Meal worms for chickens

One of our goals is to set up our farm to be self-sufficient, mainly because that the cheapest way to do things, and also because it means that we don't have to rely on external sources to provide what we need.  A weak point is the chickens.  Even though they provide us with plenty of tasty eggs and meat, we still have to buy grain to feed them, so that's not exactly a self-sufficient system.  I've been on the lookout for ideas for food that we can grow for the chickens to at least replace part of the grain we but for them.

a couple of hens tasting the mealworms

One thing that does make a difference is allowing the chickens to free-range, they eat far less grain.  I wrote a while ago about feeding the chickens only corn and sunflower seeds.  Since then I've read more about chicken nutrition, as it seems that they do need meat, or at least the amino acid methionine, as it is not found in significant proportions in grains or legumes.  The theory is that chickens are descended from naturally free-ranging jungle-dwelling birds (gallus gallus), which tend to get their protein from bugs.  It is argued (and I read this in a magazine on small farming, so I can't link to the article) that a chicken free-ranging on pasture does not pick up as many bugs as a jungle bird might, and therefore does not get enough protein from bugs, and so needs to be fed a "complete ration" containing either meat meal or a synthetic form of methionine.

Chicken pellets are usually labelled as complete rations, and if they contain meat meal, they will have a warning not to feed to ruminants (trying telling our house cow not to eat the chicken feed!).  I would still prefer to feed grain, as you at least know exactly what's in the feed.  I'm not sure if our free-ranging chickens are getting enough protein from the bugs they find.  They certainly lay more eggs when we feed them high-protein layer pellets, so maybe they do need more.

With this in mind, when a friend offered me her excess mealworms, so that I could start breeding them, it seemed like the perfect way to make sure that the chickens had enough bugs in their diet to meet their methionine needs, and we could continue to feed them on corn and sunflower seeds, and look for other feed that we could grow to even replace the grain eventually, and still get lots of delicious eggs and chicken meat for ourselves.

the meal worms all tucked up under a hessian sack

Have you tried farming meal worms?  Any tips?  What else do you grow to feed your chickens to increase your self-sufficiency?