Mealworm farming

[EggSighted4Life]

Back in the early 90's, when I was in college working on my second degree, I did museum specimen preps for the biology department at UNC. I worked with Dermistid Beetles for several semesters.

If you are wanting to prep a simple skeleton for display or just to experiment, start off with a small specimen, like a mouse. A small colony of Dermistids can strip a mouse in less then a week.

You really have to keep the colonies covered, they are marvelous escape artists. Because of what they eat, dead tissue, there could be odors associated with the Dermistids. Should the colony start to run low on food, they will try to disperse, locating a new food source....they are hard to contain when they want to leave and find food.

But they do an awesome job in consuming dead tissue. They will not eat even the smallest bones.

So in my colony of 45,000 meal worms I am getting quite a bit of dead loss. Since I have just started out I am working to see if I am doing something wrong or if there is just a lot of death with that many. Do you recommend adding a few dermistids or avoiding them?

Thank you

 

[Jensownzoo]

Back in the early 90's, when I was in college working on my second degree, I did museum specimen preps for the biology department at UNC. I worked with Dermistid Beetles for several semesters.

If you are wanting to prep a simple skeleton for display or just to experiment, start off with a small specimen, like a mouse. A small colony of Dermistids can strip a mouse in less then a week.

You really have to keep the colonies covered, they are marvelous escape artists. Because of what they eat, dead tissue, there could be odors associated with the Dermistids. Should the colony start to run low on food, they will try to disperse, locating a new food source....they are hard to contain when they want to leave and find food.

But they do an awesome job in consuming dead tissue. They will not eat even the smallest bones.

Crud. I just caught six mice this past week. Gave them to the chickens to try to teach them to hunt (they grabbed them and quarterbacked with them immediately, but it took until the sixth for one of them to figure out how to kill/eat). The live trap has been empty for a few days, so I may have caught all the ones in the building. We'll see when I start cleaning and rearranging stuff.

Question: if I need to feed them inbetween specimens or mealworm duties, would canned cat/dog food work if it's 95% meat or does it need to be "unprocessed"?

 

[Rock Home Isle]

....will eat they cartilage..... maggots ruined a turkey skull by devouring all the connective cartilage....or live worms. 

Yes...Dermestids will eat flesh, cartilage...all connective tissue. But they will not eat bone.

I did several fish mounts for the biology museum that took months to complete, because the Dermestids ate all the cartilage...and I had to create a plasticine reconstruction of the missing material.

So, yes...Dermestids eat basically everything but bone.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

So in my colony of 45,000 meal worms I am getting quite a bit of dead loss. Since I have just started out I am working to see if I am doing something wrong or if there is just a lot of death with that many. Do you recommend adding a few dermistids or avoiding them?

Thank you

If your colonies are healthy and stocking is not overly crowded, expect 2% to 4% mortality. So with the numbers you quoted you should be loosing 900 to 1800 mealworms without too much concern.

If your "estimated" mortality is much above those levels...then look at your system.

At any rate...a small population of Dermestids working your colony and cleaning up the dead tissue should be fine. Just realize, if your small population of Dermestids begins to outstrip your mortality rates...the Demestids are going to want to scatter and look for better eating. They are great at escaping if local food sources are depleted.

As a trick...take a piece of round steak, cut it into a strip maybe 1/4 inch thick and dry it at 100 degrees, like a piece of jerky. Keep this on hand, so that if they do start looking to leave you can drop it into the container as an emergency food source.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Crud. I just caught six mice this past week. Gave them to the chickens to try to teach them to hunt (they grabbed them and quarterbacked with them immediately, but it took until the sixth for one of them to figure out how to kill/eat). The live trap has been empty for a few days, so I may have caught all the ones in the building. We'll see when I start cleaning and rearranging stuff.

Question: if I need to feed them inbetween specimens or mealworm duties, would canned cat/dog food work if it's 95% meat or does it need to be "unprocessed"?

I am always amazed at the behavior of chickens, I find it so fun and entertaining.

I had a mouse problem one time. It was so comical to watch me with a garden hose flooding out mouse holes, my daughter with a shovel trying to smash all the mice running around, while my son was trying to shoot them with his Buckaroo BB gun....and all the while 5 chickens are trying to rush in and grab mice. Every time my wife tries to tell that story, the house is filled with laughter....it was shear chaos.

In answer to your question:

As an emergency food source for your Dermestids, go to the store and get a cheap cut of steak; round steak works well. Trim off all the fat and then cut the steak across the grain into strips about 1/4 inch or so thick. This just like you would do if you were making jerky....do not season this meat.

Then lay the strips out on the rack in the oven and dry it over night at ~100 degrees. Use this as your emergency food source for your Dermestids population. Put it in a ziplock and store it in the freezer until needed. Just use a small piece at a time. After a while, you'll be able to estimate your population by how quickly a piece of dried meat of a given mass disappears...so it also makes a good management tool.

 

[Jensownzoo]

I had a mouse problem one time. It was so comical to watch me with a garden hose flooding out mouse holes, my daughter with a shovel trying to smash all the mice running around, while my son was trying to shoot them with his Buckaroo BB gun....and all the while 5 chickens are trying to rush in and grab mice. Every time my wife tries to tell that story, the house is filled with laughter....it was shear chaos.

Where did this Benny Hill music come from?

 

[Rock Home Isle]

Where did this Benny Hill music come from?

OMG!!

I hear it too. Benny Hill...that is to funny.

 

[DIGGIN CHICKEN]

test

 

[DIGGIN CHICKEN]

tried reading this thread but 840 pages --no chance ..... so i'm just going to ask my question instead of trying to look through the maze .... has anybody got a recipe for feeding mealworm and algae ??? Read a couple of studies on both and seems both are beneficial to chickens .... mealworm --easy to grow ... algae --even easier ! Got on the phone this morning and ordered 3kgs of mealworm for about R380 per kg ($24/per kg) ( equates to about 18000 crispy critters) .... gonna breed then up .... an experiment to see whether they cheapen my food cost for broilers ....

 

[Latestarter]

Greetings and welcome to BYC asnd the thread @DIGGIN CHICKEN I hate to break it to you, but they (mealworms) aren't really anything balanced diet wise to replace a balanced feed for the birds. This has been cover3ed in the thread at least once that I can recall. Also, raising enough to even act as a daily supplement would be a major undertaking. They do however work quite well as treats, especially in the winter months when the chickens aren't able to get bugs. As for algae, I have no clue.

When I think/see algae, I think/use bleach.