Mealworm farming

[yankeefan]

Hello everyone. I don't post too often but I do try to keep up with what's going on with all of you. The recent talk of incubators got me thinking about how to heat up my farm without actually buying an incubator or plugging in any sort of heater. Well, I think I may have come up with something that may work for some of us depending on how you heat your home. I have hot water baseboard heaters, but you may be able to adapt this simple idea to whatever you may heat with.

I have a 3 drawer style farm. It measures about 25 inches high, 14 inches front to back and about 12 inches wide. I just took a large cardboard box, stood it up on it's side and cut the box in a few spots so that it would mate up against the wall, over top of one of the baseboard heaters. So whenever the heat kicks on, the box traps quite a bit of heat and the mealworms stay pretty darn warm.
I've checked the temps several times and it seems to run anywhere from 78-82 degrees. Not too bad considering I keep the house between 67-70. Hopefully it works out, there's nothing invested and nothing drawing electricity, just stealing a little bit of heat but I doubt anyone will notice.

I think this idea would work well enough with a forced hot air system as well. I know it's not perfect, but it's cheap.

Humidity is running pretty low with this idea but I just toss in a piece of carrot or potato every other day.

What do you guys and gals think?

 

[Smiles-N-Sunshine]

The first thing I thought of... do they have enough ventilation?

 

[yankeefan]

Good question. I'm not really sure what would be enough. I do check the temperature at least once a day and they get fresh veggies every other day so the box comes off once a day. Also, the air that is heated is pulled up from below the heater and the box is not actually touching the floor, but maybe I should cut some ventilation holes up top.

 

[Kassaundra]

Okay so pretty much all the worms turned to pupea and are now beatles. Ick! lol...Theres still some pupea in the bin but most are beattles.
So is this when I start giving them to the chicks or do the beatles now lay the worms and the worms are what I feed the chicks?
I liked the worms better than seeing all these black beatles crawlin around in the plastic bin. lol....

You feed out the worms, you can also feed off the beetles if you want but I would only feed out the dead ones if I were you since the beetles are laying eggs which is where your next generation is coming from.

 

[riverpilot69]

Ok. I have been reading this topic for the last 2 weeks now. I finally got to the last page and have decided to take the plunge and try this myself. The wife is really going to think that I have finally lost it. She always said that I would sooner or later. Hey what the heck. Minimal investment even if it doesn't work for me. I really don't see how it won't work? I just finished reading over 300 pages of instruction. I will post on how this is working out for me. Thanks to everyone for all of the great info. on mealworm farming.

 

[Smiles-N-Sunshine]

You can tell her you want to raise leeches, then "compromise" on mealworms!

 

[Scooter&Suzie]

You can tell her you want to raise leeches, then "compromise" on mealworms!

 

[yankeefan]

Brilliant!

 

[Kassaundra]

Hello everyone. I don't post too often but I do try to keep up with what's going on with all of you. The recent talk of incubators got me thinking about how to heat up my farm without actually buying an incubator or plugging in any sort of heater. Well, I think I may have come up with something that may work for some of us depending on how you heat your home. I have hot water baseboard heaters, but you may be able to adapt this simple idea to whatever you may heat with.

I have a 3 drawer style farm. It measures about 25 inches high, 14 inches front to back and about 12 inches wide. I just took a large cardboard box, stood it up on it's side and cut the box in a few spots so that it would mate up against the wall, over top of one of the baseboard heaters. So whenever the heat kicks on, the box traps quite a bit of heat and the mealworms stay pretty darn warm.
I've checked the temps several times and it seems to run anywhere from 78-82 degrees. Not too bad considering I keep the house between 67-70. Hopefully it works out, there's nothing invested and nothing drawing electricity, just stealing a little bit of heat but I doubt anyone will notice.

I think this idea would work well enough with a forced hot air system as well. I know it's not perfect, but it's cheap.

Humidity is running pretty low with this idea but I just toss in a piece of carrot or potato every other day.

What do you guys and gals think?

I think that is ingenious! Great use of available resources.

 

[Emily1220]

You can tell her you want to raise leeches, then "compromise" on mealworms!

That is hilarious!!!!!!!