Mealworm farming

[EngineHogs]

We only see a moth in the house once in a while now so they are almost completely gone. The bin outside is doing good in these temps so they should survive through the summer. I wonder if I'll want them in the house again.
You are right Cluckies no bird seed in the house ever again!

We had pretty much the exact same problem, and it caused us to sacrifice our entire colony to make any progress in exterminating the moths. We still find one every now and then, but I think we've about got it under control. Hopefully we can go several months this summer without a sighting and we'll consider restarting the meal worms. We never did figure out exactly where they came from, either.

hi, I'm new here, and I haven't read all 828 pages yet, so forgive me if this has been covered. I recently bought a pound of mealworms and 100 pupae to start a little mealworm farm for my birds. The pupae are hatching but the beetles (we have ten now) seem to spend most of their time on their backs feebly waving their legs in the air. If we turn them over they beetle off to one of the egg boxes no problem, but every time we check them they are nearly all lying in their backs again. We check often, as I have a fascinated five year old.

They are on wheat bran with bits of squash. Are they OK? I have hungry chicks to feed!

We've successfully raised them in wheat bran but saw the same problems you're encountering. We had much better success using rolled oats.

 

[Wellington W]

Thank you both. I have oats as well, so I'll change their bedding and give the bran to the larvae.

 

[ashleymroles]

I haven't completely read through everything in this thread, but I want to share my experience to maybe help someone along the way. I bought 100 large mealworms from PetSmart three weeks ago. I had them in a chick starter/wheat germ/fish flakes substrate. The chick starter was Dumor brand from tractor supply. I thought it was weird that after three weeks I hadn't seen a single pupae, so I looked at the ingredient list for the chick starter. It contains copper sulfate (its the last ingredient), and apparently this is an insecticide. As soon as I found out I ran to the store and bought cheerios to grind up as a new substrate. Its only been two days since the switch, and I have three pupa!! Before the switch I never saw them on the carrots I put in there, but now they're actually eating it up! Anyway, just a warning, DO NOT USE DUMOR CHICK STARTER AS SUBSTRATE FOR MEALWORMS.
Enjoy the pics!

 

[ccrow]

Ladyearth - temperature may be one your problems. I'm only guessing since you haven't given us much detail about your setup. Beetles are most active and lay maximum eggs when kept between 80 and 85F. They're sluggish at room temperature of 70 and under.

Many of us do keep beetles separate from the eggs they lay since beetles may munch on them, decreasing the amount that will ultimately hatch into larvae. You do that by cutting a hole in the beetle trays and gluing metal screening over it so the eggs filter through to a tray underneath so the eggs accumulate there and not in the beetle tray.

Larvae also tend to grow faster and larger when kept under these warmer temperatures. It's also important to make sure the bedding isn't getting too damp. I leave the lids off my trays when the bedding starts smelling damp.

Lastly, beetles need surfaces to mate and to lay their eggs on. If they're very crowded and haven't got enough surface area, they tend die off, too. You can increase surface area by adding layers of newspaper sheets and spent toilet paper rolls. Simply having a bin filled with deep substrate doesn't add much surface area.

Surface area and temperature are keys to maximum larvae.

I'm envisioning sort of a 'layer cake' setup; is that what you mean? Beetles upstairs and eggs/larvae downstairs?

 

[ccrow]

I'm hoping someone could help me. We just purchased our 8 baby chicks about 2 weeks ago and after reading the forums, and this thread in particular, I decided to start raising mealworms as a treat for them. I ordered 2000 mixed size from Amazon and received them today. I dumped the burlap bag into my substrate and 2 different size beetles came out with the larvae. I believe the single, larger beetle is the mealworm beetle but I'm not sure what the smaller beetles are (there are lots of them). I suspect it is a foreign grain beetle but I want to make sure before I start killing them off. Here is a picture of the smaller beetle (bottom middle against the side of the bin) next to a mealworm.




My current plan is to leave the single mealworm beetle in with the larvae, pick out and kill all other "grain" beetles, and move pupae and beetles out to other drawers as I get them. It seems like too much work to create a whole additional drawer for a single good beetle. Any other suggestions?

Thank you for any advice!

Jenn

Probably a dermestid beetle; Rainbow sells them as 'cleaner crew'. They will eat dead beetles etc.

 

[ccrow]

Thank-you very much! I picked out the little bugs using tweezers. The chicks seemed much more interested in the mealworms than in them, though.

Hmm.. tried to reply, and it disappeared... anyway, it's probably a dermestid beetle- they are sold as 'cleaner crew'.


Edit: Oops, there it is; sorry for the duplicate!!

 

[ccrow]

My DH brought home some wild bird seed that was infested with pantry moths we never had them before so didn't know what they were until they started multiplying then DH went online to find info. I took all the wild bird seed outside but the moths kept coming, I bought moth traps which caught a few but the moths kept showing up even when we'd go on a killing spree. More moths! I was vacuuming and cleaning... As you probably guessed they had invaded my meal worms

I had them 4 years I think (the mealies) , kept them in the basement. Two large bins with the covers just across not locked tight. I had bought screen to make covers but never did, I thought everything was working fine. I wondered if it was my worms that were infected as I lay in bed last night so when I got up this morning I went and looked and yep a moth flew out!! I just brought the bins up and outside. So I'll feed them out to the hens eventually and maybe by then the moths will all be out of the house. I will have to go through everything in the pantry also. And I will wait a long time before I order more worms to make sure everything is clean. Really horrible. And I told DH years ago I didn't want to keep bird seed in the house, I also bought him a locking type metal garbage can to keep seed in on the deck but he didn't use it.

For anyone having moth problems- the pheromone sticky traps work well. And moths are the reason I use window screen on my mealworm bins; the holes are too small for moths to get in. Just put moth traps around where you're seeing them and you will soon have the satisfaction of finding them stuck in the traps! Here's a page about them: http://www.pantrymothtrap.com/moth-traps-pick/

 

[algopurple]

Hi everyone. I am thinking about starting a mealworm farm but I'm wondering how beneficial they are to chickens and if I'm already feeding my girls whole corn and layer pellets is it possible to feed them too much protein or will they not eat them if they don't need the protein?

 

[lovemealworms]

Hi everyone. I am thinking about starting a mealworm farm but I'm wondering how beneficial they are to chickens and if I'm already feeding my girls whole corn and layer pellets is it possible to feed them too much protein or will they not eat them if they don't need the protein?

you can give the chickens too much protein. It is recommended to not feed more than one teaspoon or ten mealworms per day per chicken. They will eat any they come across no matter what.

 

[algopurple]

Ok Thank you for answering my question. I Have been looking all over for an answer and then I remembered BYC.