Mealworm farming

[Richard Pryor]

What would be the main reason for mealworms dying?

How many casualties do you guys get in, let's say, a week?

What would be the cause of having 2 (out of 8 trays) get moisture inside?

Besides those 2 problems, I seem to have some new beetles and pupae (sic?).

 

[Richard Pryor]

So I had my first frass "harvest" and I got to say it was a PITA so I'd like some feedback.

There was still some wheat bran left in the container and that made it harder. Some wheat bran fell through my strainer.

I'm guessing it's better to wait and make sure that all the wheat bran has been 100% consumed (to the point where you leave the worms starving for a few days) before harvesting?

I also have significant worm casualties. I see a lot of black worms and not sure if you guys are losing these many worms. I did have plenty of pupae so I can't be doing everything wrong. But just thinking how my worms came when shipped (95% alive) makes me think that I should be having more or less the same rate of live worms?

If I had to ship live worms right now I would say "heck no" cause separating the live ones from the dead ones would be too much work.

And separating pupae from worms was also very time consuming so not sure how these people are doing it in a commercial scale.

Finally, I may be feeding too many carrots. I saw some small mite-looking animals inside a few carrots. Not sure what they are but I cooked my wheat bran at 250 for more than an hour so I don't think they're wheat mites.

How much are you guys feeding? Say, for 5k worms, how much do you give them and how often?

TYVM for your time. God bless. RP

 

[Richard Pryor]

Yes I agree. I've been doing my best with the info that's available. Thanks for your answer.

 

[Kusanar]

What would be the main reason for mealworms dying?

How many casualties do you guys get in, let's say, a week?

What would be the cause of having 2 (out of 8 trays) get moisture inside?

Besides those 2 problems, I seem to have some new beetles and pupae (sic?).

Mealworms seem to just die, I haven't seen any particular reason for it in my bin.

As far as casualties, I don't have anywhere near as many as you do, and I don't pay that close of attention to them, so I can't help much on that question. Sorry.

So I had my first frass "harvest" and I got to say it was a PITA so I'd like some feedback.

There was still some wheat bran left in the container and that made it harder. Some wheat bran fell through my strainer.

I'm guessing it's better to wait and make sure that all the wheat bran has been 100% consumed (to the point where you leave the worms starving for a few days) before harvesting?

I also have significant worm casualties. I see a lot of black worms and not sure if you guys are losing these many worms. I did have plenty of pupae so I can't be doing everything wrong. But just thinking how my worms came when shipped (95% alive) makes me think that I should be having more or less the same rate of live worms?

If I had to ship live worms right now I would say "heck no" cause separating the live ones from the dead ones would be too much work.

And separating pupae from worms was also very time consuming so not sure how these people are doing it in a commercial scale.

Finally, I may be feeding too many carrots. I saw some small mite-looking animals inside a few carrots. Not sure what they are but I cooked my wheat bran at 250 for more than an hour so I don't think they're wheat mites.

How much are you guys feeding? Say, for 5k worms, how much do you give them and how often?

TYVM for your time. God bless. RP

As far as frass harvesting, I wouldn't worry too much about leaving a little bit of bran in the frass, it won't hurt what you are fertilizing with it. Apparently, if you have a lot of worms and pretty deep bran, you can actually start to see a line where the bottom is pretty much all frass and the top is pretty much all bran, you would just scoop the top layer into another container and then sift for worms in the frass layer.

As far as separating pupae from worms on a commercial scale, I doubt that they do. Likely, all of the worms in the bin are within a few days in age of each other and so they will pupate within a few days from each other as well.

No idea how much to feed 5k worms, but I would just toss them a baby carrot or 2 and then kind of time them to see how fast it vanishes or dries out. Once it's pretty much completely dried out or gone (sift through, sometimes they bury things), then figure out how long that took and calculate the carrot to time ratio that way. If you want to feed once a day and they killed a carrot in 2 hours, then give them 12 carrots at a time.

 

[Richard Pryor]

I'm halfway through separating pupae from 8 bins (approx. 5k worms in each).

There HAS to be an easier way to do this. Not only is it extremely time consuming, but it's tedious work. My back is killing me.

Only reason I'm separating pupae is because I have casualties in my bins and I'm afraid there is going to be ammonia build-up. I believe it is much easier to grab the beetles since they seem to stay on the top surface.

If you're diligent, I think you can catch the beetles before they start to lay eggs. Just need to check on your bins, say, every other day?

I'm still curious how these commercial worm farms are doing this. I think @Kusanar is right. They probably have a bunch of beetles in trays and change trays every few days after sifting through the oats or bran or whatever they're using. Then they might keep some trays with worms (sell the rest) and rinse and repeat.

Finally, what % of your worms turn into pupae? Mine varied but I got at least 1k pupae from each tray (total 5k worms) with about 1k casualties.

Still need to dial in my setup. Need to figure out why so many died. Maybe they were overcrowded (5k worms in a 27 quart container). Maybe I fed too much and it was too humid inside.

I will NOT go through my worms to separate the dead from the living. And since I don't think it's ok to feed chickens dead worms (correct?) I'll just start over with all the pupae I got. I don't want to buy 40k worms again. Hopefully most hatch and I have plenty of beetles so I can get a population going ASAP.

 

[Kusanar]

Also, another possible way to separate out the beetles... They do climb, just not smooth surfaces. I'm thinking, if you could give them a ramp made out of something they can climb and then have that dump onto a "slide" of something they can't get traction on, you might be able to get the beetles to climb up the ramp for some moist food and then lose their footing and slide down a ramp into a separate bin.

 

[KernH]

Problem is the worms also climb quite well. I have thought of some variation on your ramp that over time could divide the worms and beetles from the frass would be good.

 

[Kusanar]

Problem is the worms also climb quite well. I have thought of some variation on your ramp that over time could divide the worms and beetles from the frass would be good.

True, my worms don't climb much, but I guess that they can... mostly my worms stay buried in the substrate.

 

[Richard Pryor]

Please keep me posted regarding ramp, etc.

Today was round 2 of separating pupae. Horrible. Took me at least half an hour per bin and I currently have 8. After I was done, I glanced at bin #1 and there were at least 10-15 pupae on the surface. So I had to go through all of them again (a bunch had emerged to the surface). And let me tell you, I was THOROUGH the first time around. After picking up every visible pupae that were on the surface I used a spoon to scatter all the bedding.

Just glanced at the containers and looks like tomorrow will be round 3 .

Like I said, if I didn't have so many dead worms and hence not afraid of an ammonia build up, I would've let the beetles hatch and pick those out. But pupae seem to like the surface so I don't know. They are slippery, though.

Next round I will keep ~2k in each 28 qt. container (as opposed to ~5k). I guess I need to figure out how often to change the beetle bedding after they lay eggs to get to that number, although I can always remove/add by hand.

I will also sift the frass before it reaches 50% of the bedding material. I think the frass added head/moisture. I need to find a way to separate frass from wheat bran in large amounts. Maybe a larger mesh (1/8" or 1/4") to separate worms from all the bedding and then a very fine mesh to separate frass from wheat bran.

I know @Kusanar is correct and wheat bran won't hurt my plants at all. I just have this crazy idea that I might have so much frass that I could sell some to the local grow shop. A 25 pound bag sells for $150. And if I do that, I'll definitely have to give them pure frass.

 

[Kusanar]

Please keep me posted regarding ramp, etc.

Today was round 2 of separating pupae. Horrible. Took me at least half an hour per bin and I currently have 8. After I was done, I glanced at bin #1 and there were at least 10-15 pupae on the surface. So I had to go through all of them again (a bunch had emerged to the surface). And let me tell you, I was THOROUGH the first time around. After picking up every visible pupae that were on the surface I used a spoon to scatter all the bedding.

Just glanced at the containers and looks like tomorrow will be round 3 .

Like I said, if I didn't have so many dead worms and hence not afraid of an ammonia build up, I would've let the beetles hatch and pick those out. But pupae seem to like the surface so I don't know. They are slippery, though.

Next round I will keep ~2k in each 28 qt. container (as opposed to ~5k). I guess I need to figure out how often to change the beetle bedding after they lay eggs to get to that number, although I can always remove/add by hand.

I will also sift the frass before it reaches 50% of the bedding material. I think the frass added head/moisture. I need to find a way to separate frass from wheat bran in large amounts. Maybe a larger mesh (1/8" or 1/4") to separate worms from all the bedding and then a very fine mesh to separate frass from wheat bran.

I know @Kusanar is correct and wheat bran won't hurt my plants at all. I just have this crazy idea that I might have so much frass that I could sell some to the local grow shop. A 25 pound bag sells for $150. And if I do that, I'll definitely have to give them pure frass.

Was looking on YouTube earlier and there was a guy that had a kind of cool idea that might work for you. He keeps the worms in mesh bottom bins once they are big enough not to go through the mesh. The frass falls through into a bin below.