Mealworm farming

[WestKnollAmy]

You're awesome, Amy!

LOL Hardly but I do try to have fun since I can't find a regular paying job.
I figure I might as well help others while learning myself and spend a lot of time answering PMs and emails. I don't mind, I love to talk!

I find it incredible that hannkat got a nice shot of the beetle laying the egg! I have tried to keep watch on mine but they have not been forth coming and I haven't enough patience to wait for long.

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Glad you liked the video, Trish. I made several but this was the better one and I still thought it was too jumpy. Hard to hold the camera and move the substrate around.
I find that avalanche of babies and bran so fascinating. I get so excited to see it moving knowing there are tons of babies that are going to grow up to feed the chickens or make more beetles or go on a long trip to someone else's house.

 

[Carin]

Thanks to you all I have 3 meal worm farms now. To those ladies who don't like to touch the beetles or pupa try using a plastic teaspoon. I am using a plastic teaspoon not because of any other reason but to prevent me from hurting them. I just scoop them up with the plastic spoon. To get the worms to feed to the chicks I find that they love crawling into the toilet paper inner and I lift that up and shake it in a container. As I have only five chickens and not enough worms yet- I get the idea I will never have enough worms- I only feed a little bit of worms at a time.

 

[Terri O]

I had beetle races with my grandkids! I made a quarter-sized circle on a piece of cardboard as the starting area, then a 6-8" circle around it as the finish line. First beetle to cross the large circle wins!

Now this is where you make memories! Can you imagine the stories when they have kids of their own and they ask "what was great grandma like?" Maybe you will be lucky and still be around to have beetle races with the great-grands too! Now I wish I had grand kids to do this with! You go Grandma!

Terri O

 

[Emily1220]

If I use the plastic spoon for the beetles wont they run or jump off as soon as I pick them up??

 

[heritagehabitatfarms]

If I use the plastic spoon for the beetles wont they run or jump off as soon as I pick them up??

no not really... they are kind of slow and if they walk off the edge of the spoon they will just hang on upside down most of the time...

 

[WestKnollAmy]

If I use the plastic spoon for the beetles wont they run or jump off as soon as I pick them up??

I have an extra soup ladle I use sometimes. It is smaller than what I need and has that deeper cup than a spoon does so it works pretty good.
But I have not minded handling the worms or beetles. To me the beetles are harder to corral than the worms. Some worms can be pretty fast though! I just pick them up unless I have a good many all at once.
They like to hang on screen, too. So if we are sifting them we can turn the screen up on edge and barely touch the worms with the small ladle and they fall right into it. My DH gets the ICK effect when he touches them. He prefers the ladle.

 

[wsmoak]

I was about to come here and ask what I could be doing wrong, but this morning I FINALLY found a tiny new worm!

I use the giant popsicle sticks you can find in the craft area to move pupae and beetles to their respective boxes. I found the baby worm by scooping up some of the substrate, tilting it so most of it fell off, and then peering intently at what was left to see if anything moved. And there was a teeny tiny worm, almost the same color as the stick and the bran flakes, very hard to see.

I started back in September with 1000 mediums from Southern Bait Worms. At this point the worm bin is almost empty, there are some in the pupae box, and there are hundreds of beetles.

I'm going to start a fourth box for the "new" worms so that I can eventually dump the original one in the compost (after I let it sit for a while to make sure nothing else happens -- I was late moving pupae out and some were already beetles, so there could be eggs in that one.)

I sure hope the bluebirds appreciate this. (The guy that sold mealworms here in town stopped doing it, so I figured I'd try this before resorting to placing a weekly order. Can't have hungry baby bluebirds!)




-Wendy

 

[Terri O]

I was about to come here and ask what I could be doing wrong, but this morning I FINALLY found a tiny new worm!


I sure hope the bluebirds appreciate this. (The guy that sold mealworms here in town stopped doing it, so I figured I'd try this before resorting to placing a weekly order. Can't have hungry baby bluebirds!)




-Wendy

Wendy...I wonder if we were "peering" at our bran at the same time last night? LOL--what a funny picture that gave me! So nice of you to use them for bluebirds...are you a rehabber or do you put them out for the parent birds to feed to the babies? Neat pic too! Terri O

 

[PsychoChicken]

I bought some from CrazyHuhn last month. She lives right by me- it was so convinient!