Mealworm farming

[LibertyChick]

Quote:
Oh I knew the answer to how many the WOULD eat!!!!

I would like to know how many they should get if you are going to use as a supplement, or as a primary protien source.

Yes, you are right!! How many they should eat as opposed to how many they could eat.

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
Someone else on here researched that and was told no insect inhibitor as well. I also checked with the store and was told the same but I'm with you...everything was GREAT until I made that one change, now everything is stuck between stages. We'll see. I salvaged what I could out of my old mix and transferred everything to new mix minus chick start. Lets see what happens next.

I'm setting up two bins this time to start .. one will have chick starter.. one won't.. other than the chick starter they both will have the exact same ingredients... then I'll wait a bit and see which has the better growth

 

[hannakat]

Quote:

Yes, how many mealies per day per bird are people feeding?

Well I was just discussing this with crazy huhn a few days ago: each female beetle lays about 400 eggs. So if u put 100 beetles in a bin...assuming 50 are female and 50 are male... Each of those 50 female beetles lay approx 400 eggs that would give u approx 20,000 worms in one generation. Of course this will vary depending on the actual male/female ratio--but u get the idea.
It was suggested to me to leave the beetles in the bin for a month and then remove them..by then they will probably have laid all her eggs--she may continue to live a few more weeks--but may eat some of those eggs--so it's best to remove them after a month.

Maybe we are getting information from different sources but from my understanding....
The average amount of eggs laid by a single adult female beetle is closer to 300 or less.
Beetles will lay eggs their entire life which averages 2-3 months. From my observations, the eggs are not eaten.

 

[Kassaundra]

Quote:
Well I was just discussing this with crazy huhn a few days ago: each female beetle lays about 400 eggs. So if u put 100 beetles in a bin...assuming 50 are female and 50 are male... Each of those 50 female beetles lay approx 400 eggs that would give u approx 20,000 worms in one generation. Of course this will vary depending on the actual male/female ratio--but u get the idea.
It was suggested to me to leave the beetles in the bin for a month and then remove them..by then they will probably have laid all her eggs--she may continue to live a few more weeks--but may eat some of those eggs--so it's best to remove them after a month.

Maybe we are getting information from different sources but from my understanding....
The average amount of eggs laid by a single adult female beetle is closer to 300 or less.
Beetles will lay eggs their entire life which averages 2-3 months. From my observations, the eggs are not eaten.

And I read from several sites they live as adults for 1-2 months and lay 400-500 eggs. So apparently their is a lot of leeway out there. I will use the lower numbers in any estimating I do for how many beetles to keep so if they do better all the better, but if they produce on the lower end of the scale I won't be disappointed.

 

[hannakat]

That would be great if there's more than 300! Guess I'm not done researching after all.

I fed mine a few dozen every day last winter. (I only had 3 chickens) Never counted but the expense of buying freeze dried worms is what lead me to start the farm. Don't know if this'll help or not.

Edited to add: My pupa started morphing April 27th and I've only found 1 dead beetle to date in the top drawer of the 3-drawer unit. (they are not quite 3 months old yet). This has kinda been a research project for me. Oh...and they are still laying lots of eggs as I've found since I now monitor the droppings into the second drawer.

 

[JSLKelly]

Quote:
Someone else on here researched that and was told no insect inhibitor as well. I also checked with the store and was told the same but I'm with you...everything was GREAT until I made that one change, now everything is stuck between stages. We'll see. I salvaged what I could out of my old mix and transferred everything to new mix minus chick start. Lets see what happens next.

I'm setting up two bins this time to start .. one will have chick starter.. one won't.. other than the chick starter they both will have the exact same ingredients... then I'll wait a bit and see which has the better growth

Fantastic! The mad scientist!!!!! I'll let you know what I've found out too, when anything changes.

 

[LibertyChick]

Quote:
Well I was just discussing this with crazy huhn a few days ago: each female beetle lays about 400 eggs. So if u put 100 beetles in a bin...assuming 50 are female and 50 are male... Each of those 50 female beetles lay approx 400 eggs that would give u approx 20,000 worms in one generation. Of course this will vary depending on the actual male/female ratio--but u get the idea.
It was suggested to me to leave the beetles in the bin for a month and then remove them..by then they will probably have laid all her eggs--she may continue to live a few more weeks--but may eat some of those eggs--so it's best to remove them after a month.

Maybe we are getting information from different sources but from my understanding....
The average amount of eggs laid by a single adult female beetle is closer to 300 or less.
Beetles will lay eggs their entire life which averages 2-3 months. From my observations, the eggs are not eaten.

Can you see the eggs with the naked eye?

 

[crazy huhn]

Quote:
Exotic nutrition.com was reasonable... But I ordered mine from crazy huhn (a BYCer)... She provides all 3 stages in her shipment...beetles, pupa, and worms.... I haven't found a commercial supplier that does that....her shipping is the actual cost of shipment and tries to use the "if it fits-it ships boxes)...
I was very happy with my order!!
Go to page 68, post #670 I think--and u can click on her email...

Thank You for the very nice compliment Klwright1122.

I am a native German and I always strive for "Mercedes" quality mealworms for my customers (all worms are organically grown and hand picked), never satisfied with just "Fiat" quality....

All my customers have to be 100% happy with their order.

 

[crazy huhn]

Quote:
Composting is nice for any garden.

But I also wanted to drop a note about the used mealworm bedding which is the very best fertilizer you can get and just another reason I do have mealworms. Since I have started my mealworm breeding about 4 years ago, I have never used any commercial fertilizer anymore on my flower and vegetable garden. I have only used the mealworm castings and my garden has never looked any better. A lot of my local mealworm customers now are buying the castings as well for their organic gardens.

Here is an analysis of mealworm castings I found: mealworm castings contain 4 times the available nitrogen, plus other important nutrients such as phosphorus and iron -- Nitrogen-4.17% Phosphorus-2.70% Potash-1.64% Sodium-62.9mg/100gms Iron-26.5mg/100gms. PH is 7.25---

FOR CRAZY HUHN:
How do u do that? Do u just sift out the worms and dump the contents of the bin into the garden? The reason y I ask, is because I don't
have any idea what a worm cast looks like. I have wrigglers...that's obvious.... But I imagine the bin is full "dry castings" shed skin, and wheat bran, oats, etc. Am I right? As u know, I just started my bin

so I don't think I have much castings....if I do, I can't tell the difference between them and the grain in the bin.

After I have harvested out all the mealworms out of one bin, I sift all the remains in a bucket and leave it like that for a few weeks to see if any baby worms were hiding in there. However, you can basically also spoon it out and fertilize your plants with it. The recommended use I found was 10 to 20 pounds per 1,000 sq feet. If you use magnifying glasses you will see that the castings pretty much look like tiny pearls of flour consistency. But even if your bedding substrate has no worms in there anymore, but you can still see oats or crumble, that will also be fine for your plants. If you do like your wild birds (Blue Jays for example), you can spread out the castings even with a few worms left in the bedding. The wild birds greatly appreciate the worms as well and I actually also have customers buying mealworms just for them (there are special mealworm feeders on the market).

 

[crazy huhn]

Quote:
Well I was just discussing this with crazy huhn a few days ago: each female beetle lays about 400 eggs. So if u put 100 beetles in a bin...assuming 50 are female and 50 are male... Each of those 50 female beetles lay approx 400 eggs that would give u approx 20,000 worms in one generation. Of course this will vary depending on the actual male/female ratio--but u get the idea.
It was suggested to me to leave the beetles in the bin for a month and then remove them..by then they will probably have laid all her eggs--she may continue to live a few more weeks--but may eat some of those eggs--so it's best to remove them after a month.

Maybe we are getting information from different sources but from my understanding....
The average amount of eggs laid by a single adult female beetle is closer to 300 or less.
Beetles will lay eggs their entire life which averages 2-3 months. From my observations, the eggs are not eaten.

After breeding mealies for about 4 years now, I am still trying to improve whatever I can do. Some sources say that a female lays about 150 eggs while other sources say 400 to 500. Out of my experience it is closer to 400 ( I am going by the number of worms harvested out of the bins). However, now I know what I am going to do this weekend: I will start a 1 Gallon bin with just 10 beetles and see/ count what happens in a few month....Will keep you all posted.
Edited to add: Oh yes, the beetles will cannibalize their own eggs. They do like to hang out at spots were eggs have been laid before (were veggies were placed in the past). I see it all the time.