Mealworm farming

[Kusanar]

My worms are weird. From everything I have read on here, they don't like to be crowded... I had mine in a small bin that was about 2 inches deep in WORMS, not worms and bedding, just worms, I would toss in a handful or 2 of food in every couple of days and it would just vanish into the writhing pile of worms... I took pity on them and put them in a bigger container with a LOT more food, and the silly things are back in a big pile rather than spreading out...

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

Agree. Beetles have a huge multiplier effect. A female lays about 500 eggs every time she lays. Larvae and pupae have no multiplier effect - one larvae/pupae = one beetle.

 

[Richard Pryor]

I'm gonna go ahead and say it: mealworm farming has been one of the most time-consuming ordeals I've ever experienced. You couldn't pay me to grow these things again. Not even if the chickens laid gold eggs would I grow these again.

It takes forever for them to mature into worms. Feeding them every other day so that the bins don't get flys. Separating pupae from worms... separating beetles from pupae. My God!

Good luck everyone. As soon as my worms are big enough I'll feed them to the chickens and call it a day. This is a very time-consuming hobby and I'd rather spend my free time doing other stuff. At least 1 hour per bin when separating pupae from worms. 45 minutes to sift frass and collect animals. 30 minutes to separate beetles from pupae.

Yeah, once you have beetles it's like watching paint dry for a few months but I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

I'm not hating, just giving my point of view as I made a pretty significant investment thinking this was EZPC. It is not.

Peace.

 

[azygous]

Oh, you poor man! Meal worm farming is supposed to be fun! It's not supposed to entail so much agonizing effort! Your farm shouldn't require much more effort and thought than keeping your water heater supplying hot water!

A system of stacked covered shallow trays should keep your farm producing larvae to feed out on a regular basis with no more effort than tossing a few baby carrots to the tiny beasts every few days, much as you'd toss a bone to a mangy yard dog.

By cutting a hole in the bottom of the beetle container and gluing screening over it, then cutting a matching hole in the lid of a second tray, you can stack them and your beetles can be happily ignored in their luxurious bed of rolled oats while they have mad sex with one another with complete and utter abandon, while their oodles of tiny eggs filter down through the screened bottom into the tray beneath filled with wheat bran to cushion and nourish the baby larvae. Kept between 75F and 85F, you will see some real action.

At warm temps, the larvae grow like mad, shedding their exoskeltons as they grow larger and larger. In about three months they go from miniscule to feeding size of an inch.

The only time you will need to sift frass is when you see the larvae have about eaten themselves out of house and home. I did this just last night with a tray. It took me all of fifteen minutes to get them safely tucked into their fresh new bedding and popped back on the shelf to ignore for another month. Except for tossing the little beasts a couple carrot stubs.

The only sorting I ever do is when the pupae in the larvae trays present me with some bouncing baby beetles. They're easy to round up, which I try to do every few days or so during the pupae stage. I leave scraps of newspaper in the trays and the beetles cling to the undersides. I just pick them up and shake the paper into the beetle tray. Takes all of two minutes.

Once in a great while, I'll clean house in the beetle tray, picking out the dead ones. They're the only source of odor to the entire colony, and being fond of my beetles, I like to keep them clean and happy.

I examine the tray of bran under the beetle tray for movement after about a month after putting a fresh one under there. When I see the substrate move when I drag a finger through it, I replace that tray with a fresh tray of bran, pop a carrot into the tray with the newly hatched larvae, and pop a lid on it and put it in the stack to ignore for the next three months while the larvae grow.

Really. A worm farm shouldn't be a grueling effort of back breaking labor.

 

[Windy's Feathered Friends]

Here's another link on a great farm!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mealworm-Farm/?amp_page=true

 

[Windy's Feathered Friends]

I'm gonna go ahead and say it: mealworm farming has been one of the most time-consuming ordeals I've ever experienced. You couldn't pay me to grow these things again. Not even if the chickens laid gold eggs would I grow these again.

This farm does a lot of the work for you.

It takes forever for them to mature into worms. Feeding them every other day so that the bins don't get flys. Separating pupae from worms... separating beetles from pupae. My God!

Good luck everyone. As soon as my worms are big enough I'll feed them to the chickens and call it a day. This is a very time-consuming hobby and I'd rather spend my free time doing other stuff. At least 1 hour per bin when separating pupae from worms. 45 minutes to sift frass and collect animals. 30 minutes to separate beetles from pupae.

Yeah, once you have beetles it's like watching paint dry for a few months but I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

I'm not hating, just giving my point of view as I made a pretty significant investment thinking this was EZPC. It is not.

Peace.

This farm does a lot of the work for you!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mealworm-Farm/?amp_page=true

 

[kerbotx]

I recently came across a couple of articles that suggest using Prickly Pear Cactus as a moisture source for mealworms. I happened to have some growing down at the end of the driveway, so I gave it a shot - and they seem to like it! Bit of a chore to remove the spiney parts, but it's supposed to be a good source of calcium. Is anybody else doing this?

References:
http://www.openbugfarm.com/forum.html#/discussion/46/ultra-cheap-mealworm-production/p1

http://www.instructables.com/id/Preserving-Prickly-Pears/

 

[tigger19687]

What do you all do with the FRASS ??
Compost ?

 

[Chickassan]

I put the frass in my flower pots.I'm having a weird but totally solvable issue, skinks. I put the worm boxes on my front porch and this morning I had at least four skinks in there chowing down. I didn't think about those guys, no big deal skinks got to eat too. They did thin out my beetle herd for me.

 

[tigger19687]

lol