Mealworm farming

[azygous]

I'll post some pics of my worm and beetle trays with the hot water tubs as soon as I have the time later on today, Cluckies. I have no doubt your colony dried out with the combo of forced air heating drying out your air and the bins being completely exposed to the drying air currents. If you still have the lids to your containers, drill a whole bunch of holes in the lids and cover the containers.

As for beginning a worm farm, I began a few years back with just about fifty larvae. You can buy them at a pet store or aquarium shop that sells fish and lizards. Buy some wheat bran, sterilize it in the oven at 300 F for twenty minutes to kill grain mites, and fill a container with the bran, a few inches deep, add a carrot, cover, place in a warm dark place and watch them grow and then pupate into beetles over the next couple months. They grow faster or slower according to the room temp. Ideal is around 80F, 25-30C. Read some of the pages of this thread to discover tricks and pitfalls you may encounter.

 

[babul]

yeau, harvesting worms is a shock for me. The dung heap of our 15 cows and buffaloes just provide more than enough dung beetles, worms and undigested grain particles. Chickens are also tick specialist doctor occasionally hunting ticks when one or the other member of the herd is sitting or laying. Animals also love getting rid of those blood sucking ticks. Buffaloes seem to enjoy most.
Instead of raising those disgusting worms I will suggest keeping a cow, she will provide besides fresh milk more than enough dung you can raise earthworms (chickens favorite treat)on the dung. These noble worms will provide protein for your flock and manure for your garden. The suggested meal worm food you can feed to the chicken they like it. The wheat bran so costly in your country we get 3kg in one dollar and then complain about inflation.

 

[Latestarter]

Greetings @babul and welcome to BYC!

If you think wheat bran is costly here, you should see the price to keep a (just one) cow!! Not just the food, but vet maintenance and space requirements. Contrary to the size of our country, most people are crammed together in towns and cities where it would be impossible to own a cow. If you buy a calf and raise it, it will be 18-24 months before she can get pregnant, then another 9-10 months before she'll calve (for that delicious milk)... The cost to get to that point would provide 500 families enough wheat bran and meal worms for the better part of a century! If you start with a cow already in milk, it would cover the costs for about 50 years...

I don't disagree that chickens and dung piles are a match made in heaven, and further, the benefits in the form of fertilizer for your garden(s). But unless you have the land with forage and water to support a cow, it's a very costly proposition.

 

[azygous]

Here's my stacked worm farm, beetles and egg trays on the left, and larvae on the right. When I have a recent egg hatch, I place that tray on the bottom on the right so the new hatchlings have maximum heat from the hot water tubs.
The older worms then reside in a tray stacked on top of the newest larvae tray.
I removed the tray of worms so you could see the frame that the trays rest on with the water tub under it.

The frame is just firring strips glued to legs made from any scrap lumber.

The plastic tubs are filled with tap water and heated for seven minutes in the microwave in the morning and once again at night. The water stays warm for hours and keeps the worms and beetles around ten degrees warmer than the ambient room temp. It's especially helpful at night to keep the worms warm until I start the wood stove up again.

I pack a towel in front of the water tubs to help hold in the heat and then drop a cloth flap over the tubs and trays to keep it dark for the creepy crawlies.

 

[ladyearth]

just curious why keep the beetles seperated. I tried that and somehow the fiberglass screen got chewed on in sev places..
I see mentioned the facebook group... but no thank you to Facebook...

 

[Cluckies]

Here's my stacked worm farm, beetles and egg trays on the left, and larvae on the right. When I have a recent egg hatch, I place that tray on the bottom on the right so the new hatchlings have maximum heat from the hot water tubs.
The older worms then reside in a tray stacked on top of the newest larvae tray.
I removed the tray of worms so you could see the frame that the trays rest on with the water tub under it.

The frame is just firring strips glued to legs made from any scrap lumber.

The plastic tubs are filled with tap water and heated for seven minutes in the microwave in the morning and once again at night. The water stays warm for hours and keeps the worms and beetles around ten degrees warmer than the ambient room temp. It's especially helpful at night to keep the worms warm until I start the wood stove up again.

I pack a towel in front of the water tubs to help hold in the heat and then drop a cloth flap over the tubs and trays to keep it dark for the creepy crawlies.

Thanks for the photos, i'll have to see what I can come up with. I appreciate all your help!

 

[babul]

Pardon me Sir, for my foolish mistake. I never thought raising cow is such a big thing there because we are keeping cows and buffaloes from generations.
Yeah, dung piles and chickens are match made in heaven. Babul

 

[Latestarter]

@babul No no no... I wasn't trying to be mean or disrespectful of your idea! It was a GREAT idea! No foolish mistake! Again, you are absolutely correct, and for those able to own a real farm with large animals, there is no need to raise meal worms. But for those who live in cities or towns with virtually no land, who CAN own chickens, the meal worms are very easy and inexpensive to raise for use as treats for their birds. Also, though this is a chicken website, many folks keep inside, caged birds and raise mealworms as treat for them as well. They are however very expensive to buy at the store. I was just pointing out/explaining why many here who are only now getting back into chicken ownership, are unable to do what you recommended.

 

[Docmom1471]

Hello, I am new to the BYC site. I have been raising mealworms for about two years. My sister is the one with chickens, so I raise them for her and for the wild birds during nesting season. I have read most of this thread and have learned a ton. I live in Michigan, so my challenges are trying to keep my worms warm and provide enough moisture during our dry winter. I use wheat bran as my substrate. When I first started, I did try some infant rice cereal and oatmeal that I further ground in a food processor. I found that container took literally twice as long to mature, and the rice cereal got clumped up. I have not had any trouble with mold or mites in my substrate, but I do find that mold develops quickly on potatoes. Carrots dry out quickly in the winter, so I have a hard time finding a reliable vegetable to provide moisture. So, I use a spray bottle and mist the surface of the substrate daily, unless it still feels at all moist. I also have newspaper or part of a brown paper grocery bag laying on the surface, and I spray each layer of those. My containers are open trays and plastic drawers that came from typical Sterilite sets. I keep them in the basement in some lower kitchen cupboards that were left over from a remodel from before we bought this house. I use seedling germination heating pads and strings of xmas lights for warmth.

I wanted to comment on an observation I made recently. I had been keeping my pupae separate from the larvae and beetles, because I have observed the beetles chewing on the heads of the pupae. After reading here that cannabalism should be minimal, I put them back together, and made sure there were apple slices for the beetles to chew on. I noticed an immediate increase in the number of misshapen newly eclosed beetles. So, I took the pupae out again. When they were in their own container with no supplemented moisture, there was 100% perfect eclosures. So, I suspect that there is either cannabalism, or the eclosure process occurs more smoothly under dry conditions. The percentage of malformations, when they occur, is between 10 and 15%, which doesn't seem too bad, except this is at the end of the process. We've finally gotten to the point where we hope to see the population explode, and 1/7 is malformed.

It is time consuming, but I am going to stick with keeping the stages separate.

To increase efficiency, I recommend keeping a folded piece of brown grocery bag on top of the substrate. The mature larvae converge there while they prepare to pupate. So, if you want to collect some to feed the chickens, just pick up the paper and dump them into a container. No sifting or separating sizes. Same goes for taking beetles out of a container to separate them from the eggs they've laid. Put fresh carrots or apple slices or a fresh heel of bread on top and they will swarm to it. Scoop out the pile of beetles and repeat as many times as needed. And, you don't need to get every single beetle out. If you continue to provide moisture, which you should anyway, the few beetles left behind won't eat a significant number of the eggs, and they'll die a natural death soon enough.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. It really is the best source of information out there, since it has experiences from people in different climates and different household situations, with observations over long periods of time as well as common newbie downfalls. Best of luck to all with both their mealworms and all their other critters.

 

[Kusanar]

Pardon me Sir, for my foolish mistake. I never thought raising cow is such a big thing there because we are keeping cows and buffaloes from generations.
Yeah, dung piles and chickens are match made in heaven. Babul

Pardon me Sir, for my foolish mistake. I never thought raising cow is such a big thing there because we are keeping cows and buffaloes from generations.
Yeah, dung piles and chickens are match made in heaven. Babul

@babul No no no... I wasn't trying to be mean or disrespectful of your idea! It was a GREAT idea! No foolish mistake! Again, you are absolutely correct, and for those able to own a real farm with large animals, there is no need to raise meal worms. But for those who live in cities or towns with virtually no land, who CAN own chickens, the meal worms are very easy and inexpensive to raise for use as treats for their birds. Also, though this is a chicken website, many folks keep inside, caged birds and raise mealworms as treat for them as well. They are however very expensive to buy at the store. I was just pointing out/explaining why many here who are only now getting back into chicken ownership, are unable to do what you recommended.

Then there are the crazies like me, I don't have any birds yet, I have 7 horses (probably at least as good as a cow for making manure), but I have some meal worms, to be fair though, they were wild caught at the barn (they eat the dropped grain) and I kept them in a tub with a handful of horse feed, so really no cost to maintain them.

I would love to get some chickens and use them to turn my manure piles for me, get free eggs and less work.