Mealworm farming

[biophiliac]

 

[Kusanar]

I tried reading as many pages as I could before asking my questions but obviously 873 pages is a lot of reading.

I want to raise mealworms to give to my chickens but also for their frass. Just placed an order for 40k.

I know the 3-drawer setup is the best to breed, but is it a PITA to get the frass out? Excuse me if this is a stupid question, I’m just not familiar with how this will work.

How many 3-drawer setups will I need for 40k worms? Should I cram all the worms into one drawer or should I do two 3-drawer setups?

Will I use 1.5” of wheat bran on all 3 drawers? Should the top drawer have less so that the eggs and babies fall down to the next drawer?

What size screen should I get and where should I get it?

How big do you let the mealworms grow in the middle drawer before transferring them to the bottom drawer?

How will I harvest frass? Do I need to wait until the worms eat all the wheat bran?

Thanks so much for your time and help guys!!

Ok, first of all, I have NO idea how much room you will need for that many, maybe someone else can help with that. Personally, if I had room, I would do a 2 drawer setup, put beetles in the top on mesh with oatmeal (it won't fall through the holes like the bran will), then put bran in the bottom. Every so often (once a week, once a month, etc), take the bottom drawer and dump it into a container that will hold the bran (dollar store food container is what I would use) this will have eggs that are all within a certain age of each other (however long between dumpings). Then you can stack the ones with the eggs up and check every so often for movement. I personally wouldn't feed until you can tell there are some hatched and moving around in there, then start supplying with SMALL amounts of veggie for moisture.

This way you can each month or so, harvest about 90% of the worms out of each container, let the rest pupate, and put the new beetles in with the others or start a new 2 drawer setup so all beetles in the drawer are about the same age so once most beetles in a drawer have died, you can just take the entire drawer out to the birds and let them have the beetles and oatmeal so you have a clean, empty drawer to put new beetles in.

 

[azygous]

Harvesting frass is easy if you wait until the worms are all an inch or so in size and have eaten most of the wheat bran. It's easy to see because the frass particles are so much finer than the wheat bran.

Just take a kitchen strainer that has a mesh that's a bit finer than window screening and sift the worms out. I warn you, though, some teensy worms may still be present in the frass and they will eat any new seedings you use the frass to fertilize. A waiting period is advisable or microwave the frass before you put it on plants.

I began with the three-drawer setup, and ran into problems with it. The drawers are too small and shallow, and I had worms escape all over the place. That third drawer is useless, too.

A better setup is to use larger trays that stack and have lids to keep your critters contained. You can cut the bottom out of one, glue metal window screen over it, cut a hole out of a lid of a second tray so the first tray will stack, and you're ready to go. I use rolled oats in the beetle tray since they don't sift down and empty the beetle try. Wheat bran in all the others.

With this arrangement, you can build up to numerous worm trays of different ages, always having worms to feed out and plenty to allow to pupate. When beetles emerge from pupae, I then pick them out and install them in the beetle tray.

Tip: always maintain carrots in the beetle and worm trays so they always have a moisture source. Carrots are preferable to apples or potatoes because they won't mold.

 

[Richard Pryor]

Brilliant. Thanks!

 

[Richard Pryor]

Mites:
- 300F for 2 hours?
- This won't "cook" the bran?
- Will these mites transfer to plants? Or do the strictly eat grain?

 

[azygous]

I heat my substrates at around 250F for around 45 minutes. At 300F it will scorch. It's a good idea to stir it halfway.

Mites are so annoying, even terrifying for those who are experiencing them for the first time, I wouldn't be surprised to hear someone has set fire to the worm trays to get rid of them.

 

[aart]

Mites:
- 300F for 2 hours?
- This won't "cook" the bran?
- Will these mites transfer to plants? Or do the strictly eat grain?

Grain mites eat grains.....so they won't transfer to your plants, but they mite(haha!) transfer to grain products in your kitchen.

I've heated wheat bran for a couple hours at about 300F,
might have been a slightly lower temp-depends on your oven.
Keep an eye(and nose) on it.
Stirred it up every 20 minutes or so to make sure it all got up to heat.

 

[azygous]

Grain mites won't eat your tender plants, but microscopic meal worm larvae will. I would take the precaution of heating the frass if you intend to use it immediately on plants as a fertilizer.

 

[Richard Pryor]

Thx guys. 40k worms arrived this morning at the post office. Just got a call saying they're waiting for me.

Bought a 50 pound bag of wheat bran ($20) and a bunch of 23x15x6 containers.

Gonna be cooking bran all day today. Excited!

 

[Kusanar]

I need to go through my worm bin, looks like most of the beetles are dead (my worms get cold in the winter and so they all pupate and turn into beetles at about the same time when they warm back up) so I need to get rid of the dead ones and sift the bedding, see if I have any decent sized worms in there.

I'm also thinking about catching some more beetles to refresh the genetics in my tote. For anyone that hasn't followed my crazy mealworm antics, I caught my first beetles wild, they were in my horses stall under his feed tub, they eat the feed he drops and in the day hide under the tub in the dark... so I caught 5 beetles and put them in some horse feed (same thing they were eating before being caught). A few generations later (I forget, 5-6) I have hundreds, maybe thousands of bugs (I don't feed them up, I raise them more as pets than anything), but they are all from the same 5 parents... There have been a LOT of beetles under the feed tub recently, so I'm thinking of catching a few more to add to the tub and get some fresh wild genetics back.

I would also love to separate them all out and try to put the deformed beetles all in the same tub as each other with no normal ones, see if the deformed ones have a higher percentage of deformed young or if it's all related to them being chewed on or otherwise damaged as pupae.