Mealworm farming

[Germaine_11.20]

Unless you are extremely careless, they aren't getting out. They don't fly. I keep a screened lid on mine, not to keep them IN, but to keep weevil moths and anything else undesirable OUT. I have some in a shallow glass bowl (pupae) and they can't even crawl out of there.

I did see one trying to crawl up the side of the plastic container once but it had alot of dust matter on the side. It couldn't get past the screening (as in window screen material). I washed the container out and good as new and no one even made it half an inch up the side.

Preferably though keep them outside, perhaps in your coop. I have a bunch of mine in the wood shed right now as I am painting the coop floor for winter. They are stacked on top of each other in three layers of boxes while still allowing ventilation. Once again--they live on and thrive.

 

[j3707]

Anyone have a rule of thumb to figure base mealworm population needed for harvesting x amount every day? Or is it more how many you allow to pupate?

 

[Germaine_11.20]

You will never have enough because the chickens will eat them like candy. Just breed what you can and have room for. Typically 20-30 beetles per shoebox and you can vary that to whatever size box or tote you use. Pupae = beetles so that's how many pupae you need per box.

 

[hannakat]

Quote:
Hi! It's been a couple days since I was on here...boy, the 'happenings'! Starting farms, finding pupae, finding beetles! yea!

Well, j3707, that's a hard one. My original thoughts were to start with 1000+ worms, get about 1000 beetles, hoping 50% are female that each lay between 200-500 eggs. I took an average of 300 and came up with 150,000. Thing is, I don't know how many females there were and once the baby wormies started showing up, there was no way I was gonna count them to find out what the average was.

So, the worm has to pupate successfully, then morph into a beetle successfully. There is a mortality rate in all stages but it appears to be low.

I know this doesn't answer your question but it's all this gal knows.

 

[Germaine_11.20]

Here is a fun little site for the worms. The internet has alot of them.

http://www.javafinch.co.uk/feed/live/live.html

They make it sound more complicated then it really is. I never add moisture other then potatoes or other veggies. I have one in the garage that has oodles of little worms and I haven't touched it in months. Time to add some taters though so they can get big.

 

[kizanne]

Quote:
I've been working on that myself. Though since I just started all I can do is give you mathematical extrapolations.

I bought a thousand large mealworms in a container that was bigger than a cup but definately no bigger than two cups and would only be a nice treat for my 11 girls.

That was what I decided to base my desires on one to two of those containers a day. so one to two thousand mealworms per day.

the life cycle if kept in a moderate temperature is 3 months (I don't know that exact temperature but I have mine in about 75 degrees and seem to be on track for a 3 month cycle a little more maybe).

So in 3 months at 1000/day I need 90,000 worms and 180,000 worms. Adult beetles lay between 200-600 in their life (based on what I"m seeing thinking more like 600) but I'll go with 300 to be on the safe side and to match sialis.org so 90,000 / 300 is 300 female beetles needed so lets say 600 beetles needed since 50% will be boys. Now lets say the cycle lasts alittle longer like 4 months and that you want 180,000 worms that would be 1,500 beetles. You'd want to let 1,500 pupate every 3 to four months.


Recap to provide 1,000 mealworms a day with good temps you need to let 600 beetles pupate every 3 months

Or to be on the safe happy side of my chickens

1500 beetles every 3 months.

I plan on doing mine in batches. I just let 2000 pupate and are in beetles form now laying eggs. I have a second bin with nothing but worms (small/medium) that I will take the first 1,500 pupae out and put them in a fresh bin. When all the beetles die in the first bin I'll then pull the first 1500 out and put them in a third bin. Then all other large worms from that bin will become food. With this system I think I'll have 3 bins that are constantly rotating with worm to harvest, beetles laying eggs, and one for pupae. I also think I'll end up with way more mealworms than I need cause I'll actually have 3 sets of 1500 going but hey I can't have my girls running out and I can always scale back later.

I started with 2,000 + mealworms for $20 and an $8 bag of wheat which I still have some left. I let all my first worms pupate and right now have thousands of small worms to medium size worms.

Hope that helps.

 

[crazy huhn]

Quote:
Thank You for your nice comment. I am so happy for you that your mealies are doing so well. Tell them their brothers and sisters in California say "Hi"....

 

[j3707]

Thanks everyone! Going to have to think this over a bit.

Spare bedroom=wormatorium.

Good thing we don't have a spare bedroom.

 

[hannakat]

Quote:
Thank You for your nice comment. I am so happy for you that your mealies are doing so well. Tell them their brothers and sisters in California say "Hi"....

 

[Cakela]

Just got some pictures of my wormies, I'll post them in a second!

I took their newspaper out so I could get pictures of them:

You can see a few of the pupae!