Quick question- Live or Freeze dried Mealworms?

[Penturner]

davekrista, They are something completely different. THey are the juvenile stage of a beetle. you can google them for more info.

I feed them live and all my birds love them. once you have them turned on to the live ones they will jump at even the dead, dried, fried or whatever as well.

I started a culture with 1000 worms. It will produce way more worms than i can ever use so I will be trying to sell the extras. I am thinking of offering approx 1000 worms for 10 to 15 dollars (depends on the cost of packaging) plus postage. If anyone is interested in being put on a list for them PM me.

I have 15 birds and feed about 50 worms per day. When all the birds are full grown it will be more like 75 to 100 worms a day. that sort of gives you an idea how many you will need. They keep in the refrigerator very well and you can freeze them if needed. I just shoot for only having a one week supply at a time. you can just keep them in a cool place that way.

 

[gryeyes]

Quote:
Yes, they are entirely different. Mealworms are the intermediate life stage of a beetle. You can buy 'em at PetSmart or PetCo, usually - but they're more expensive there. Some feed stores sell meal worms. Some bait shops sell 'em. You can even buy 'em online. There are BIG ones and little ones - I buy the container of 500 little ones for $7.00 too, which you have to keep stored in the fridge.

 

[davekrista]

Thanks for the explanation... From some of the other posts, I'm assuming its ok to feed them the earth worms then?

 

[gmendoza]

Hello,

I grow Darkling beatles for the purpose of going fishing with the mealworms,but I do toss a few hundreds to my birds and they love em.A female darkling beatle can lay up to 400 eggs in her lifetime.Considering I have about 1000 right now and a good guess is 500 are female,then I can have about 200,000 worms.*whew!! But I do know I have more than that right now.Just tossed about 1/2 a pint of em outside for my 25 birds and they were gone in a flash!

Also the dead darkling beatles are a treat for them too.

Live or dead,they all go down the hatch.