I'm still pretty new at this myself, so I can't say for sure how many you may want to start with. Also, it depends on a lot of different things. I have two chickens and plan on feeding them as treats in the summer months when there are other bugs they can get, and somewhat supplement their food in the winter when we have snow and there aren't any bugs. I also want to feed some to the wild birds, and maybe sell some locally. I am not a patient person and this whole process seams to be taking way to long for me!I know that is a couple of cycles I will have way too many mealworms, but for now I'm trying not to feed any out so I can get them going. At first I got about 200, then I ordered 1,000 more. My bin of 200 have mostly turned into beetles (with a few worms and pupa still) and I am seeing eggs, but I haven't seen any new worms yet. I think I got that going in March, but I'd have to check to be sure. My bin of 1,000 I got more recently and they have just stated pupating. The way I look at it is this: Say half are boys, and half are girls. So if you have 1000 and half are girls you have 500 girls. Lets just say that for some odd reason you lost 200. Some die as worms, some die as pupa, etc. so let's just say 200 (which is a lot) die and don't lay eggs. That leaves you with 300. Well lets just say that out of those 300 they each lay 200 eggs (I've read everywhere from 200 to 500) but 100 of those eggs don't mature for whatever reason. That leave you with 30,000 new worms and, I believe, my numbers were very conservative. That is after just one cycle. If you don't feed any of those to your chickens, and you let all of them go through a life cycle, you'll have more than I feel like calculating.
Now if you are wanting to start feeding them to your chickens as soon as you get them, you may want more, so you can have some to feed, and some to reproduce. Or you may feel that 30,000 is just too many, and you want to start feeding them sooner. I also am not sure how many you want to give to the wild birds, but regardless, after two life cycles, you will have more worms than you know what to do with. But it will take several months to get through two life cycles. I'm not sure if that helped at all, but I hope so.
As far as my method, I use a single container. I'm way too lazy to be moving them from one container to the other, and I don't want to drop any and loose them! My beetles have eaten some of the dead beetles, and pupa, but I have not seen them eat any live ones. The way I see it, they are keeping the bin clean for me. I can take pictures of my bins if you want to see. They are pretty simple, with the bin of 1000 being much more simple than the one with 200. I wish I had done that one differently.
Thanks for taking the timeto make such a comprehensive answer. Pictures would be great if you can. Thanks so much.
