Thoughts on These Bins as Mealworm Farm

[GeckoChickens]

Want to start my mealworm farm. Was looking at these for my farm setup. Was going to create a rack from this 4 pack and stack vertically.

4 Pack of Bins

Any thoughts / recommendations from the experienced farmers? Anything better or cheaper that I should take a look at?

 

[Battlepants]

I have no experience with mealworm farming, but I did find a blog that seems to use that exact item, or close to it.

https://blog.meyerhatchery.com/2019/09/diy-mealworm-farming/

 

[Boppo]

Hi, I am farming meal worms. I started with the stack design and switched to keeping them in a single box. I suppose it depends on how you intend to use them. I have plenty for my small number of birds with the box. I quit the stack for 2 reasons:
1. I could not keep the mesh lining tight enough and always had sagging heaps of the meal bedding dragging as I opened drawers.
2. I have a mouse infestation and even enveloping that stack of drawers in screen mesh was not enough to keep mice out. I can keep them out of a single drawer by setting a metal screen over the top.

I would say that my mealworms strongly prefer wheat bran to rolled oats. They have had both and the rolled oats are still floating around in the bins. I just use sliced chunks of carrot every day or 2 for moisture for the worms.

I notice that if my worms (and really, probably the beetles) are stressed about anything, they give off a strong ammonia smell. So you can tell if they need more bedding or carrots or are unhappy about something else. I have mine in the front room of my house, near the computer where I am writing this.

I have given mealworms and the occasional beetle to both my chickens and my quail. The quail are up on wire in their cage. Some of the worms and beetles got dropped down and now I have a summertime colony of mealworms under the quail cage where they drop their food. We will see how long that lasts.

Best wishes!