FINCHforum

Mealworms that is! I decided that live food may be the only way to go for my RCCBs, so I bought a whole bunch of mealworms and have started my own mealworm farm. It does seem to be an incredibly economical alternative to continually purchasing them. Easy to set up too. Luckily I am not squeamish! Hopefully I will have enough to keep my birds on a steady diet of them in a few months. Wish me luck!!!

Good luck! I've been growing my own for a couple years now for my geckos. They are easy to grow but seemed to take forever to get them started.

Good luck Jacqui
I have absolutely no problems growing them, in fact my shaftails flung them around a year ago and I still haven't managed to remove all the eggs Still finding a few rogues every now and then

lovemyfinch wrote:Good luck Jacqui
I have absolutely no problems growing them, in fact my shaftails flung them around a year ago and I still haven't managed to remove all the eggs Still finding a few rogues every now and then

And that right there, is why I cannot ever do live food. The thought of finding them chilling out in my carpet makes me shudder.
Very few things give me that feeling, but maggots and other little worms are at the top of that short list!

Good luck Jacqui!

I have my rccb's eating freeze dried bloodworms and eggfood when breeding. They never ate the mealies.

I'm growing mealies too. It does work but be aware that when they are feeding young they are eating a LOT of mealworms! Not only a few a day... My mealworm farm was never so productive that I could have had enough during that time.

Good luck! I think it's fun to see the mealworms grow and then turn into beetles and reproduce.

finchmix22 wrote:I have my rccb's eating freeze dried bloodworms and eggfood when breeding. They never ate the mealies.

I've tried the freeze dried bloodworm and eggfood route and it doesn't work for mine. They LOVE mealworms. I wish they would raise chicks without live food because it is just simpler all around, but after 4 tossed clutches it just isn't worth the heartache to keep trying. Hopefully the live food will do the trick!

I've never heard of raising your own, I've been buying mine at petsmart and they get expensive. What do you Google to get a farm going?

procfamily wrote:I've never heard of raising your own, I've been buying mine at petsmart and they get expensive. What do you Google to get a farm going?

This is the site I used for information. http://www.sialis.org/raisingmealworms.htm

I bought a plastic container at the dollar store, filled it to 1.5" depth with wheat bran and added my mealworms and the few that had turned into pupae. Cost of the mealworms aside, it cost me about $2.50 to set up.

When I was "farming" my own I used whole wheat flour as bedding, a very fine strainer...I put a handful of bedding/mealies in the strainer and shook it gently, the bedding fel through and mealies were left behind in the strainer.

Just took a peek at them tonight to make sure they were all doing well and one of the pupae that I had put in turned into a beetle already! Kind of exciting!!!

Thanks for the web page... think i'll give this a try myself!

Good luck. I hope you have better worm farming success than I did initially. It takes time for each person to get thier own method to work for them.
I have my own little system that is working well. I had to seperate the different stages as I found the beetles would eat the eggs and small worms.
I do suggest you microwave your substrate bran to kill off any bran mite, a minute or so does the trick (though watch it carefully as it can overheat and turn to charcoal quickly). I did use food grade bran initially but my lot kept getting overrun by the mites. Now I use nuked flour. Helps to sieve out the little worms when you want them quickly.

I fully agree about microwaving the bran!! I always had problems with the grain mites and my worm production was very poor. I even have up on raising them. Then, about half a year or so ago I got the tip with microwaving here on the board and gave it a go, and my beetles are producing wonderfully now. It really helps a lot!

Ursula wrote:I fully agree about microwaving the bran!! I always had problems with the grain mites and my worm production was very poor. I even have up on raising them. Then, about half a year or so ago I got the tip with microwaving here on the board and gave it a go, and my beetles are producing wonderfully now. It really helps a lot!

Ack - I wish I knew that 3 days ago Next time!! Thanks very much for the tip!!