Live meal worms

[Pine Marten]

Hi Jeff,

thought it was about time i gave an up date on the mealworm farm. And its great news. I had a good look today while i was changing the potato. I found that cutting very thin slices dont get to much moisture in the top tray and change them every few days.

However i looked in the tray under filter and couldn`t see anything, so what i done was turn it over a bit with my fingers. And i could see bits of bran falling in. On further investigation i could just about see some very tiny wiggly things. Brown in colour. Very exciting i thought so turned a lot more over. And yes i can confirm that i have the tiniest mealworms in the tray. Very hard to spot but they are there. They seem to stay underneath. Am looking forward to seeing them grow. When they get larger will take a couple of pics. But at the moment to hard to spot.

Pine Marten.

[jeff]

Hi Pine Martin
That's brilliant news, you'll soon have hundreds of your own mealies.

your news sent me dashing to our own tray's to see if ours had popped out yet, I even got the magnifying glass out lol but as yet nothing then the wife informed me that we are about a week behind you so I hope this time next week to see what you’re seeing now.

Congratulations on becoming a new Dad lol

[70007]

This is a fascinating thread, and thanks to you both Jeff and Pine Marten for giving such a great running commentary.

I have been reading it all but not making any comments until you had some success, because I wanted to see if your efforts were more cost effective to just buying the mealies off Ebay.

How much would you say it has cost so far?

John

[jeff]

Hi John
Please to hear you found this thread interesting because its been very interesting, sort of working in unison or side by side with Pine marten, I haven't had his success yet, I'm still awaiting to become a dad again lol maybe next week I hope.

I think the total cost for me so far is the £10 for the 6 pots 2/3000 of mealies I bought from CJ wildlife and a couple of pounds postage, a couple of packets of cheap porridge oats from the local supermarket, carrots or potatoes to feed them with and not forgetting the 3 draw towers we bought, the mesh for the filter, so saying around £30-£40 to start your farm.

Looking at our beetles there has to be a few hundred in there and if each one supposed to produce between 2/300 eggs even working on the lowest 200x200 that’s 40000 meal worms, quite a lot for £30-£40 and the next lot will only cost us the price of carrots/potatoes and some oats, because we already have the tower.

The wife gave a couple of hundred mealies to the birds from our 2/3000 so we were getting 2 deals in one by feeding and breeding.

I'm sure Pine Marten will add a little more or correct me if I'm wrong?

I'll see if I can get any pictures of our beetles but most of them hide under the bits of egg box we broke up for them to hide under.

All in all its been very interesting watching all the stages and it does work out much cheaper to breed your own rather than constantly buying them.

[jeff]

Just took this and you can see just in this corner there are quite a few beetles, notice how they all head downwards when disturbed, within a few seconds they were mostly out of site and buried below the oats.

I can't wait to see Pine Martens little meal worms.

[Pine Marten]

Hi john.

I had a bit of a better start than jeff, as i bought a small tub of what i thought were mealworms from the local pet shop. Only cost a couple of quid. When i got home and looked, loads of them had already morphed and i even had a couple of beetles. Like jeff i bougt the tower for around a tenner and cheap porridge oats. And added some other stuff that i found out about on a website.

But its really an ongoing thing once you get mealworms select some of the large ones and put in another tray let them morph and put the beetles or the morphed ones in with the beetles to start all over again.

I dont buy live mealworms, just dried ones and thats about a tenner for a kilo. But for me its just hopefully going to be like a hobby. My birds will like fresh mealworms and so will the hedgehogs that come to visit.

Like jeff says it will become very much cheaper once the production line gets going. Like all things it has startup cost.

Pine Marten.

[Pine Marten]

Hi jeff.

Lots of beetles there. You cant be very far away from finding little mealworms in the tray underneath. I put a very thin slice of potato in the middle tray yesterday so the baby mealies can have a drink. Had a look this morning and several little mealies were under it. Turned the medium over gain and had a look. Need glasses to see. I reckon i have quite a few in there. Looking very good i must say.

Pine Marten.

[Pine Marten]

Hi jeff,

Pretty rubbish pic, but here are some of the baby mealies on the potato.

http://i53.tinypic.com/343ol7l.jpg

Pine Marten.