of the liberty minded lifestyle I am trying to build for my family. It’s a freedom from the feed store. Think about it, rabbit meat that I don’t have to spend money to raise. Chicken meat and eggs that I don’t have to spend money to acquire! My chickens can eat whatever they find in the pasture and the woods, and get a small handful of larvae every day and be healthier than birds raised on corn and soy pellets. What’s not to love?!

Mealworms

So let’s cover the basics of raising these critters. I’ll probably be producing a video in the future after I get my setup going and mature enough to show you guys the whole process from start to finish, so in the meantime this info should get you started if you want to grow em.

First let’s talk about the lifecycle and then get into the practical how-to bit.

What we’re shooting for harvesting is the mature larva of the darkling beetle called Tenebrio molitor, and these insects go through four life stages. It starts as an egg (or beetle, depending on what camp you are in with the chicken or the egg), the egg hatches as a tiny larvae, they molt several times as they grow, until they mature as a larva around an inch to an inch and a half long. At this point, the larvae change again into pupae, and that’s kind of like a moth spinning a cocoon, or a butterfly hardening into a chrysalis. After maturing as a pupa, the adult form emerges as a white beetle, and it matures over a couple days, changing to a reddish color, and finally to black. Then the adults lay eggs and the whole cycle starts over again. The adult beetles will lay eggs for a few months, and can lay hundreds of eggs over their lifespan. They will overwinter as pupae for up to 9 months before emerging in the spring as adult beetles. The whole lifecycle takes up to a year. But under optimal conditions, you can keep several breeding populations going at the same time so you harvest every day, or every week if you prefer. I am probably going to aim for a weekly harvest so I can feed my animals and dehydrate a bunch for winter protein. But that’s enough about what they are and how they breed, let’s get into some how-to.

How to Raise Them

Let’s break down the steps:

1. Pick a container (you can use most anything that’s smooth sided, dish pans, cat litter boxes, aquariums, plastic shoe boxes…) Some people use plastic shoeboxes, or those plastic drawer units that rubbermaid and sterilite make, you know the ones in every walmart in the world, or even wooden boxes or drawers as long as you use some adhesive and glue something like aluminum foil to the sides so the insects can’t crawl out. You don’t want those beetles to be crawling across the floor in your bedroom at night. I would probably have to sleep outside for a month if I let that happen… They don’t really climb or even fly, so as long as the containers have somewhat smooth sides, they’ll stay put.
2. So you have your containers, you’ll need at least a couple containers to keep them in, but you can start with a single container.
3. Make sure container is well ventilated (burn or drill holes in the lid or high up the sides, or don’t worry about this step if you’re using an open top container) If you want to put the lid on the container, make sure there are lots of holes, you have to keep it well ventilated or else the bedding will get moldy and they’ll all die!
4. Fill container with bedding of your choice about 1”-2” deep. People use quick oats, wheat bran, and even things like cheerios put through a blender to powderize it. I’ll be using wheat bran because it’s cheap and I can buy it in bulk. Plus it’s what the pros seem to prefer.
5. Add your mealworms. You can buy them online, a pet store, or get them from a friend. I’ll be ordering a starter kit from someone online so I can get some beetles.
6. Add a carrot or half an apple, or half of a potato, a stick of celery. Something along those lines, but those are the most popular water sources. Mealworms don’t drink water, they get their water from their food. Don’t use watery foods like grapes, strawberries, tomatoes, they rot or cause mold issues. You’ll check on them every week or couple days to make sure they still have some carrot to much on, but their main food is the quick oats or wheat bran or whatever you choose for bedding, they eat carrots or some kind of vegetable for moisture. If you don’t have carrots, you can use a piece of potato, or apple, or celery. You don’t want to use something that is going to be so moist that it will make the bedding material get moldy. You’re aiming to keep it relatively dry in there, no mold growing, and good ventilation.
7. You can add some paper egg cartons, or toilet paper tubes, something like that for them to hide under. They don’t like light and will be more active if you give them someplace to hide.
8. The mature mealworm larvae (1”-½” long and a golden yellow to light brown color) will turn into pupae in a week or two, at which time they’ll stop moving and stay stationary for a week or two. At this stage, they don’t need bedding or the wet food. But I suggest putting the pupae into a container with a little more extra bedding. The mature beetles like to burrow through the food.
9. Now that the pupae are emerging as adults, they should be in a container with 2”-3” of bedding and some cardboard tubes or some other shelter material so they can hide. Soon after they turn fully black is when they will start laying eggs. They will lay eggs on everything, so don’t throw any shelter materials or bedding out or you’ll be throwing the eggs away too.
10. You can start rotating the beetles to a fresh bin of bedding every week for 11 more weeks at this point if you want to focus on maximum production. Otherwise just let them do their thing and maintain one bin.

My Setup

I’m personally building a drawer unit that I can move indoors or outdoors that will likely be 2’ wide by 4’ long and have sides that are 4 1/2” tall, with 12 sets of drawers per unit, making my units 6’ tall. I’ll leave 1 1/2” of airspace above each shelf for ventilation (which is very important). I’ll start with one unit and as I build populations up, I’ll add a second and third unit bringing my total number of drawers up to 36. That means I’ll have 288 square feet of growing space. That should be enough for 16,000 mature beetles laying eggs at a time. Every week I would empty out a drawer of mature larvae, clean the drawer, put new bedding material in, and move the beetles from their current bedding, to the fresh drawer. All the larvae I just harvested would be split up into what I needed for animal feed, and the rest would get solar baked, then spread onto drying racks to be stored for future use or sold as pet food. I should be able to produce a little over 19 pounds of larvae a week, and there are around 4200 mealworms per pound. That means I can feed at about 20% of their diet, which is .8 oz per bird which comes out to 2.5lbs of larvae per day, and I should be able to produce somewhere around 2.7. So that gives me a little wiggle room and some extras to save for winter or feed to other animals.

Nutritional Content

I have some nutritional information for you here that I took from an online retailer that breaks down the nutrient profile of various insects so you can see what they are as a dried insect. Keep in mind that these are different numbers from fresh insects. The mealworm larvae fresh are between 20% and 30% protein. http://www.grubco.com/nutritional_information.cfm

Economics and Financial Breakdown

Feed conversion rate is generally about 1 lb of worms for every 2.2 lbs of wheat bran. I hope to feed primarily summer squash to my larvae during the summer to eliminate the need to buy extra produce. That means I should be able to produce larvae for about $.55 per pound if I’m feeding only wheat bran. That comes out to about one 40# bag of wheat bran, which costs me $9.99 per bag. That means I’m getting almost 20 pounds of larvae for ten bucks and about half an hour of my time every week. If I kept up production levels and maintained that rate of growth and harvest, I would spend $520 a year on mealworm food. But wait! I can cut that feed bill in half with the addition of 50% rabbit manure. That means now I’m getting that 19# of larvae for five bucks every week. Guys… I can let my chickens free range in some grass and feed 2# of bugs to them every day and not have to buy laying pellets. I might have to add some calcium powder to the mix, or add crushed eggshells to their feed to make up for the lower calcium levels… So that means I could have a flock of 50 birds giving us eggs for only $260 a year in feed…

If you haven’t done the math, feeding conventional feed to 50 birds comes out to about 12.5# of feed per day, that means at my prices of feed, it’s $3.125 in chicken feed per day. That’s $1140 per year in chicken feed. I can cut my feed bill to a quarter of what it would be or even just in half if I didn’t use manure. Man, that’s $0.32 per dozen eggs in cost if you assume each hen lays 200 eggs per year with 2 roosters not laying a single egg.

If I wanted to or needed to, I could even cut out completely the wheat bran and use just rabbit and goat manure to feed the larvae. Now I might have to run it through a shredder of some kind to powderize it a little better. But that means if times got real tough I could be 100% independent of purchasing outside feed for my birds. I could be completely independent. What if I grew some field corn for my animals and had it milled or milled it myself, then I could use that cornmeal to add to the manure for a boost in production and feed the insects the corn instead of the birds. If I needed more protein in the diet of the worms, I could use my comfrey and mulberry leaves.

What a fantastic set of benefits! I get better quality food for my birds, they’ll be healthier, lay better eggs, my food will be higher quality, and I will be less dependent on a feed store to keep my homestead running.

I hope you consider giving it a try. You don’t have to go big like I’m planning on doing, if nothing else, it would be a great little project and science experiment for your kids if you’re a homeschooler like us. If nothing else, for the space it takes to keep them, you could raise a great treat or a decent amount of supplemental feed for a small laying flock underneath your bed with just a couple minutes of time every week.

I hope this has been encouraging and interesting for you. It’s sure been an enlightening few days of researching for me. And I’m really looking forward to getting started growing these critters!

Thank you so much for listening!

If you have a question or comment about the show feel free to send me an email to nick@homegrownliberty.com

Until next week

I hope you have a wonderful day, God Bless. And as always “Go Do Good Things”