Mealworm farming

[OzarkCountryGirl]

I've been using Sterilite containers (I started out using an ice cream bucket), kept in the laundry room. But I like the dresser/chest of drawers idea better, and I've already got a small chest of drawers just the right size out in the storage building.

 

[beverly evans]

Ummm, let me tell you about finding meal worms where they weren't supposed to be.

I was keeping the three-drawer file box on my small boiler inside the water heater closet. I noticed a couple meal worms crawling around on the floor under the boiler. That led me to inspect the worm box, and there were worms crawling around on top of the boiler. Then I pulled out the drawers of the file box and discovered the worms had found their way out of the drawers and had colonized the inside portions behind the drawers.

The little critters had figured out they could escape the drawers through the air holes I'd drilled in the sides of the file box. (Lesson: only put air holes on top of your worm containers if you feel you need them.) As I was taking the box apart to get to the worms inside the walls, I dropped the pieces, and worms went everywhere. In trying to get the worms corralled, I ended up with worms all over the kitchen. Luckily, the beetles were so busy having sex, they didn't join the jail break, or I'd have really had a circus on my hands.

This is why you need to make sure your worm containers have vertical, slick sides, and the bedding needs to be low enough they can't reach the top by extending their little, wormy segments.

This episode was nerve-racking, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the time I was trying to verify I had grain mites and was looking closely at some with a hand lens and ended up sniffing them up my nose.

Good times.

Sorry but that was funny! As I change out chicken bedding I always think, "I should use a mask!" I wonder what diseases I could get from all this chicken poop-sawdust dust I inhale on a regular basis?? And add to that a bunch of almost invisible grain mites!! Your mishap with your mealies sounds like the sort of thing that will happen to me if I have them in the house. Good luck with yours. I haven't started yet but have hens that would love them.

 

[beverly evans]

My farm is sitting on book shelves front and center in the living room right beside the wood stove. But then I've never been real keen on the fine furniture/interior decorating gambit. I still have the wooden Chinese fish crates in my living room that I had back in college, and I'm now 72. My friends and relatives have always been aware that I have skewed priorities.

I had a friend over for tea one day, and I got the worm bins down and put them on the kitchen table where we were drinking our tea. I started sorting the pupae from the larva and fished out the occasional beetle. She went, "Ewwww! The chickens whose eggs I eat eat THOSE BUGS?" But inside of ten minutes she was as engrossed with the worms as I was, going, "There's a pupae, there!"

If you have the right attitude, you can make anything seem normal.

You sound so much like me! Same age and same attitude and similar house "decor". Haha. My girlfriends say I've "gone to the chickens". Just wait til I get going on the worms!

 

[beverly evans]

How does everyone handle company coming over to visit??

I do not thank it will be problem because only family comes over they know me. It may make dating more difficult or interesting.[/QUOTE]
It should only make it more interesting! Just don't have them in the bedroom what with the scratching noises they make! ; )

 

[beverly evans]

Company? People don't want to come to my house...animals live here!

I have some fuddy-duddy old lady friends that would be totally turned off by "bugs" deliberately in the house. They don't get invited over! Only the laid-back ones that think I'm crazy but like me that way. : )

 

[beverly evans]

I've been using Sterilite containers (I started out using an ice cream bucket), kept in the laundry room. But I like the dresser/chest of drawers idea better, and I've already got a small chest of drawers just the right size out in the storage building.

Sounds like the answer. I don't have a laundry room and am a hoarder so empty space is a rare commodity. I have my FF in the kitchen and haven't figured out where to put the worms yet so haven't ordered any but will get some from "cazy huhn" when I do. I need to rearrange my garage and make room for a chest of drawers. Wonder what manner of other creatures will get in it out there? My garage is not "creature proof". Good luck with yours.

 

[dstinett]

Make sure you have plenty of ventilation. I just leave lid partially off. I let humidity get to high and the substrate went sour. Blah!

 

[chickenALD]

I try apples today but I think they liked the carrots better. They are all like to go to the corners is that normal or should they be separated ?

 

[Chickengirl1304]

I had was online that you could grid oats up to make them smaller for smaller. My whole reason for breeding them is to save money. I am looking for the cheap way possible. Because I am spending about $300 a month on mealworms.

Do you spend $300/month on mealworms just for your chickens or other animals? If so how many chickens do you have?

 

[azygous]

Corners. The worms love to congregate in the corners. This is normal. Besides crowding together for warmth, the worms and beetles are also thigmotactic. That means liking and needing to be in contact with their own kind with as many of their surfaces touching each other as is possible.

When I first learned that word, I thought it was so neat I told the first person I encountered which happened to be a young man who had come to my house to clean the chimney. When I told him the word and what it meant, he got excited and said he was going right home and tell his girl friend that he was thigmotactic.