Mealworm farming

[hannakat]

Hi JohnandJacquelineW!

They'll do fine! How many did you order? Are you going with a single bin? Tupperware and Gladware make real good temp. homes when in need!

Let us know how you make out!

 

[JohnandJacquelineW]

Quote:
Hi

We ordered 1,000 to start us out. The plan is to essentially do the single bin setup, but we are going to do it in a three drawer tower. That just happened to be the most efficient and inexpensive setup we could find that gave us a decent surface area without wasting a ton of volume (since surface area seems to be more important in this case).

I don't have a real big interest in separating out the different stages as it just seems like more work to me with not enough additional payoff for the extra work.

We may use the extra drawers to try to get separate colonies going through the different phases at different times. That way we can have a more continuous/consistent supply of meal worms.

I'm writing this from work

and got distracted by something that I was actually needed to be working on so didn't post this right away. But I just got a call saying that they have been delivered and are sitting on the front porch in the shade right now.

One more reason to be excited about getting off for the weekend in about 2 more hours!

 

[OwensMom]

Welcome JohnandJaquelineW You will love the meal worm colony. You'll love feeding them more. Enjoy, Owensmom

 

[hannakat]

Yippie! Yep, you're gonna have fun!

 

[WestKnollAmy]

Another family on board with meal worm farming!

You will enjoy watching them mature, change and reproduce. Fascinating and it doesn't take as long as I had thought. I did not expect to see baby worms this early. I was hoping to see some by the end of July but I already have some growing up. So exciting! And my chicks are anxious to try them again.

Welcome to our mealie community!

 

[Mamma_Duck04]

I just got 1000 meal worms 2 days ago- these meal worm threads sure make it enticing!

So... I need to go ahead & pull out a tank for them for good, but I temporarily put them in a rubbermaid storage container, laying the tank screen lid over top just for good measure lol. I mixed up some chicken crumbles & oats in the mix for now & laid a bunch of sliced-in-half carrots on top (because that's what hit me first from many of your pictures). Well I got distracted & finally checked on them again yesterday evening & to my amazement the carrots are *GONE*. I thought the carrots & potatoes were for moisture?? But I even dug around thinking they'd buried them in the mess, because I'd put in there about 8 carrots- NONE, all gone!

So I added some cut potatoes in there instead. I thought these little buggers ate the dry material & drank from the vegetables, but they actually eat these vegetables too?? I laughed to DH that they weren't orange at all

Guess I should call my dad & talk to him about these guys. He was so excited to hear I got into chickens again (he's to blame, buying me my first when I was about my son's age lol) & was even more excited when I told him the girls just die for meal worms.

He told me when they used to raise quail & pheasant (they used to breed/incubate, etc) they had really bad hatching rates till they put their birds on a high-meal worm diet & just went on & on about the meal worms.

I'm so excited to start raising them, hopefully I can have a good winter supply this year for the girls.

Oh! A few questions first- I've seen lots refer to freezing them, though I know you can refrigerate pretty much indefinitely, doesn't freezing cause them to go mushy?? Or better- how do you guys store your batches that you keep (as opposed to just letting them breed out constantly)?

And how do you go about 'loading' them? What stage do you do this & for how long do you let them 'load' before putting away for storage? What do you feed them to 'load' them well for chickens?

 

[hannakat]

Quote:

Welcome to the 'farm'!

Yes, they can go through a lot of veggies while they're growing. They can go for long periods without it but they grow much faster with veggie added to their living space.

They don't refrigerate indefinitely. They will still pupate and what I found is that those pupa don't make particularly healthy beetles. Maybe 50% good. It does slow them down but there is a 'shelf life'. I did take mine out once in a while to let them eat and every time they would grow and shed exoskeleton.

I haven't started experimenting with freezing yet. Still waiting for my first cycle of baby worms to grow big enough to start that.

Gut loading before freezing is still to be determined also since I'm still waiting for those adorable baby wormies to get big enough. I put some cucumber peal in the drawer with all the babies and when I checked it an hour later, there wasn't a empty spot of real estate .... worms just hanging on the whole thing! Can't imagine how many worms are in that drawer.

HOWEVER...in the 3-drawer colony, the babies are being raised on a mixture of wheat flour, ground oats, ground chicken feed, corn meal and dried milk. I have no idea if that will make a difference at all though!!! Doesn't matter, I'm having fun and so are the wormies.

Sounds like you're gonna have a good time! We'll keep sharing info as we progress!

 

[hannakat]

Note about development......

I'm still at a loss as to why I've had dead beetles in the single bin and not a single dead beetle in the top drawer of the 3-drawer colony. Those beetles are the first that developed and are about 2-1/2 months old. Gonna be a sad day when that drawer goes silent.....RIP dear mealworm producing machines..... BUT not YET!!

The only difference is the amount of ventilation, which I've corrected, and the amount of occupants. My single bin is solid beetles and the baby worms in there also seem to be doing well. I'd really like to figure out why the mortality rate of the beetles is higher in the single bin. It's enough that when I start getting beetles again from this young batch, the 3-drawer unit will be stocked again.

 

[Klwright1122]

I have been reading this thread for a week or so now and researching slot about these worms. I have a friend who raises cattle and therefore stores corn in grain silos. They have told me that when they get to the bottom 4 or 6 inches of the silos the "floor moves". They say it's maggots. They said they are white worms. Could this possibly be a growing meal worm? I have read where the meal worms start out white and change to the yellow color as they grow. I think I'm gonna have to go over and check it out. I actually never thought that maggots would eat corn. What do u guys think-- maggots or meal worms?

 

[hannakat]

I wouldn't think magots.....but I don't know if it's the kind of meal worms we're raising.

Calling Gallo del Cielo ~ Help!!!