Mealworm farming

[RoseMarie1]

I've got to find me a hanging feeder I can feed some of mine to my chickens in. I feed fermented feed in a plastic trough so I don't have the normal hanging feeders. Anyway I want to feed some to mine. I fed just a few of the small ones to them but not the large ones. They're going to have a blast with these things! lol

 

[aart]

Wow that is cool that she links back to this thread.

Thanks for the link-- need to do more reading.

Looks like it is easy to over harvest the mealworms-- any one have a rule of thumb like 5%of the visiable mealworms a day . . .

I'm trying to figure that one out too.....haven't seen anything precise as far as harvesting.
But it takes 3-4 months for a complete life cycle, and chooks can gobble up a lot of mealworms very quickly.

I was thinking about staggering several colonies and keeping so many breeder worms in each colony and feeding the rest to the chooks as treats rather than a specific portion of their feed. Seems you'd need very large colonies to feed even a dozen chooks regularly.

 

[aart]

Yes, I, too, would be interested in whether you should feed the dead beetles to the hens. Just as a time frame, please, we have worms, go to pups and then to beetle.....beetles lay eggs (over a period of time and then die). Just "about" how long is "over a period of time?" Days, weeks???? Thanks!

You can try feeding the dead ones but chickens prefer bugs that move. So if you keep an eye on your beetles and pick them out just before they die you will have better luck feeding them to the hens. Or you could add some dieing beetles to the dead ones to catch the hens interest.

Beetles will live until they run out of eggs/sperm then they will pass away. How long they live depends on the temperature in colder weather they move slower and lay less eggs so will live longer.

When the beetles are old and just before they die they start being clumsy falling on their backs all the time and having trouble getting back up. Young ones will do this too but you can tell they are young by their brownish coloration. With old dieing beetles you can turn them over and put them back on their feet and you will see them flipped upside down again fairly soon. It wont take too long for you to be able to tell a old dieing beetle from a healthy one.

My chooks gobbled up the dead beetles in like 2 seconds flat.

 

[Arielle]

IMO after only a few short years with chickens, it helps to introduce new foods as chicks, as many different foods as possible. THough all it takes isone adventurous adult hen to get everyone to chase her when she is runningwith a coveted food item, them everyone wants to try it. Eating it is another matter. lol

Colony size. I'm sure there is a complex mathmaticall formula to predict the larvae mass of any colony: average number of beetles, the number days laying, avg # eggs, temperatures and the like. CLearly warmer results in faster production!!

 

[azygous]

I'm trying to figure that one out too.....haven't seen anything precise as far as harvesting.
But it takes 3-4 months for a complete life cycle, and chooks can gobble up a lot of mealworms very quickly.

I was thinking about staggering several colonies and keeping so many breeder worms in each colony and feeding the rest to the chooks as treats rather than a specific portion of their feed. Seems you'd need very large colonies to feed even a dozen chooks regularly.

That's what I do. I have three trays. One with unhatched eggs collected from the beetle drawers every few days, a second tray of baby, newly hatched larva, and a third tray of fully grown larva, part of which I feed from and the rest are allowed to pupate.

These three trays are stacked on top of each other with the tray of hatching larva on the bottom, sitting atop my heating unit consisting of a 25 watt bulb in a cookie tin on a timer to come on for fifteen minutes every half hour. The heat radiates upward and warms the other two trays to a lesser degree.

When I want to begin hatching the tray with the beetle eggs, I move it to the bottom where it gets kick-started with regular heating. In a month or so, I have a new crop to feed from. About that time, the large worms in the other tray have mostly been fed or have pupated into beetles. Cue to begin a new tray of beetle eggs.

Works for me.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

Beetles may lay around 30 eggs per day over a 90 day life span. I've had a few beetles live as long as six months and still keep laying eggs.

I ran across this really elegant web site on everything you want to know about meal worms and darkling beetles with pictures and videos. It's a gorgeous site and she links to BYC and this thread! http://www.westknollfarm.com/Meal-Worms.html

That's WestKnollAmy, she's an active BYC member and used to be active on this thread. I believe she learned to raise mealworms along with a lot of people in the early days of this thread and you can find that link in the first post. She used to sell them too, but I don't know if she does anymore.

 

[sueblack]

I thought WestKnollAmy was still selling mealworms, but just checked her website, which says she is not and refers you to Rainbow Mealworms. I bought mine a year ago from her and was VERY happy with her service. There are several others on this thread that sell mealworms so you should be able to find them pretty easily.

 

[evemfoster]

The beetles will eat a large portion of their own eggs so for the highest yield I recommended that you move the beetles into a new container with fresh feed every week. Or at least monthly. Allowing the eggs to stay behind in the old container to develop.

I did this for quite some time when feeding bluebirds. Worked like a charm. I used 3 sets of plastic Sterilite drawers and about 50 beetles with occasional replacements. Moving the beetles to the next drawer weekly keep me in more worms than the wild birds could eat. About 1/3 cup a day. It took about a month to 6 weeks in nice weather before the worms got big enough to start feeding out. I did find that all the worms didn't grow at the same rate so there was always different sized worms in the drawers. When i got most of large worms out of a drawer i could put the beetles back in the drawer. I would keep that up until the feed needed changing.

I got careless after a while and had over a hundred beetles and ended up with swarms of worms. Ended up doing a recipe i found on the internet to dry them out like you buy them in stores. You put the worms in a old never to be used for anything else again fry pan. Spray it and the worms with a product like Pam and turn the heat on very low. Stirring until the worms are all dried out and shinny.

After raising meal worms for a few years now I am not recommending you use the drawer system i used to grow your worms in. I found that in about a year the beetles had gnawed on the plastic so much that they could get footholds in the plastic and climb out of the drawers. I switched over to covered containers, I cut a large square out of the lid and use window screen hot glued over the hole for ventilation. I don't find beetles running around inside the house anymore. I had been housing them in the garage but when they get loose they'll get anywhere, so use a container or containers with lids.

 

[Arielle]

lol-- I would expect by having them in the house, a few beetles and worms are likely to excape!! lol

Glad to hear your recommentation for a screen insert held with not glue-- that is what I was thinking as a good modification to the unit I purchased. NO side wall drilling needed too as it is only about 6 inches tall. ANd I think I will for go the dresser unit until I can design a suitable lid. I do have a fish tank that will work though.

 

[evemfoster]

If you use glass a fish tank stick a line of clear packing tape all the way around the inside of the tank about 3 to 4 inches above where the top of the feed will be.

The glass is just rough enough that after a bit of dust gets on the glass the beetles will start trying to climb out. Kind of like a fly walking on the windows. The tape is slick enough that the beetles will fall back down. You will have to replace the tape every once in a while.

Don't try to fill the tank up with feed. Having the feed over a couple inches deep keeps too much moisture inside the grain and the next thing you know you have a tank full of mites. Horrid things. An inch to a inch and a half of feed works best.