Earth Worms

[Dodger]

I have tried several ways to present earth worms to my garden birds. However to date I have had no success. They have always escaped, no matter what I use to contain them. I have tried small doggy bowls, deep bowls, cups, saucers, most things, they always slither-out. Does anybody feed earth worms to their gardens birds successfully, if so would you please tell me your secret. Many thanks.

[Kerry L]

Sorry, but the only way I found is by digging the veggie plot and any worms uncovered are pounced on by blackbirds and robins. How about putting a bit of soil around them? Perhaps they like the flavour of dirt with their food? Have you had a go at waxworms yet - I'm wondering whether to or not. I have found that the mealworms are going great guns at the moment.

[Dodger]

Sorry, but the only way I found is by digging the veggie plot and any worms uncovered are pounced on by blackbirds and robins. How about putting a bit of soil around them? Perhaps they like the flavour of dirt with their food? Have you had a go at waxworms yet - I'm wondering whether to or not. I have found that the mealworms are going great guns at the moment.Waxworms: are OK but, the birds in my garden much prefer meal worms - although I supplement my supply of meal worms by breeding them, it is still a costly buisness. And I have a substantial supply of earth worms, which I can't seem to find a way to confine, and present them to the birds.

[Kerry L]

Thank you for the info on wax worms - I think I'll just stick to the meal worms. How do you breed them? I know that they turn into beetles, having had a few escapees in the past, but some of the pupae are eaten before they develop - some of these little things are bent on cannibalism! Others seem unable to shed their old skins and suffocate. My daughter thinks I am cruel to feed the birds with the mealworms - she is a veggie - and she would like to make pets out of some of the worms!;)

[Bebe]

Dear Dodger, If you contain the worms, take care to keep them shaded. I dug some and put them in a biscuit tin from which they didn't escape, but when I looked a couple of hours later they'd shrivelled up & died in the sun. Not very creature friendly, I'm afraid. Kerry's suggestion of earth is a good one, as long as there's not so much the birds can't find them. You'll be back to square one then!

[Kerry L]

Putting some old leaves in the tin, or bark chippings! The blackbirds love to scrape them around? The damp of the bark would stop the worms from drying out too.

[Jenny]

Dodger,

As CJ know, I'm hesitant about meal worms after their supplier (not CJ!) had a bad batch of boxes and they escaped - in the post van and caused mayhem in the wee sorting office on the island and turned up in folks' mail and in the van (going to and fro to Glasgow) for days! :D This happened TWICE! :o I wasn't popular!

I want to breed my own, but it's a bit cold up here for the garden shed! The reason for breeding my own is sheer cost and my garden visitors' greed! With four pairs (min - the grapevine works when mealworms go out) of blackbirds, two pair mistle thrushes and three pair song thrushes - plus all the other birds that home in - it's Piccadilly Circus up here and one tub lasts under five minutes - even with a dedicated feeder for non-ground feeding birds!

Earthworms - I do as Kerry suggests. I do save some for the hedgehog - she's so unafraid she'll let me put one down in front of her and will snatch it before I've let go.

[Ben]

[quote=Jenny]Dodger,

As CJ know, I'm hesitant about meal worms after their supplier (not CJ!) had a bad batch of boxes and they escaped - in the post van and caused mayhem

This week past I have received from a:mad: CJ supplier a parcel of loose mealworms(open box),not the most pleasant thing to see on opening a parcel.Managed to gather most off them and within half an hour of putting them in the garden a large magpie had scoffed the lot,the bluetits for whom they were intended never got a chance.

[NotQuiteBlackCoot]

I seem to be getting through (or rather the birds do) more & more mealworms. At first small sacks seemed plenty, but I've just ordered the largest size sack. A small sack was only lasting 10 days. Going to be fun persuading all those mealworms into containers without too many escapees. Boy do they wriggle. Can't blame them though.
I too had many qualms on the veggie question as I am a non-meat & fish eater, and it is not a good idea to watch blue or coal tits eating them. Thrushes are ok. One gulp and they're gone. No messing. And like your daughter, Kerry, I enjoy looking after the little blighters. It makes it seem a bit better if they've had maximum comfort until they go out in the feeders. They love carrot peel (organic, as well).
The blackbirds totally ignore the mealworms, but it takes 2 blue tits, 2 coal tits, 2 robins and 1 or 2 song thrushes only a few days to make quite a hole in 5000 mealworms. Goodness knows what I'd do if the blackbirds did start eating mealworms.
Tried waxworms, and they were very popular, but far too expensive for me to carry on with.
No broken boxes yet. And the sacks have been well secured.

[Kerry L]

The mealworms are almost gone. The robins have a nest at the end of the garden and they are collecting more than they can manage in their beaks! I must admit, the mealworms are cleaned regularly, I use an old sieve - but the dust created makes me sneeze like crazy. :( Then they are put into fresh bran. I tried potato skins once, that was a nice treat, but they prefer the carrot - not too much or they go yukky (we're organic too). I feel quite sorry for the ones who have just shed their skins (white or very light brown), so they get put back - a short reprieve for them. Am I daft or what?!:o
I usually order a small sack too, then put them into the little pots from previous orders (I find it hard to throw things away), but I don't think I can find room for a bigger sack - I have had to use a couple of ice-cream tubs too (at least they can't escape from those - a heck of a climb to the top), and the work surface is stretched to the limit. I don't want to stack too many little tubs in case I suffocate them either!
As for ethics, I feel that I am helping with the wildlife that could suffer hardship from weather, predators, etc, but the mealworms are plentiful. I did think of doing a bushtucker trial, but chickened out! I also thought I would get a tin of mealworms for serving up to the unsuspecting mother-in-law for a Christmas snack!:D I chickened out of that too!
Regards, Kerry

[Jenny]

Oh I wish I had a garage with heating to breed mealworms - could make a fortune up here with the fishing fraternity as well as the birding crowd!

Not quite black coot - what are you storing your mealworms in? If I order a sack, I need storage.

Help - pc screen gone bonkers - Northern lights starting so will go for now.

[NotQuiteBlackCoot]

Hi Jenny,
I am very lucky, I have a cellar, so excellent storage for all bird foods-5 CJ bins, + lots of other bird stuff. It's dry & not too cold even on frosty nights and cool in summer so ideal for mealworms. Don't know about breeding them though. I haven't a clue about how to do that. Any information would be gratefully received.
Anyway, back to storage. I put them in old margerine tubs, the larger the better , to about 1 inch depth. Then they get their food & bran mix, and a piece of carrot peel every now & then. I love the busy rustling noise they make. The sign of 1000's of contented (ignorance is bliss) little wrigglies. (This is the name mealworms go by in our family)
It is a bit of a nightmare pursuading them out of the sack, though. They come in the small sack with 3 crumpled pieces of newspaper. And they get into every nook and cranny. But I'm getting the knack of wriggly extraction now and also scooping up escapees before they make it to inaccesible parts of the cellar, of which there are many!

[Kerry L]

The newspaper can be a bit of a pain if you don't know what to expect, but after a couple of trys, I do the following:
Have a nice large 4 litre tub of ice cream. (Eat the ice cream:D - not all at once - or salvage it after teenagers have found it and emptied it first!):( The large tubs of biscuits for cheese that appear around Christmas are quite good too.
Undo the sack - carefully, there may be little worms hiding in the folds.
Carefully remove the newspaper and put into the container.
Don't try to empty the newspaper all at once, and don't tear off in large lumps because the paper can ping the little worms into space and they nip off to a hidey hole quite quickly while you have your hands full! Under the washing machine is a good place - and then you find the odd little beetle some days/weeks later!
I tear off small pieces at a time - and check on both sides - they can hold on even when upside down.
Gently brush them off the piece of paper into the container.
This takes time, but at least you can control the mess, and if you do it over the sink (put plug in first so they don't go down the hole), it serves as a double catcher!
Then empty the remains of the sack into the container - they get into the seams too.
Then I put about an inch of bran with a bit of Reptiluxe (a nice tonic after a stressful 15 minutes and the travelling).
Then I decant the worms into the tubs. I like the sound of them burrowing too - it only takes a couple of seconds and they have disappeared under the bran!
At first there will be quite a few in the tubs and I clean them out every 2 - 3 days, but as they reduce, they keep a little longer, but I tend to split them into three, otherwise I would spend too long in the utility room (not much fun in cold weather).
Also, especially for NotQuiteBlackCoot, just think we give them a quick ending, whereas fishermen dunk them first!;)

[NotQuiteBlackCoot]

It seems our methods for wriggly extraction are similar, Kerry, although I'm in a cellar and use a large bin lid as my insurance against escapees. That was a brilliant explanation on the removal of mealworms from sacks & newspaper though.
Sad to say one or two do get a dunking when a bird misjudges the degree of wriggliness and drops them in the water container on the table. But I've noticed they will fish them out later if the mealworm dish is empty.
I also have the hanging mealworm feeder from CJ. The coaltits used it straight away, blue tits then robins catching on after them. However it took the birds in my daughter's garden weeks before they'd use her hanging mealworm feeder, although it was in a good position with all her other feeders around.

[princess in the bluetower]

How do you successfully breed meal worms? I find them expensive but the robins loves them especially at this time of year.

[Ben]

How do you successfully breed meal worms? I find them expensive but the robins loves them especially at this time of year.

http://www.polliwog-design.com/mealworms.html

This site should help :)

[NotQuiteBlackCoot]

Thanks for that link,Ben. Might try the breeding thing sometime when I can set it all up.
Meanwhile I've just been extracting 1000's of wrigglies from their large sack so there are now 7 large tubs of happily rustling mealworms in our cellar.
Also in the morning the robins, tits and thrushes can stop sulking as they'll have loads of live nosh after a couple of days of rationing due to dwindling supplies.

[princess in the bluetower]

This ste is wonderful - thank you so much. My mother-in-law will also love it as she has this robin called scruffy - she is always taking out mealworms for it and stands guard until it comes and eats them; if she doesn't then the starlings get them.
Thank you again - I will be setting up my containers today.
princess in the blue tower

[Carol]

Kerry, your description of wriggly extraction was wonderful - made me laugh out loud! :D Thank you so much. Have mother-in-law idea up my sleeve - could be minestrone soup on the menu when she next visits ...;)

I have just started being a "serious" bird feeder (after sad demise of ancient cat last October :( ) and this week was brave enough to try meal worms for the first time. Box of three small tubs arrived yesterday (had forgotten to tell my husband who was rather bemused by the arrival of a box marked "live biological material", but he is used to me doing "mad" things and has built up a good tolerance level over the last few years!). I've put some out today and they are going fast. However I have a question - should I feed these mealworms over the next few days (if they last that long, that is!) or is the stuff that arrived in the tubs with the worms sufficient? I would hate to think of them being hungry and it makes me feel better if I know that they are happy before being eaten.

Am enjoying the forum and will be logging regularly. Hope your babies are all OK, NotQuiteBlackCoot!

Carol
:)

[Kerry L]

Hi Carol
When I first tried the worms, I wasn't sure what to do either.:confused: I knew they were munching the bran quite quickly, so when I did my trip to the supermarket, I looked for some. Well, as usual, they never seem to have what I want, only Allbran, Special K and the likes. So it was a trip to Holland and Barratt (or any health food shop) and I bought a big bag of the stuff. Needless to say that the mealworms ran out before the bran. But, they did eat well, and I had plenty of bran for the next order and then I bought some Reptiluxe as well, and after that I got up the nerve to order the sacks. One year quite a lot of the mealworms turned very quickly into pupae, and the birds weren't too fussed, but the hedgehog was absolutely delighted, and tipped the bowl over to reach the last remaining few.:) Unfortunately this happened just at the point when I was about to drop off to sleep and the noise of the bowl being tipped up and rolled around the paving slabs woke me up!:( Then all their friends came and talked for hours - just like steam trains - they started at 12.30 and went on until 3! This frightened my weedy husband when he first heard them, and he didn't believe me when I told him it was only the hedgehogs on a date, so he had to investigate - had this been a potential burglar he would have likely hidden and it would be me investigating strange noises.:D I carried on with the mealworms for hedgehogs until November, when I think the weather started to chill. Then there was plenty for the birds. I do bring uneaten worms in if the weather is wet, though. A covered feeder will be next on the list - perhaps a Christmas present.
Happy feeding! Regards, Kerry
PS I sort worms out into the feeding bowl, and just put a small sprinkling of bran over the top. The birds dig them out anyway, but if the bran is too deep there may be a few survivors at the bottom and a lot of messy bran on the ground.

[Kerry L]

I think we'd all like to know how the minestrone goes!:D

[NotQuiteBlackCoot]

Emptying my first large sack of mealworms, rather than the small one I usually have, seemed to go on forever. Help! I was running out of tubs!
Good job I got a large sack though...this last few days we've been invaded by a flock of starlings. There's been the odd one or two throughout the winter, and their wonderful dusk flying displays, up to 1000 birds. Now we really know we've got them. maybe only 6 or 7, but they seem like 60 or 70 when they're clattering about and squawking on the bird table. And can they eat!!! They clear a tray of mealworms in about 5 minutes. Poor little robins and tits don't stand a chance, so I ordered a hanging mealworm feeder with guard off CJ. Sadly they're on back order, so I rigged up a "contraption" of my own around the hanging feeder I already had. It did work for a day or two. The tits and robins caught on at once. Starlings got very frustrated at first, but now they've found they can still get in as the holes on the "contraption" are just a bit too big! So I hope the guard comes soon. The starlings are welcome to some mealworms but not all of them! They do make me laugh though, they're such mad , boisterous, "getting down & dirty" birds.