Trouble raising meal worms

[Jacquie Button]

Hello..,I saw that Mass had a bad storm? I hope all is well.

 

[tigger19687]

Ohh it was WINDY last night !!! I was lucky that I had battened down everything.
Chooks closed up tight in the coop.
I have a fabric carport that made it YET ANOTHER big storm best $150 I spent , and it was on sale 4 years ago ! It has served me well

On the Mealworm update, I have a lot of Pupae and hoping to get them to Beetles so they are in a separate container

I also had to put an ad on Craigs List to sell some mealies are there are A LOT ! HAHAHHAA

 

[Jacquie Button]

Ohh it was WINDY last night !!! I was lucky that I had battened down everything.
Chooks closed up tight in the coop.
I have a fabric carport that made it YET ANOTHER big storm best $150 I spent , and it was on sale 4 years ago ! It has served me well

On the Mealworm update, I have a lot of Pupae and hoping to get them to Beetles so they are in a separate container

I also had to put an ad on Craigs List to sell some mealies are there are A LOT ! HAHAHHAA

Glad you held down the fort! My worms are multiplying too... I was thinking of asking the guy I bought them from if he wanted some back, lol! But gosh some get so big!

 

[Rodtamura]

Patience. The eggs and newly hatched larvae are pretty close to invisible.

I’m having the same issue. Can’t find one thing that looks like an egg let alone a worm (even using a good magnifying glass). I’ve done everything that I’ve read and seen in videos and nothing. Unless there is one and only one person incapable of raising them and that one person is me..... raising mealworms is a scam! Glad that I didn’t have to buy anything to attempt to pursue this.

 

[JustAChickenLoverOverHere]

I’m having the same issue. Can’t find one thing that looks like an egg let alone a worm (even using a good magnifying glass). I’ve done everything that I’ve read and seen in videos and nothing. Unless there is one and only one person incapable of raising them and that one person is me..... raising mealworms is a scam! Glad that I didn’t have to buy anything to attempt to pursue this.

This is from 3 years ago! Don't worry about it, I'm pretty sure it's because of an update? Not entirely sure. And welcome to BYC!

 

[azygous]

I’m having the same issue. Can’t find one thing that looks like an egg let alone a worm (even using a good magnifying glass). I’ve done everything that I’ve read and seen in videos and nothing. Unless there is one and only one person incapable of raising them and that one person is me..... raising mealworms is a scam! Glad that I didn’t have to buy anything to attempt to pursue this.

There can't be many things easier than raising meal worms, and we've made all the mistakes here so you don't have to. There are a few factors that are more conducive to raising the meal worms that you should know. They need to be in a warm place to reproduce, 75F-80F is best. Bedding is also important (wheat bran and mill run are best so the baby worms can move through it easily). Also, crucial is a water source that won't grow mold (carrots are best), and keeping the colony at the correct humidity so you aren't raising grain mites in addition to meal worms (don't use covers on your worm bins).

Are you watching adult meal worms (beetles) trying to mate and lay eggs? Or are you expecting mating action from larvae (worms)? The life cycle of a meal worm is larva, they grow, molt their skins many times, then they slip into the pupa stage. In not too long, the pupa turns into an adult (beetle). Then the beetle mates with another beetle and lays eggs. It takes a month or two, depending on temp, for the eggs to hatch into baby worms so tiny you won't be able to see them, but you will notice the bedding moving.

 

[Rodtamura]

There can't be many things easier than raising meal worms, and we've made all the mistakes here so you don't have to. There are a few factors that are more conducive to raising the meal worms that you should know. They need to be in a warm place to reproduce, 75F-80F is best. Bedding is also important (wheat bran and mill run are best so the baby worms can move through it easily). Also, crucial is a water source that won't grow mold (carrots are best), and keeping the colony at the correct humidity so you aren't raising grain mites in addition to meal worms (don't use covers on your worm bins).

Are you watching adult meal worms (beetles) trying to mate and lay eggs? Or are you expecting mating action from larvae (worms)? The life cycle of a meal worm is larva, they grow, molt their skins many times, then they slip into the pupa stage. In not too long, the pupa turns into an adult (beetle). Then the beetle mates with another beetle and lays eggs. It takes a month or two, depending on temp, for the eggs to hatch into baby worms so tiny you won't be able to see them, but you will notice the bedding moving.

Oh, looking for the eggs from beetles

 

[azygous]

Okay, then. You're looking for the eggs from the correct meal worm stage. If you have your beetles at 75F to 80F, you would start to see the substrate moving with newly hatched larvae within six weeks or so.

Many of us have a beetle tray with a screened bottom where the eggs fall through to another tray below it. This not only prevents the beetles from consuming the eggs, but it makes it much easier to watch the growth of the newly hatched larvae.

I use rolled oats as a substrate (bedding) in the beetle tray because it doesn't sift through the screen as easily as finer substrate does. I use wheat bran in the tray below since newly hatched larvae would find it much more difficult to navigate the coarser material. Other bedding material such as corn meal or other cereals are much too dense and lack the proper protein content.

Protein content of the substrate is important. Wheat bran happens to have just the right balance of protein so that the larvae grow to their full potential. A substrate that is higher in protein such as mill run, a high protein by-product in the milling of wheat to produce cereals such as couscous, cause the larvae to grow much, much larger than normal. This causes them to spend this life stage in growth and they don't have time and energy left to pupate. If they do pupate, the pupae die before morphing into beetles.

But the meal worms on mill run grow to an inch and a half compared to the normal one inch of worms on wheat bran. These are big and juicy and the chickens love them, but you won't see many of them turn into beetles which defeats the point of raising meal worms. This is why I grow meal worm larvae on wheat bran to perpetuate the colony, and grow some in mill run strictly for feeding to the chickens.