Feeding & Nutrition

The hens were a lockdown impulse that stuck, three scruffy rescued battery hens who took a season to remember they had wings, and the mealworms, dried and bagged, were the treat that turned a wary peck into a stampede of feathered greed at the sound of the tub.

I kept the bag in the feed bin by the coop, and the terrier, Bram, who accompanies every trip to the garden as if he's the foreman, developed a nose for it within a week, appearing at my elbow the moment the lid lifted, his whole body pointed at the worms like a furry arrow.

At first I said no. They're for the hens, I told him, in the tone you use with a dog who isn't listening, and he wasn't, because the smell of dried insect is apparently irresistible to a terrier's brain, a scent that overrides the usual hierarchy of treats in his head and puts him in a state I can only describe as reverent.

Then I looked it up, because I'm the sort who reads the label even on chicken snacks, and found that dried mealworms are mostly protein and fat, a dense little packet of exactly what a working dog's body wants, and that a few, crushed, weren't the poison my no implied, just a rich food to be given the way you'd give a bit of cheese, sparingly and with an eye on the waistline.

So Bram gets a pinch now, crumbled fine into his dinner on the days the hens get theirs, and he's stopped lunging at the feed bin because the worm isn't a forbidden thing behind a lid anymore, it's a small, predictable part of the routine, and a dog who knows where the good stuff lives is a dog who stops hunting for it.

The hens, unbothered, still stampede for their share, and I've noticed their feathers shine a bit brighter in the weeks since the worms became regular, though that could be the summer, or the fact that they've finally forgiven the world for the life they had before the coop, and I'm not going to claim the worms did it all.

It's a small economy, the same tub feeding two very different animals, and it pleases me more than it should, this little loop where the garden gives the hens something to want and the terrier gets the echo of it at his bowl, both of them a bit happier for a handful of dried things I bought on a whim.

I've started keeping the tub higher now, not because Bram shouldn't have his pinch, but because a terrier who can reach the bag helps himself to the whole thing, and a dog who eats a cup of dried worms in one sitting is a dog with a stomach ache and a owner with a mess, so the lid stays closed and the pinch stays mine to give.

The protein maths is the part that stuck with me. A handful of dried mealworms is denser in calories than the same handful of the kibble he gets, so his pinch is exactly that, a pinch, crumbled so fine he doesn't get a lump he can guard, because Bram guards anything he can pick up whole, and a worm he can own becomes a small negotiation I'd rather avoid.

I've noticed the change in him on worm days, a brightness, a quicker step to the bowl, the kind of enthusiasm he usually reserves for the word walk, and it's taught me that dogs, like us, get bored of the identical plate, and that a dash of something novel, even something as odd as a dried insect, is sometimes the only thing standing between a dog and a dull dinner.

The hens, for their part, remain unbothered by the terrier's interest, pecking the ground with the serene confidence of creatures who've never once considered sharing, and I've taken to feeding them first so Bram's pinch comes after theirs, a small order of operations that keeps the coop calm and stops the dog deciding the whole tub is his to police.

There's a satisfaction in the loop I didn't anticipate, the same cheap bag doing double duty, the garden giving the hens a reason to be glad to see me and the dog getting the echo of it at his own bowl, and the whole arrangement costs less than a single bag of the fancy treats he'd have ignored anyway, which feels like the rare win where the cheaper option is also the one everybody likes.

The coop has its own economy now, the worms a currency the terrier understands and the hens simply expect, and I've come to like the symmetry of it, one cheap bag stretched across two species, the garden giving and the animals taking in their different hungers, and me, the clerk with the tub, keeping the peace with a pinch and a scatter.

Bram's stopped vaulting the low gate to the run since the worms became a near-certainty rather than a forbidden hope, which is the quiet win, a dog who no longer tests the boundary because the good thing now arrives without the theft, and the hens, fussing in their dust bath, have no idea they're the reason the terrier finally learned to wait his turn.