Pets

How to raise mealworms, the easy way

You may wonder why one would want to breed mealworms. There are several reasons I can think of why some might NO interested in raising mealworms: They are worms! They are smelly, slimy, repulsive, twisted worms! They can come out and infest my house! Or those who have a bit of experience with these insects may suggest that they can easily be purchased at a local pet store or even cheaper in bulk on the internet.

First, let me dispel any assumptions: They’re not smelly, slimy, twisty, and I don’t think they’re gross. His climbing abilities are limited to non-slippery objects. They move slowly so if you drop one you can easily capture it.

Yes, you can order mealworms at a pet store. The internet also sells worms for as little as $12k! So why would I want to go through the trouble of breeding them if I can buy them so easily and cheaply? Big question.

If you raise small reptiles like me, or have very small hatchlings like viper geckos, pictus geckos, or even chameleons, you need to raise your own mealworms! You will find that mealworm farming provides a wide variety of sizes that are perfect for these little reptiles. Young reptiles eat often! You must have a reliable supply of food that is the right size for these young animals so that they can grow at a healthy rate. By breeding your own, you will have various sizes available for your animals.

To start raising your own mealworms, start with around 100 to 200 adult mealworms. Again, these can be purchased at a local pet store or even from an internet company. A note that normal mealworms will metamorphose into a pupa and then into the dark beetle.

Prepare bedding used to keep worms healthy using a generic brand of oatmeal and dry infant cereal. The cheaper the better. I use oatmeal as a base for the medium. I like to add the cereal as an additional food source for the young mealworms.

Mix the two together: 2/3 oatmeal to about 1/3 cereal. You’ll want to mix just enough to have about an inch or two in the bottom of your container. This will become the staple food for the worms. Additional foods such as potatoes, carrots, apples, kale, and other greens can be offered to provide moisture for the worms. The container can be a plastic shoebox, a sweater box, or another configuration that I’ll discuss later.

Once the oatmeal and cereal are mixed together, add the mealworms. Add an egg carton on top and bottom and voila. The worms use this egg carton to crawl over and under. Even though mealworms don’t climb the plastic walls, I place the boxes away from the edges of the box.

Keep the mealworms at a constant level of 70 to 80 and you will soon begin to see pupation. I have found with the medium mix described above and other offered foods that the maggots will not bother the pupae. Some pupae may turn brown and die, but most should become beetles. If you want to maximize production, you can certainly separate the pupae from the worms.

After about 2 weeks of pupation, you will start to see some dark beetles appearing under the egg cartons. Again, I haven’t noticed any predation on my groups, even of the softer pupae by beetles if they feed well. Beetles are ultimately what you are looking for in a healthy colony of mealworms. They lay eggs to create new mealworms. The eggs are quite small and you will probably never see them as they are sticky and stick to bedding.

Eventually, the container will be a mix of substrate, egg cartons, mealworms of various sizes, maybe a few pupae, and certainly beetles. From this activity mix, you can selectively harvest the size of mealworm you want.

The above technique works well if you need to feed only a few animals. If you have more than a handful of animals, the best way to set up a continuous mealworm factory is to use one of those plastic filing systems found at your local department store. Set up each container with a culture and you’ll get every size of mealworm, more than you could ever use.

In this setup I have 6 bins of mealworms (the middle bin is used for vermiculite). I don’t use all the worms this unit produces. I let several containers mature to produce pupae, beetles, and eventually more mini-mealworms.

I hope you will try this good way to provide additional food for your animals. Be a little patient as it takes a little time to see those first micro mealworms.

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