Baking instead of boiling eggs

Giving this a shot:

From TipNut:
Put a baking sheet on the bottom of the oven then place all the eggs you need cooked directly on the oven rack, the baking sheet will catch any broken eggs for easy cleanup ... Bake the eggs at 325°F. for half an hour. Take the eggs out of the oven then put them directly into a big bowl of very cold water (with ice added). This will stop the eggs from cooking and make them easier to peel too.

Didn't bother to add ice because the ambient temperature in my house is 64F. Will update and let you know how it goes.

Mealworm breeding

We've taken 3 6 quart blue Sterlite containers, drilled a sequence of holes in the sides and filled them with roughly 2 inches of baked wheat germ. A couple of sliced carrots and 500 mealworms, plus a slick little label have finished things off for now. I've temporarily placed it in the blue shed next to the Silkie brooder to soak up heat (mealworms breed best at roughly 100F).

Now we wait for them to begin developing in the pupae worm, which I'll transplant into another bin already pre-labeled as BEETLES. Those will hopefully develop into blackwing beetles, mate and lay eggs. The beetles will be moved into another bin, so the eggs can develop on their own into yet more mealworms. The lids will be swapped naturally, so the EGGS label will stay with the eggs and the BEETLES with the beetles. Easy-peasy.

Some of the mealworms will be harvested and fed to to the chickens, the rest will be left to continue transforming. And the cycle continues.

The whole thing takes about 6 months and $50 bucks to get started, depending on how much recycling you can do with bins and how cheaply you can get mealworms. And of course, how many you want to start out with. Given that you just feed them a few carrots, potatoes and the like, its a pretty cheap system. And very self-sustainable with only 10 minutes or so attention a week. Doable.

I'll likely update this with photos, so don't check back if you are squeamish. :D