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Now I just need to know if these worms would harm my chickens. They (the chickens) already try and eat foam packing material that gets blown out of trash cans o
by igetspam 6y ago
Now I just need to know if these worms would harm my chickens. They (the chickens) already try and eat foam packing material that gets blown out of trash cans on windy days. The worms can't be worse, right?
We don't eat the chickens and barely eat the eggs (they're pets), so no risk to us.
- dexterdog 6y agoWhy don't you eat the eggs? I have ducks as pets and I love the eggs.
- igetspam 6y agoWife is vegan, kid doesn't really like them and I just don't eat a lot of food. Nobody is really all that interested. We eat some but the chickens are free range and since the last move, we haven't found their nesting ground. We get one a day is a predictable place and the rest are who knows where. Even with one a day, we give about half away.
- dexterdog 6y agoHuh, I thought chickens were more predictable and nested. Ducks sometimes just drop and egg while they're walking around, but mine stay in a pretty small area so they're easy to find if they haven't broken them.
- ffhhj 6y ago>The mealworms are able to do this due to their gut bacteria (Exiguobacterium sp. strain YT2) that actually breaks down the polystyrene. > The fact that these worms are converting about half of the styrofoam they eat into carbon dioxide and the rest into mineralized organic material suggest that it has come full circle. The bacteria breaks the molecules and shouldn't harm the animals that eat them.
- blackrock 6y agoIs the next step to breed and harvest the bacteria? And use that to just break down the styrofoam?
- singron 6y agoI don't know about industrial processes involving bacteria, but the mealworms might be providing a lot of value. First they chew up the styrofoam, and then they provide an environment (pH, nutrients, enzymes) for the bacteria to be effective. Mealworms are also fairly easy to breed. If you isolated the bacteria, you might need to provide those other functions in an alternative way that's more cost effective than putting some worms in a bucket.
- abiogenesis 6y agoTrue, but at industrial volumes it might be more space/cost/time effective to directly use the bacteria, combined with a mechanical or chemical pre-processing step.
- Waterluvian 6y agoYou don't buy fire, you buy a furnace. The mealworms really are the functional tool here, even if the bacteria is what's doing the work.