Any such thing as too many black soldier fly larvae

[U_Stormcrow]

Yes. Tried BSFL. Too hot here Or wrong location. or something else. I have a commercial cricket farm up the road, if I was truly needy. (they raise them under climate control in a HUGE building. I could place my house, my RV, the car, the tractor in it, and still have room for an 18 wheeler or three....)

 

[Scooter-jedi]

THAT is an excellent start. Strawberries are mostly water, good sources of vitamin C and magnesium, not a heck of a lot else.. If your chickens were given nothing but strawberry plants to eat, that would be a problem - the chickens would eat to imbalance, because they had no choice. Tommorow or the next day, you might offer some veggies (or peels), or a legume, or a near grain, or a grain, or a pulse. Variety. That will also help ensure that what might be imbalanced on one day averages out over time.

Or, you could not treat them at all. It isn't necessary, but it is satisfying.

and I should have done more research for my BSFL farm. Step one, don't use a black barrel (all I had). More shade would have helped too. possibly I started too small, as well (not enoiugh volume to moderate temperature changes? I've given it a lot of thought, but haven't come up with any satisfying answers.

Whatever you decide, I wish you every fortune in it.

A good summertime treat is the rind of watermelon. Freeze some of the left over rinds to give to your birds. They'll peck and eat them all the way down leaving just the outer skin as they thaw on a hot summer day. A nice cool hydrating treat your birds will enjoy.

If your chickens eat/stomp down most of the greenery in your run, you could build them a salad bar box. A wooden frame resting on the ground made of 2X8 or 2X10 lumber with chicken wire or 1 1/2 inch by 1 1/2 inch grid wire fencing stapled/nailed to the topside with a couple inches of decent soil/compost to grow greens in. The size of it may depend on the number of chickens you have in the run. Of course you could expand what ever you have by just building more salad bar boxes in other areas of the run. Growing a variety of chicken friendly greens will ensure they will still have access to greens... even if they destroy everything else in the run down to the last blade of grass. The fencing prevents them from scatching away the dirt and digging the plants out by the roots and the fencing also prevents them from being able to get at the plants all the way down to the ground.

One of the things I grow for the chickens here is comfrey which can withstand a lot of pecking... It just keeps growng back no matter how many of the leaves they get to... as long as they can't reach all the way down to the ground through the fencing. Any chicken poo will just fall through and fertilize whatever you get growing there. Plant your seeds and water the greens as you would maintain any garden. It will be fun to watch your birds occasionally gather and congregate atop the salad bar boxes and nosh happily as if it were a social event... and maybe it would be to them