Aww, I am sorry to hear it. She was very pretty, but something inside her must not have been right..
Thanks!
ALSO! The dried ones are just so expensive, i can't justify it for myself. I do ok on the worm part, the pupa, eggs. The beetles creep me out some. They are sneaky lil nasties and will get on your shirt sleeves if you don't roll them up. The frass "poop" they leave builds up and does create dust, so i use a mask, it makes me cough.
I'll add my meal worm experience and how I got started with this post. I bought two of those little small tubs of meal worms that they sell at Wal Mart around here. Wal Mart keeps them is a small refrigerator in the sporting goods section and they are sold as fish bait. Keeping them cold stops them from turning into beetles so cold is never a problem just can't let them freeze. After the fishing trip I probably had less than a hundred mealies left over. I read enough of the meal worm thread that jchny 2000 posted above to realize I had everything I needed to get started. I used a large box of quick oats and the 10 gallon fish tank that had been sitting empty in the garage. I did add about a cup full of chicken layer crumble. I didn't bake anything because this whole thing was kept in the garage at the time. It stays hot in the garage and thats what they like to multiply. The box of oats and the cup of layer crumble made it about 2" deep in the 10 gallon fish tank and thats still all I have in there to date. A couple of baby carrots, apple, potatoe, ect for moisture about once a week and thats it. I keep it in the house in a closet for now but it will return to the garage when the weather gets warmer. The garage gets much hotter than the house in the summer and is dry so its the perfect enviroment. My less than a hundred has multiplied at least to a thousand and I still have live beetles laying eggs (You know how we love egg layers). Mine will be a slower process to reach large numbers but I like the idea that I only have invested the cost of a box of quick oats and a cup of layer crumble. The mealies were going to get tossed to the chickens anyway and I did get to use them for bait. As it stands now I will not have to buy bait anymore and the bulk of the worms will provide a endless supply of chicken treats (unless I let Roger help me count them). I actually forget about them being in the closet but get reminded when I make salads that I need to give them a couple pieces of carrot or celery or something moist. A five dollar investment and no more than a minute worth of my time a week required to take care of them made it a easy decision. Free fishing bait an NO Roger they are not ready yet to be counted.![]()
Thanks!
