I've been spoiling Tilda a bit with the Mealworms. She has them for breakfast and she has them for dinner. Every day. (She also has layers pellets, garvo, oystershell & grit, natural yoghurt, and cucumber).
Occasionally, the Grden Girls get mealworms, the odd treat. Once a week, sometimes twice, the Allotment crowd get mealworms as a treat.
I buy 1kg of mealworms from Wiggly Wigglers, divide them up into my 3 differently-sized and superduper bait boxes. The largest box goes in the salad drawer. The other two sit on different shelves in the fridge. Evry few days, I take the boxes out of the fridge, add some grated carrot, and leave them out for a couple of hours so that the mealworms can come out of hibernation and have smething to eat. Then they go back in the fridge.
This week Tilda has been outside a few times, sometimes for a whole day at a time. She doesn't do anything while she's out there, but she looks fairly content. Her tail and head are good barometers of how she is feeling.
This morning she was enthusiasticaly helping me get the mealworms out on to the floor for breakfast, and we accidentally ended up with a slightly larger heap than intended. To my surprise Tilda didn't eat them all.
My mealworm phobia has almost completely evaporated, so the sight of a small pile of mealworms didn't worry me too much. A frew minutes later and the sight of mealworms travelling away from the pile in different directions did bother me a bit. My Great Niece is coming, and she might be a bit distressed.
Tilda was having a post-breakfast doze, and wasn't interested in helping me clear them up. So, I went outside, held out my arm, and brought in a very happy Poppy. I put her on the floor and she hoovered up the escapees with gusto. Tilda was most upset. She did a sort of chickeny growl. She came out of her pen to defend her mealworms. This was not a good move as Poppy, oblivious to the tension, saw an empty pen and lots of interesting coop cups. Fortunately I saw her heading in there and stopped her.
Tilda got back into her pen and started eating her Garvo very loudly. There was a lot of burbling, presumably she was muttering under her breath as she stabbed into the food.
