growing meal worms?

[thepremo1]

anyone hear of this

 

[NoelTate]

I am giving it a shot....took a five gallon plastic bucket, filled it about 1/3 full of chicken food, added a cut up apple on top, then bought a package of 50 live mealworms from the store. Fed half to my animals and dumped the rest in the bucket with the food. From what I understand, you keep a substrate of something like oatmeal or chicken food along with something like cut up apple or potato on top for moisture, then allow the works to morph to their beetle state. After that, you should have eggs and a steady supply of mealworms. I'm hoping it will work so I can feed them to my pet birds, hamsters, and use them to attract bluebirds!

 

[flakey chick]

It's supposed to be fairly easy and I am trying it. Mine have gone from worms to pupae to adults. I have seen mating, but nothing beyond that. The eggs are supposed to be pretty much invisible. The worms aren't supposed to be noticeable until a week or so after hatching. I've had adult bugs for a while and am still waiting to see my next generation.

 

[HEChicken]

Temp and humidity make a difference, in that they want a higher temp to develop. Also, they need some humidity for the eggs to hatch. To the person who bought 50 and fed half, it will be a LONG time before you have enough to feed to your pets. I bought 50, put them all in the breeder container and 3-4 months later, I do have baby worms but they are still pretty small. At this rate, I'm thinking it might be next winter before I have any spare to feed....

 

[Armageddon]

I have thousands of meal worms. They are extremely easy and I hardly do anything to them.

I have a rubbermaid box with bran in it......when I start it, I add live worms, the worms turn into pupa, they emerge as beetles. The beetles lay eggs, you will have little tiny worms that will grow into big worms. I freeze the bran before I use it to kill any other kind of eggs that may hatch. You can buy bran at a feed store, it's very fine like sawdust.

I add a few slices of apple or cactus or potatoes and replace them when they are gone.....sometimes I put some corn meal or dry milk...it is soooo easy.

Here's my mealworm bin as it look tonight.

 

[tamelroy]

wow, now I know why I had beetles in with my frog. lol I wasn't trying to have them it just kept happening! lol We had a frog, that didn't like meal worms, I think I only had 2 or 3 and ended up with like 30 and beetles that I had no idea what they were. (until now!) lol

 

[chickbird]

Quote:
can you tell me if the beetles can fly????

 

[Illia]

No. Mealworms are essentially ground beetles, and are in most species unable to fly.

 

[crazy huhn]

Quote:
can you tell me if the beetles can fly????

The beetles have wings, but you can leave the lit of the container of and they will not fly anywhere.
The only thing I do with my meal worms is, that I have three different bins: the worms in a big container (16 quarts), the pupae in a smaller container and the beetles in a a similar size container, because I was told that the beetles would eat the eggs/small worms if kept too long together.

 

[IggiMom]

I am starting to raise them also. I have a coffee can that I put some mealworms in and some chicken feed in it, because I didn't have bran.

When you separate the beetles out so that they can't eat the worms, how do you do it? Just pick them up?

I don't actually have any beetles yet.

I only got them a couple days ago.

I fed a few to my chicks and they went berserk.

Catherine