Advantages of mealworm protein powder as animal feed.

 As an animal feed, yellow mealworm has the characteristics of comprehensive nutrition, good palatability and easy feeding. Tests have shown that using yellow mealworms as fresh bait for carnivorous animals not only promotes the growth, development and reproduction of animals, enhances the ability to resist diseases and adverse environments, but also has the advantages of low feed costs and high output benefits. Using yellow mealworms as protein feed additives for livestock and poultry farming can not only improve the palatability of feed, which is conducive to digestion and absorption, but also increase feed remuneration and improve the flavour of livestock and poultry products.

1.As fresh bait can be directly fed carnivorous, insectivorous and omnivorous special economic animals are mainly scorpions, amusement clams, ants, clam ants, lucid scorpions, toads, crabs, shrimp, frogs, toad credit, tortoises, turtles, goldfish, tropical fish, zebrafish, seven-starred fish, bearded squid, tilapia, loach, eel, eel, juvenile snakes, large whales, flying grouse, bamboo chickens, black phoenix chickens, pearl chickens, peacocks, sparrows, childish, Various kinds of ornamental birds and so on dozens of species. The following is an example of several kinds of special economic animals that need a large amount of insects, a brief introduction to the feeding of yellow mealworm bait methods and precautions.

(1) Feeding scorpions: Yellow mealworm is a high-quality bait for feeding scorpions, not only can it live with scorpions for more than 10 days to meet the scorpion's predation at any time, but also the moulting hormone contained in yellow mealworm is also beneficial to scorpion moulting. Generally feed directly in the scorpion breeding box or breeding pool can, but pay attention to choose fresh live insects, because the movement of the yellow mealworm is more likely to be found and captured by the scorpion, and can avoid the death of the yellow mealworm contamination of the scorpion nest; but also pay attention to the scorpion according to the developmental stage of the choice of different sizes of the yellow mealworm larvae in order to young scorpions to feed on; in the scorpion feeding peak feeding amount should be preferred more than the shortage of scorpions to avoid the scorpion lack of food and kill each other.

(2) Feeding frogs: Yellow mealworm is one of the ideal opening baits for young frogs that have just begun to metamorphose, and it is also a high-quality bait for rearing young frogs and breeding frogs. However, since yellow mealworms die easily when they see water, it is best to set up a special bait table or put yellow mealworms on land. The bait table is usually made into a disc or shallow slot, with smooth walls to prevent yellow mealworms from crawling out, and the mouth of the disc or slot should not be too big to prevent frogs from jumping and catching.

(3) Feeding turtles: Because turtles feed in the water, we should consider the survival time of yellow mealworms in the water. After throwing the live yellow mealworms into the water, they usually suffocate and die within 10 minutes, and the water temperature is above 20℃ for 2 hours and then start to rot, and the body of the insects will become black and soft, and gradually become smelly. Therefore, to feed yellow mealworms to turtles, first of all, we should control the amount of turtle's food, and in the growing season, the amount of fresh worms to be fed is about 10% of the turtle's body weight. Each feeding amount should be eaten within 2 hours. In summer, when the water temperature is above 25℃, the turtles eat more, and can be fed 2-3 times a day. In spring and autumn, when the water temperature is 16?20℃, the turtle's food intake is small, and it can be fed 1 time per day. If artificial heating culture is carried out, the feeding frequency should be increased when the water temperature is around 25℃, and it is better to eat less and more often to ensure the freshness of the worms. When feeding, the yellow mealworm larvae should be placed on the bait table in the water, and when feeding for the 2nd time, it is necessary to observe whether the amount of worms put in the previous 1 time has been eaten up, and remove the residual bait and adjust the amount of the next feeding in time.

(4) Feeding fish: when feeding ornamental fish, rare fish and squid and other carnivorous fish with yellow mealworms, due to their feeding mode of swallowing, the feeding of yellow mealworms should be good for small individuals, and the amount of feeding should not be too much each time, but also should be eaten more than once, to prevent the death of insects and corruption of the short-term food is not finished. Tests have shown that the yellow mealworm larvae are made into minced worms after being crushed, which has a significant food-attracting effect on tilapia, and the best effect is to add 2% of yellow mealworms in tilapia feed.

(5) Feeding birds: when feeding live yellow mealworms to paintbrush birds, larks, etc., it is generally best to feed 8-16 heads/only per day, and it should be fed with other feeds to avoid indigestion caused by simply taking yellow mealworms. When feeding, you can feed the larvae by hand, or you can put the larvae into small containers for the birds to feed freely, but the inner wall of the container should be smooth to prevent the yellow mealworms from crawling out and escaping, and there should not be water and other debris in the container.

(6) Feeding snakes: snakes like to devour animals, often feeding on frogs, mice and other small animals, can also be used as bait for snakes with yellow mealworms, and older yellow mealworms are especially suitable for feeding young snakes. When feeding adult snakes with yellow mealworms, it can be combined with other feeds to form full-price feeds, processed into food pellets suitable for snakes to swallow, and the number of feeding times is determined according to the number of snakes, their size and the different seasons, and is generally fed 3-5 times a month.

2.As a protein feed with the development of local special economic animal farming and livestock and poultry farming, protein feed, especially animal protein feed shortage is increasingly prominent, resulting in fish meal, meat and bone meal and other animal protein feed prices continue to rise. Yellow mealworm has the characteristics of high protein content and reasonable amino acid composition, theoretically it can replace fish meal, meat and bone meal, etc. added to livestock and poultry feed. However, due to the very limited scale of yellow mealworm farming, it is still difficult to provide sufficient raw material supply for the feed industry, although the small-scale test proved that it can replace fish meal as poultry protein feed, but how to formulate a variety of feed formulas with yellow mealworm as the proteins need to be explored in depth. The following is a brief introduction to some small-scale application tests.

(1) Feeding broiler chickens: at present, more applications are fed to the soil chicken with higher economic value. For example, if 2% of adult yellow mealworms are added to the basic diet of three yellow chickens every day instead of the equivalent amount of fishmeal, the protein metabolism rate is 13.17% higher than that of feeding fishmeal, and the daily weight gain is 1.89% higher than that of feeding fishmeal.

1.89 %. Adding 5 % of yellow mealworm larvae to the basal diet of hens instead of the equivalent amount of domestic fish meal also increased the daily weight gain of hens, and had no effect on the quality indexes of chicken meat, such as slaughtering rate, semi-clearance rate, full-clearance rate, breast muscle rate, leg muscle rate, and so on. The addition of 7 % yellow mealworm larvae meal to the AA broiler chicks' basal diet improved the flavour of chicken meat, increased the water retention capacity of chicken meat, and prolonged the shelf-life of chicken meat, while it had little effect on the tenderness of chicken meat. Soil miscellaneous chicken free-range farms in the broiler full-price with feed every day plus feeding 10% of the fresh larvae of the yellow mealworm, not only can enhance the chicken's resistance to disease, reduce the use of medication to prevent epidemics, but also the production of the worm chicken meat tender, fragrant and tasty, nutrient-rich.

(2)Feeding egg-laying chickens: designing feed formula with yellow mealworm larvae powder as protein raw material, feeding egg-laying chickens with conventional ordinary egg-laying chicken feed as control, it can increase the egg-laying rate by 5.06%, increase the weight of egg by 12.40%, and reduce the feed to egg ratio by 6.90%. The free-range farms can feed 10-12% live larvae of yellow mealworms in the full-price feed for laying hens every day, which can produce delicious, nutritious and unique eggs with worms.

(3) feeding crane quail: in the white quail basic diets add 3 % of yellow mealworm larvae powder instead of fishmeal, can reduce the mortality rate of crane quail, accelerate the growth rate, increase the weight of the individual, improve the feed compensation, the output of the crane quail meat muscle fibre diameter and shear force to become larger, the muscle of the water retention to improve the muscle to extend the shelf life of the muscle, and the tenderness of the muscle has little effect. Adding 10 % powdered larvae of Coturnix japonica to the feed of 120-day-old laying coturnix quail for a few days increased the egg-laying rate by 4.1 %, and the egg weight by 7.0 %, while the feed-egg ratio decreased by 11.3 %.

(4) Feeding goslings: in the meat Jilin white goose goslings feed formula to add 22% of the yellow meal powder, instead of an equal amount of fishmeal + soybean meal, not only can improve the goslings' ability to resist disease, the survival rate of the goslings will increase by 5.4%, but also to make the goslings gain weight quickly, high feed remuneration.