That’s how I got pulled into the fray in a minor way. But apparently it isn’t widely known that even many songbirds cast pellets. Most bird enthusiasts are well aware that owls cast pellets and many know that other raptors do too. Much (though not all) of the misunderstanding resulted from the author’s apparent ignorance of the fact that many songbirds regurgitate pellets as a means of discarding undigestible material in their diets such as insect exoskeletons, including those of mealworms. Folks feed birds because they love them so you can imagine their reaction to any claim that they might be killing them. This of course caused considerable concern and even consternation amongst those who feed birds in their back yards, wild bird rehabbers and businesses that sell bird food. Recently a Facebook post whose author has a broad following among bird enthusiasts falsely claimed that feeding mealworms to birds can be deadly for them. Any dead or discoloured ones must not be used as they can cause problems such as salmonella poisoning.This is what happens when false and misleading information is widely distributed amongst the bird-loving community. It is very important that any mealworms fed to birds are fresh. If you want to start new colonies, prepare another tin and transfer some bits of dry bread (these will carry beetle eggs) from the flourishing colony.Replace the bread, potato and cabbage as necessary. The beetles will lay eggs which hatch into mealworms and so on.After a few weeks the mealworms will turn into creamy pupae, then into little black beetles. Introduce two or three hundred mealworms into the prepared tin.Keep the tin at room temperature, not in hot sun. You can put a raw cabbage leaf on top if you like.
Put a slice or two of bread and raw potato, followed by another two layers of sacking/bran/bread/potato, like a three-decker sandwich. Punch small holes in the lid for ventilation, place a layer of old hessian sacking in the bottom and sprinkle fairly thickly with bran.It can become quite expensive to constantly buy mealworms, so you might want to grow your own.įor a constant supply of mealworms, prepare a large circular biscuit tin as follows:
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