The Great Grub Massacre of 2013.....or not

Every year in Spring and Fall I venture into the horse/goat house to clean it. I figured today was the day. It's quite the chore with all the old hay, pine shavings and manure layered up for six months. I got to use my new dump cart which made it all suck a little less. 

After the seventh and final load of nastiness I finally hit the bottom layer. Under that bottom layer I found a surprise. Not a "Oh wow, how neat" surprise. But rather a "Oh, that is disgusting" surprise. I turned over the last layer of old hay to find roughly 30 grubs digging their way through the dirt. It was the perfect habitat for grubs, nice and cool with fine loose dirt. So I did what any human being would do. I ran out of the horse shed and grabbed a bowl. Then I collected all 30 some grubs into the bowl. These were the biggest juiciest grubs I've ever seen before, some of the larger ones being the diameter of my thumb. Yuck!

I'm sure at this point you are saying to yourself "Why would anyone in their right mind collect 30+ grubs into a bowl?" Well if you are asking yourself this then you are definitely not a chicken owner. You see I've been collecting grubs from my daily trek out to the garden. Whenever I plant something I am usually finding at least one or two to feed to the baby chickens. They are slowing coming around to idea of eating bugs. Apparently it's a learned behavior, something they usually are taught by their mother. Me, being mother hen, has been trying to teach them the wonders of bug eating.....but alas I don't eat bugs so it's slow going.

So off I go with my big ol' bowl of grubs. They see me coming and stretch their little necks through the fence (they are still living in the dog kennel during the day, not old enough to integrate into the flock).

I'd like to say it would always be referred to as "The Great Grub Massacre of 2013" but the poor uneducated pullets didn't know what to think of the giant squirming grubs. I'd almost venture to say they were scared of them. It was a disappointment for me. I, being the chicken mom, wanted them to devour the disgusting mass of food I'd presented them. Oh well. I collected my grubs and tossed them in the hen house where they lasted exactly 2.8 seconds.

I tried.