I just ordered my mealworms. How long til I can expect to be able to begin to harvest?

[Paully3]

I ordered 500 regular and 500 large mealworms. I figured with the different sizes, I won't have them all pupating at the same time. I'm just curious as to how long before I will have enough reproduction to be able to begin feeding my chickens...

 

[jimmywalt]

I ordered 500 regular and 500 large mealworms. I figured with the different sizes, I won't have them all pupating at the same time. I'm just curious as to how long before I will have enough reproduction to be able to begin feeding my chickens...

Well I can't actually give you a guess, all I can say is I started my colony in mid July and just this week I can see extremely tiny worms in my colony. When I say tiny, I mean about 2 mm long at most!!!

It seems it doesn't take long for them to go from the adult worm phase to the pupa to the beetle. What feels like it take forever is the beetle phase. I've had beetles for at LEAST 4 to 5 weeks and just this week see some tiny worms. The beetles are starting to die off too, so I was going to give up thinking it wasn't working, but now I have baby worms.

I'm guessing it's going to take AT LEAST another month till these worms are the size of the 500 I purchased from Petco in July.

So I would guess your answer is 5 to 6 months.........

 

[Kelsie2290]

http://www.sialis.org/raisingmealworms.htm here is a good link to raising meal worms, they mention how long each stage takes at various temperatures. Their growth rate is really temperature dependent, and egg laying especially seems to be extent humidity dependent.

 

[Paully3]

That is easily the most informative mealworm site I have seen. I bookmarked it. Thanks a bunch...