Mealworm farming

[kubotafoot]

i was trying to read thru the thread but after getting to page 47 i decided to skip to the end lol.

So my question is this....i want to order mealworms, i want to use wheat bran for the substrate but the closest store with bulk wheat bran is 45 mins away....so has anyone tried farina? IT is cream of wheat so wheat food stuff still...and someone keeps giving me boxes of it which i dont eat so i thought it might be a good use and viable until i can get to the store later this month.

I don't have any of it here, so I can't read the box ingredients, but if it is just wheat (semolina etc) I would use it with a little oat meal added, as it is VERY fine in comparison to wheat bran in bulk.
I doubt you'll have any problems if there are no additives (like dairy or sugars).
Have fun!

 

[aart]

.......

When I have mostly larva (worms), I can feed out about 2 cups, 2-3 times a week and I do NOT take the time to pull out only adult/mature worms... I just scoop a bunch of whatever comes up... worms/beetles/pupa/eggs... it all goes to the 30+ birds as a snack and they devour everything in very short order! Doing that obviously puts a dent in future generations, and I can only maintain that feeding level for a few weeks before noticing a major depletion of "breeding stock" at which time I stop and let them re-group for a while.
......

How many times over what number of months have you down this?

Great rundown in your post.

 

[The Hawk]

Hello Latestarter.
Thanks for the great run down of your operation. Its so nice to hear how and what, others are doing on there farm.

I only started raising mealworms 2 months ago with 142 beetles and doing it a bit different than most.
I have my 142 beetles in a screened bottom container and once a week I take what fell through plus I screen the beetles out and take what they were in also. Then they start again in a fresh container. The bran with all the eggs are set in a warm spot to grow. Each week I do this so now after 2 months I have 8 containers with larva in 7 and still eggs in the 8th. I'm amazed that I have stayed at 142 beetles for 7 weeks and just now on the 8th one I had 5 dead ones.
It looks like I will need one more month of growing on the first batch of larva and then each week I will have one container to feed out or freeze. I am going to keep a count to see how many I get and will eventually know how long the beetles last and how many eggs.
My plan is to keep 600 larva from the oldest container to start a new colony and keep doing it the same way. I think this way I could keep a 500 beetle herd and be harvesting a cup of larva per day with only a small amount of time spent once a week.
I will let you know how this all works out in the end. It might be a total flop

but lots of fun trying.

 

[aart]

Hello Latestarter.
Thanks for the great run down of your operation. Its so nice to hear how and what, others are doing on there farm.

I only started raising mealworms 2 months ago with 142 beetles and doing it a bit different than most.
I have my 142 beetles in a screened bottom container and once a week I take what fell through plus I screen the beetles out and take what they were in also. Then they start again in a fresh container. The bran with all the eggs are set in a warm spot to grow. Each week I do this so now after 2 months I have 8 containers with larva in 7 and still eggs in the 8th. I'm amazed that I have stayed at 142 beetles for 7 weeks and just now on the 8th one I had 5 dead ones.
It looks like I will need one more month of growing on the first batch of larva and then each week I will have one container to feed out or freeze. I am going to keep a count to see how many I get and will eventually know how long the beetles last and how many eggs.
My plan is to keep 600 larva from the oldest container to start a new colony and keep doing it the same way. I think this way I could keep a 500 beetle herd and be harvesting a cup of larva per day with only a small amount of time spent once a week.
I will let you know how this all works out in the end. It might be a total flop

but lots of fun trying.

That's an interesting technique...I like it!

 

[Peep-Chicken]

I just started raising mealworms a few weeks ago!

 

[Latestarter]

Quote:

How many times over what number of months have you down this?

Great rundown in your post.

Hey Aart; I started the original farms back in March of 2014. Chickens arrived end of May 2014. Started treating them in I guess about July. Up till then it was just letting the worms/pupa/beetles do what they do. I didn't give them a lot of worms (like 2 cups per treat session) until probably September/October when it started getting cooler. I was able to treat them this amount 2-3 times a week through about December at which point I was about out of worms and only had beetles/pupa and eggs/babies. I have been re-building the 5 colonies since then and am just now getting back to a very large population of adult worms. Each bin is getting essentially 1/2 of a 2 lb bag of baby carrots each week. Since most of the eggs have now hatched and are growing as worms, I really need to sift out all the living from the dead beetles & frass and replenish the bran substrate. I do this about twice a year.

Hello Latestarter.
Thanks for the great run down of your operation. Its so nice to hear how and what, others are doing on there farm.

I only started raising mealworms 2 months ago with 142 beetles and doing it a bit different than most.
I have my 142 beetles in a screened bottom container and once a week I take what fell through plus I screen the beetles out and take what they were in also. Then they start again in a fresh container. The bran with all the eggs are set in a warm spot to grow. Each week I do this so now after 2 months I have 8 containers with larva in 7 and still eggs in the 8th. I'm amazed that I have stayed at 142 beetles for 7 weeks and just now on the 8th one I had 5 dead ones.
It looks like I will need one more month of growing on the first batch of larva and then each week I will have one container to feed out or freeze. I am going to keep a count to see how many I get and will eventually know how long the beetles last and how many eggs.
My plan is to keep 600 larva from the oldest container to start a new colony and keep doing it the same way. I think this way I could keep a 500 beetle herd and be harvesting a cup of larva per day with only a small amount of time spent once a week.
I will let you know how this all works out in the end. It might be a total flop

but lots of fun trying.

Wow Hawk, what a great way to maintain tight control and be able to document and evaluate! I'm impressed! I hope you have good ventilation where all the bins are stored... The smell can build up and the frass/shed exoskeletons (which are lighter than air!) can pose a real health hazard without a dust mask. I used to close the door to a crack and put an exhaust fan in the window then do all my work on the colonies right below the fan. That way the dust got sucked/blown outside and it helped a great deal!

 

[The Hawk]

Quote:


Wow Hawk, what a great way to maintain tight control and be able to document and evaluate! I'm impressed! I hope you have good ventilation where all the bins are stored... The smell can build up and the frass/shed exoskeletons (which are lighter than air!) can pose a real health hazard without a dust mask. I used to close the door to a crack and put an exhaust fan in the window then do all my work on the colonies right below the fan. That way the dust got sucked/blown outside and it helped a great deal!

So far I haven't had to clean anything out yet but there is getting to be a fair bit of shed skins in the oldest containers. I have an outside door right close to my worm barn so thinking I can just take out and pour worms into new container. With a bit of wind blowing it should take the skins away. I am hoping I only have to do this once per container and then they will be ready to harvest.

The humidity is very low 20% so I can just bury baby carrots and apple cores right in the wheat bran. Never get any mold or smell so far.
Its a fun hobby watching things grow.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I got my mealies yesterday morning...i did not realize how much weight there was to 5,000 mealworms lol. They were split into 3 of the shoe box containers from family dollar, the newspaper that came along with them was put into its own bin in case there are any eggs stuck to it and the pupae that came with the worms are in a smaller square bowl...one beetle also came with my worms. i am doing a test on the substrate bin 1 is all farina, bin two is all oatmeal, bin 3 is a mix of the two...not sure if there will be any noticable difference. So far they seem very thirsty after being in shipping for 3-4 days, they like zuchini, tomatoes and strawberries it seems.

 

[kubotafoot]

Congrats on your new adventure. Just remember, fruits and veggies are VERY important. As I have said in past posts.....I thought from looking at photos of set ups a carrot or two would be fine. For me, it wasn't as it was too thick for my worms to get at and as I saw it left, I thought all was well. Nope! I added thinner pieces and veggies and fruits and they literally swarmed all over them and my hatch rate went sky high! Have fun and please keep us informed of your findings.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Congrats on your new adventure. Just remember, fruits and veggies are VERY important. As I have said in past posts.....I thought from looking at photos of set ups a carrot or two would be fine. For me, it wasn't as it was too thick for my worms to get at and as I saw it left, I thought all was well. Nope! I added thinner pieces and veggies and fruits and they literally swarmed all over them and my hatch rate went sky high! Have fun and please keep us informed of your findings.

i will, i havnt tried carrots yet because i wanted something with more moisture since they were in shipping so long, after work i am going to swap out whatever is left for fresh stuff and see how thirsty they still are.