Meal worms are EXPENSIVE! Tips for growing my own?

[Jbum]

It’s super easy.

Recipe:
- 5 gallon bucket
- Fill 3/4 with pine shavings
- Live Meal worms
- 2-3 sweet potato or regular potato cut In half, long ways
- half cup dog food
- 1/4” or 1/2” hardware mesh fabric cut slightly larger than bucket opening
- 1 medium rock

Place shavings in bucket, add meal worms, place dog food and potatoes to top of pine. Ensure potatoes are placed skin up. Cover bucket with hardware mesh, place rock on top of mesh.

Tips: keep in warm dry area. I live in CA and mine is outside all year even when it slips into the 30s in winter. No issue. In the northeast, you may need to move into garage in winter or somewhere that is not negative 100C and under 4’ of snow.

Keep dry - if the pine gets wet, replace it.

If you get heavy ammonia smell or any other funk, put the gloves on and get it cleaned and refreshed with new pine.

Easy cheesy, get your worm on!

Thanks looking to get “my worm on!” But why dog food? I don’t currently have a dog or food but I guess a cheap bad from DG would suffice.

 

[JB8907]

Following because I want to this and a fodder system to feed my birds. Organic feed isn't cheap.

 

[paneubert]

Thanks looking to get “my worm on!” But why dog food? I don’t currently have a dog or food but I guess a cheap bad from DG would suffice.

You can use many different substrates. If dog food isn't something you have, oatmeal, corn meal, anything with "meal" in it. Any grain. Dog food is an interesting choice since a lot of dog food is intentionally grain free these days. But I guess the cheap stuff would not be grain free.

I use a mix of corn meal, oatmeal and then some fish food flakes for protein. I have been thinking of tossing in some shrimp pellets I have. The kind that are fed to bottom feeder fish. Sinking fish food pellets.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

To really simplify things, a lot of folks use poultry feed ...grain based, high protein, readily available. I use wheat bran as it works best for my sifters

 

[JB8907]

To really simplify things, a lot of folks use poultry feed ...grain based, high protein, readily available. I use wheat bran as it works best for my sifters

Sifters?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Sifters?

Yes, to quickly and easily sort worms by size, separate them from bedding and get the frass(poop) out of the bedding I use these.

They are meant for gold panning or sorting soil, etc

The screens on the trays decrease in mesh size and the last one is fine enough only frass falls into the bucket below....I just dump everything in the top and then take each size of worms from the trays...super easy and fast. Oatmeal and poultry crumble are noth too big to sift through effectively and gum up the works.....wheat bran sifts easily. The larger pieces collect with small worms in the second to last tray and small pieces collect with the tiniest worms in the last tray....both trays are dumped back into separate bins (topped off with fresh bran) for those worms to finish growing out.
When I started I was doing colony style (all in one tub) and sifting with different strainers and whatnot....this is so much easier to me.

 

[JB8907]

Yes, to quickly and easily sort worms by size, separate them from bedding and get the frass(poop) out of the bedding I use these.
View attachment 1741808View attachment 1741808They are meant for gold panning or sorting soil, etc

The screens on the trays decrease in mesh size and the last one is fine enough only frass falls into the bucket below....I just dump everything in the top and then take each size of worms from the trays...super easy and fast. Oatmeal and poultry crumble are noth too big to sift through effectively and gum up the works.....wheat bran sifts easily. The larger pieces collect with small worms in the second to last tray and small pieces collect with the tiniest worms in the last tray....both trays are dumped back into separate bins (topped off with fresh bran) for those worms to finish growing out.
When I started I was doing colony style (all in one tub) and sifting with different strainers and whatnot....this is so much easier to me.

Where do you get those?

 

[Morrigan]

Do they continuously reproduce inside the bucket? Or do you have to create a new environment when they get to the beetle stage?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Where do you get those?

I got these off Ebay....there are sources all over the web, from Amazon to Ebay to various individual store sites....search classifier pans, sifting pans, etc. I opted for an ebay deal that allowed a total of 5 with a choice of sizes because the "prepackaged" set of 5 most offer has one size that I had been told would be superfluous (1/2) and doesn't include the smallest size I wanted..... I have 1/4, 1/8, 1/12, 1/20 and 1/30.