Mealworm farming

[destin0709]

I was all worried when for 2 months I still didn't see any worms and then I finally spotted them in 1 drawer. Now the other day I found them in another drawer so I moved all the beetles to the bottom drawer so soon I should see some in there also and I will have, hopefully, 3 different stages of worms. I plan on freezing some for the winter months. My chickens will be so happy. Yippee!!

 

[onafixedincome]

In the last couple of days I've frozen--get this--at least a couple of POUNDS of 'may pupate anytime now' mealies!! And that was only a third of the box sorted, too. This particular box had about 12-14 thousand of all sizes ten days ago or so, but the loss rate is rising and the pupal size decreasing, and I opted to sort out all the big'uns over the course of about a week.

Going by volume...I know that a 'tube' of mealies in the bottom of a one-gallon Ziploc bag (when rolled, it's about the size of the OK sign circle of your fingers) is right about 500. That means that I put up , oh...I'm going to guess pretty close to 5,000 mealies, maybe more, in two days.

And...I can't tell I even touched the bin.

That's pretty spectacular production, in my book!

Of course, I lost quite a few due to dog predation while I was sorting--my 15 y/o aussie/shep X absolutely adores wheat bran AND mealies!

Go figure!

 

[mychookschick]

Oh my goodness! That is a lot of mealies!

 

[yo burrill]

Are these the same beetles I found in my garden while digging potatoes this morning. Can I use some of those to start a farm. I found a few worms too But mostly the beetles in the dirt.

 

[mychookschick]

Hmm, I wouldn't think that these would be living in your garden... They are grain or "meal" eaters. They don't do well in dirt, although, I have heard of people trying it... Do the worms look the same, or just the beetles?

 

[yo burrill]

They both look very similar. Found them in the dirt under the potato vines. They probably are different though.

 

[mychookschick]

Huh... IDK. I am terrible at plants. I have a MAJOR brown thumb!

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

OK i did it, read every last page!!! Now am going to dig thru the barn and see what i have for bins.
Found wheat bran at TSC next city over, $17 for 50 lbs.
Hope to be a mealie mommy by next week hehehe!!!

This is going to be really easy.... (I hope lol)
Thanks for all the pictures and posts!

 

[1MrsMagoo]

I purchased my first 2,000 meal worms (1,000 larger and 1,000 medium) from GrubCo. this past February: They cost me around $20 with shipping. I got a bag of wheat bran locally for $18 and used a plastic 3 drawer stackable unit we had been using for art supplies to house them.

They were a bit slow to start since we don't have central heating in our house (SE Louisiana...heat with a wood stove) and our room stayed under 70 degrees. However,once the temperatures outside started to rise, so did the activity in my meal worm colony. Our house stays around 78 degrees all summer and I have expanded to 8 drawers, with 5 of them being very crowded: These are the ones I feed the chickens from.
I feed around 2-3,000 beetles a week and haven't even touched the population. I really have NO idea how many worms are in there, but in the 5 crowded bins, the bedding moves and I have picked out over 750 worms at a time and move scoops to the lesser populated drawers regularly.. Within a week I can't even tell I removed any of them from those drawers.

I started out moving all the larvae to separate drawers, but gave that up. As long as I keep potatoes or carrots in there, the beetles don't seem to cannibalize the larvae as far as I can tell. However, if I wait too long to put in another carrot after the last is gone, I have caught the beetles attacking the larvae.

I am going to get another 3 drawer unit pretty soon and put some worms in them to get them started. With as many birds as I have, I haven't needed to freeze any yet, but may try that in the future if the population gets too far ahead of me. Either that, or the local bait store and a couple smaller pet shops said they'd buy them from me.

Here is a view of my meal worm high rise. The top drawer got cut off:


One of my highly populated drawer corners: Other than the pieces or carrot and potato I put in, this is the place where the worms congregate.


One of my less populated drawers. I use paper towel and toilet paper tubes as well as pieces of pulp egg cartons in my bins for them to hide and crawl on.

 

[cluck-cluck]

I just ordered 500 small mealies from ebay as they're not far away from my town, and I figure they'll arrive safer? I do live in a warm climate, but I still feel like I'm a bit too late in the season to raise enough mealies to feed my chicks any time soon (might take a few out to feed 'em for fun, but that'll reduce my production, eh? LOL) Oh well...